Creativity
Products of creativity may be intangible (e.g. an idea, scientific theory, literary work, musical composition, or joke), or a physical object (e.g. an invention, dish or meal, piece of jewelry, costume, a painting).
The ancient Greeks had no terms for "to create" or "creator" except for the expression poiein (to make), which only applied to poiesis (poetry) and to the poietes (poet, or "maker", who made it).
"[14]: 18–19 This could be attributed to the leading intellectual movement of the time, aptly named humanism, which developed an intensely anthropocentric outlook on the world, valuing the intellect and achievement of the individual.
[17] Psychologist Mark Runco and Robert Albert argue that creativity as the subject of proper study began seriously to emerge in the late 19th century with the increased interest in individual differences inspired by the arrival of Darwinism.
[2] In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, leading mathematicians and scientists such as Hermann von Helmholtz (1896)[20] and Henri Poincaré (1908)[21] began to reflect on and publicly discuss their creative processes.
The insights of Poincaré and von Helmholtz were built on early accounts of the creative process by pioneering theorists such as Graham Wallas and Max Wertheimer.
Statistical analyzes led to the recognition of creativity as a aspect of human cognition separate from IQ-type intelligence, under the study of which it had previously been subsumed.
[47] Empirical research has investigated whether, as the concept of "incubation" in Wallas's model implies, a period of interruption or rest from a problem may aid creative problem-solving.
Honing theory, developed principally by psychologist Liane Gabora, posits that creativity arises due to the self-organizing, self-mending nature of a worldview.
[63] Honing theory posits that creative thought proceeds not by searching through and randomly "mutating" predefined possibilities but by drawing upon associations that exist due to overlap in the distributed neural-cell assemblies that participate in the encoding of experiences in memory.
[67] Imaginative thought in everyday life can be categorized based on whether it involves perceptual or motor-related mental imagery, novel combinatorial processing, or altered psychological states.
[76] This interdisciplinary framework integrates theoretical principles and empirical results from neuroeconomics, reinforcement learning, cognitive neuroscience, and neurotransmission research on the locus coeruleus system.
Likewise, composers receive intrinsic reward for creating non-arbitrary melodies with unexpected but regular harmonies that permit wow-effects through data compression improvements.
[123] Barbara Fredrickson, in her broaden-and-build, model suggests that positive emotions, such as joy and love, broaden a person's available repertoire of cognitions and actions, thus enhancing creativity.
[129] In general, people who have worked in the arts industry throughout history have faced many environmental factors that are associated with, and can sometimes influence, mental illness—things such as poverty, persecution, social alienation, psychological trauma, substance abuse, and high stress.
[137] Another study, involving more than one million people, conducted by Swedish researchers at the Karolinska Institute, reported a number of correlations between creative occupations and mental illnesses.
Writers had a higher risk of anxiety and bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, unipolar depression, and substance abuse, and were almost twice as likely as the general population to kill themselves.
[139]People diagnosed with bipolar disorder report themselves as having a larger range of emotional understanding, heightened states of perception, and an ability to connect better with those in the world around them.
Symptoms of bipolar disorder correlate with behaviors in high-profile creative personalities such as alcohol addiction; drug abuse including stimulants, depressants, hallucinogens and dissociatives, opioids, inhalants, and cannabis; difficulties in holding regular occupations; interpersonal problems; legal issues; and a high risk of suicide.
One characteristic of creative people, as measured by some psychologists, is what is called "divergent production"—the ability of a person to generate a diverse assortment, yet an appropriate amount, of responses to a given situation.
[148] One way to measure divergent production is by administering the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking,[149] which assess the diversity, quantity, and appropriateness of participants' responses to a variety of open-ended questions.
Some researchers also emphasize how creative people are better at balancing between divergent and convergent production, which depends on an individual's innate preference or ability to explore and exploit ideas.
It allows artists and designers to generate innovative ideas, solve complex problems, create products and experiences that are meaningful and impactful, stay ahead of trends, and anticipate future needs.
REM sleep may aid creativity by allowing "neocortical structures to reorganize associative hierarchies, in which information from the hippocampus would be reinterpreted in relation to previous semantic representations or nodes.
[173] Vandervert and Vandervert–Weathers have pointed out that this blending process, because it continuously optimizes efficiencies, constantly improves prototyping attempts toward the invention or innovation of new ideas, music, art, or technology.
[195] One reason for this is that students are able to express themselves through musical improvisation in a way that taps into higher order brain regions, while connecting with their peers and allowing them to go beyond typical pattern generation.
In the Scottish education system, creativity is identified as a core skillset for learning, life, and work, and is defined as "a process which generates ideas that have value to the individual.
It involves looking at familiar things with a fresh eye, examining problems with an open mind, making connections, learning from mistakes, and using imagination to explore new possibilities.
[203][204][205][206] Organizations in which help-seeking, help-giving, and collaboration are rewarded promote innovation by providing opportunities and contexts in which team processes that lead to collective creativity can occur.
[214] Additionally, leadership styles that downplay hierarchies or power differences within an organization, and empower people to speak up about their ideas or opinions, also help to create cultures that are conducive to creativity.
