Measuring Creativity: A 40+ Year Retrospective

This article describes how, as theories of creativity evolved, so have measures of creativity. Measures thus reflect the theories that generated them.     

Evaluating Creativity Through the Degrees of Solidity of Its Assessment: A Relational Approach

In this paper, we introduce a new approach to creativity assessment. Arguably, one of the main obstacles to creativity assessment is that creativity criteria are likely to change depending on what is assessed and who is making the assessment. We argue that we might be able to solve this problem by adopting a relational ontology, i.e., an ontology according to which beings of the world acquire their properties by relating to other beings. First, we present the main consequences of this ontological approach for creativity assessment: (a) Accounting for the creativity of a given object involves retracing the beings (including criteria) that relate it to its alleged creativity; (b) One can assess the creativity of this object by looking at the number of beings that substantiate this relation, i.e., by looking at what we call the “degree of solidity” of the relation; (c) One can thus account for the specificity of various forms of creativity and, at the same time, compare them in terms of solidity. Building on these ontological assumptions, we then present a new assessment technique, the Objection Counting Technique, before putting it to the test using an excerpt taken from a naturally occurring brainstorming session.     

Creative at Each Age: Age‐Related Differences in Drivers of Workplace Creativity from an Experience Sampling Study

Creativity and innovation are essential agents for change processes and accelerating technical development. Having to face challenges, such as demographic change, organizations require individuals who are creative and innovative at each age. Previous research identified affect as a crucial determinant of creativity, even though empirical findings showed inconsistencies. Drawing on literature on age‐related changes in affective experiences, we investigated the moderating effect of employees’ age on the association between daily positive and negative affect and creativity using a daily diary study. A total of 116 employees responded to daily questionnaires twice a day over five consecutive working days. As expected, hierarchical linear modeling analyses revealed differential effects regarding the affect‐creativity association, dependent on employees’ age. Although older employees were most creative on days when they experienced a high level of positive affect (compared to their mean level of positive affect), younger employees were particularly creative when experiencing negative affect (compared to their mean level of negative affect). We discuss practical implications on how organizations could provide creativity‐enhancing work environments for employees at each age.     

WHITEHEAD,CHANCE, AND THE IMMANENTLY CREATIVE SPIRIT

In this essay, it is argued that God through the Spirit is both the immanent and eminent principle of creativity, ever wooing and empowering the advancements in complexity within biological evolution. I argue herein also that God, particularly in and through the activity of the Spirit of creativity, was fully present in and with and under what is oft called “creation,” from the very beginning of created time—and will be to the end of time, proleptically present as the expression of the principle of creativity. I maintain that the Spirit, by her kenosis into the natural world, imbibed the nature with an evolving fertility that has continually manifested itself in and through the increases of complexity in the natural environ. This primal imbibing of herself into the world of nature caused the world to become marked by what principally amounts to an activation of the naturally occurring, inherent potentialities within nature, thereby producing a distinctive self‐creativity within the world. Somewhat akin to Peirce, who said that we need a “thorough‐going evolutionism or none,” I contend that we need a thoroughly immanent God or none, all the while noting that both immanent creativity and self‐creativity are marks of this overall poietic process known as biotic evolution.     

AESTHETICS,CREATIVITY, AND MYSTICISM: AN INVESTIGATION OF THREE MODES OF CONSCIOUSNESS

This essay explores the universal nature of aesthetic, creative, and mystical experience, tracing some essential interrelations among the three. Enlarging upon the work of anthropologist Jacques Maquet, I speculate that “sensory fixedness” is both necessary and sufficient to achieve aesthetic experience, and that the unification of mind engendered by sensory fixedness is the essential source of aesthetic power. Therefore, the role of the aesthetic object (construed broadly) is either as an arbitrary sensory focusing mechanism, or as the physical embodiment of a gestalt facilitating fixedness; the first category is merely attractive, while the second contains all that is truly great in art (visual and auditory). I suggest further that as both creative inspiration and mystical experience result from fixedness, both are related to aesthetic experience. However, while aesthetic experience is rooted in sensation, mystical and creative experience, though often prepared by sensory fixedness, may transcend the sensory domain altogether toward more abstract forms of mental fixedness.     

Creating Through Deviancy or Adjustment? The Link between Personality Profile Normativeness and Creativity

Does deviancy or adjustment predict creativity? To address this question, we tested the association between personality profile normativeness (similarity between one's personality profile and the average profile—a proxy for the deviancy–adjustment continuum) and creativity across four different samples (total N = 348 768). We used a wide range of creativity measures, including self‐reported, informant‐reported, behavioural, and occupational creativity, as well as several essential statistical controls (i.e., demographics, socio‐economic background, intelligence, and life satisfaction). Furthermore, we employed both cross‐sectional and longitudinal designs, including samples of college students and representative adult populations. We found that people who had more normative personality profiles were more creative. However, this association only held within modality (i.e. when both personality and creativity were either self‐reported or informant‐reported). We did not find robust associations between personality profile normativeness and laboratory‐based behavioural measures of creativity, occupational creativity, or creative achievements. We discuss alternative explanations for the observed adjustment–creativity link, specifically, implicit theories of creativity and person perception biases (halo effects). Notably, the findings did not support the idea that deviancy breeds creativity, suggesting that the famed ‘mad genius’ hypothesis might not hold among the general population. © 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Psychic bisexuality and creativity

This contribution is complementary to a previous publication (Ferraro, 2001), which examined the role of bisexuality in psychopathology. This second article concentrates on the relationship between psychic bisexuality and creativity. After a brief clarification regarding the relationship between psychic bisexuality and option of gender, the author takes up two meanings of the bisexuality concept, both of which are of pre-eminent significance to him. The first is psychic bisexuality as a quality of the self related to the feminine and masculine as pure elements; the second is psychic bisexuality as an expression of identification with both parents, mother and father. The author presents the thoughts of various authors who have examined the link between psychic bisexuality and creativity, based on the same foundation, and then puts forward the hypothesis that in some blocks of creativity an alteration to psychic bisexuality can be traced. This hypothesis is illustrated through two clinical cases that focus on the dynamics impeding creative capacities and illustrate how these dynamics are gradually overcome. In the first more detailed case, he presents a lack of masculine elements, while in the second, using a brief part of an analysis, he presents a predominant lack of feminine elements.     

论如何培养中小学生的创新精神

本文分析了创新与创造的本质、层次和我国教育至今未培养出获诺贝尔奖的科学家的一部分原因,论述了中小学生创新与创造的定位、创新精神的含义以及如何培养中小学生创新精神的策略与措施。     

英国青少年科学创造力的发展研究

对英国6所学校11岁到15岁的1087名中学生的科学创造力进行了研究,结果表明：英国青少年科学创造力及其各成分的发展存在着显著的年龄差异,随着年龄的增大,科学创造力及其各成分呈持续发展趋势,但在14岁时要下降;第二,英国青少年的科学创造力存在明显的性别差异。总的来讲,女生优于男生。但就科学创造力的各个成分来看,男女生具有不同的特点。     

Special issue on problem-solving,creativity and spatial reasoning

Problem-solving, creativity and spatial reasoning are high level abilities of cognitive systems with high potential for synergies. However, they have been treated separately by different fields. This special issue presents research work on these topics, aiming to observe their interrelations in order to create theoretical approaches, methodologies and computational tools to advance work on creativity and spatial problem-solving in cognitive systems.