27.4 Thinking Creatively

27-6 What is creativity, and what fosters it?

Creativity is the ability to produce ideas that are both novel and valuable (Hennessey & Amabile, 2010). Consider Princeton mathematician Andrew Wiles’ incredible, creative moment. Pierre de Fermat, a seventeenth-century mischievous genius, had challenged mathematicians of his day to match his solutions to various number theory problems. His most famous challenge—Fermat’s last theorem—baffled the greatest mathematical minds, even after a $2 million prize (in today’s dollars) was offered in 1908 to whoever first created a proof.

Industrious creativity Researcher Sally Reis (2001) found that notably creative women were typically “intelligent, hard working, imaginative, and strong willed” as girls, noting examples such as Nobel Prize–winning geneticist Barbara McClintock. In her acceptance speech for the 2013 Nobel Prize for Literature, author Alice Munro, shown here, also spoke about creativity as hard work. “Stories are so important in the world…. [The part that’s hardest is] when you go over the story and realize how bad it is. You know, the first part, excitement, the second, pretty good, but then you pick it up one morning and you think, ‘what nonsense,’ and that is when you really have to get to work on it. And for me, it always seemed the right thing to do.”

Wiles had pondered Fermat’s theorem for more than 30 years and had come to the brink of a solution. One morning, out of the blue, the final “incredible revelation” struck him. “It was so indescribably beautiful; it was so simple and so elegant. I couldn’t understand how I’d missed it…. It was the most important moment of my working life” (Singh, 1997, p. 25).

A creative environment

Creativity like Wiles’ is supported by a certain level of aptitude (ability to learn). Those who score exceptionally high in quantitative aptitude as 13-year-olds, for example, are more likely to obtain graduate science and math degrees and create published or patented work (Park et al., 2008; Robertson et al., 2010). And the more intelligence and working memory, the better (Arneson et al., 2011; Hambrick & Meinz, 2011). Yet, there is more to creativity than aptitude, or what intelligence tests reveal. Indeed, brain activity associated with intelligence differs from that associated with creativity (Jung & Haier, 2013). Intelligence tests, which are intended to assess aptitude and typically demand a single correct answer, require convergent thinking. Injury to the left parietal lobe damages this ability. Creativity tests (How many uses can you think of for a brick?) require divergent thinking. Injury to certain areas of the frontal lobes can leave reading, writing, and arithmetic skills intact but destroy imagination (Kolb & Whishaw, 2006).

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Although there is no agreed-upon creativity measure—there is no creativity quotient (CQ) score corresponding to an intelligence quotient (IQ) score—Robert Sternberg and his colleagues believe creativity has five components (Sternberg, 1988, 2003; Sternberg & Lubart, 1991, 1992):

Imaginative thinking Cartoonists often display creativity as they see things in new ways or make unusual connections.
  1. Expertise—well-developed knowledge—furnishes the ideas, images, and phrases we use as mental building blocks. “Chance favors only the prepared mind,” observed Louis Pasteur. The more blocks we have, the more chances we have to combine them in novel ways. Wiles’ well-developed knowledge put the needed theorems and methods at his disposal.
  2. Imaginative thinking skills provide the ability to see things in novel ways, to recognize patterns, and to make connections. Having mastered a problem’s basic elements, we redefine or explore it in a new way. Copernicus first developed expertise regarding the solar system and its planets, and then creatively defined the system as revolving around the Sun, not the Earth. Wiles’ imaginative solution combined two partial solutions.
  3. A venturesome personality seeks new experiences, tolerates ambiguity and risk, and perseveres in overcoming obstacles. Wiles said he labored in near-isolation from the mathematics community partly to stay focused and avoid distraction. Such determination is an enduring trait.
  4. Intrinsic motivation is being driven more by interest, satisfaction, and challenge than by external pressures (Amabile & Hennessey, 1992). Creative people focus less on extrinsic motivators—meeting deadlines, impressing people, or making money—than on the pleasure and stimulation of the work itself. Asked how he solved such difficult scientific problems, Isaac Newton reportedly answered, “By thinking about them all the time.” Wiles concurred: “I was so obsessed by this problem that … I was thinking about it all the time—[from] when I woke up in the morning to when I went to sleep at night” (Singh & Riber, 1997).
  5. A creative environment sparks, supports, and refines creative ideas. Wiles stood on the shoulders of others and collaborated with a former student. After studying the careers of 2026 prominent scientists and inventors, Dean Keith Simonton (1992) noted that the most eminent were mentored, challenged, and supported by their colleagues. Creativity-fostering environments support innovation, team building, and communication (Hülsheger et al., 2009). They also minimize anxiety and foster contemplation (Byron & Khazanchi, 2011). After Jonas Salk solved a problem that led to the polio vaccine while in a monastery, he designed the Salk Institute to provide contemplative spaces where scientists could work without interruption (Sternberg, 2006).

For those seeking to boost the creative process, research offers some ideas:

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RETRIEVAL PRACTICE

  • Match the process or strategy listed below (1–10) with its description (a–j).
1. Algorithm a. Inability to view problems from a new angle; focuses thinking but hinders creative problem solving.
2. Intuition b. Methodological rule or procedure that guarantees a solution but requires time and effort.
3. Insight c. Fast, automatic, effortless feelings and thoughts based on our experience; huge and adaptive but can lead us to overfeel and underthink.
4. Heuristics d. Simple thinking shortcuts that allow us to act quickly and efficiently, but put us at risk for errors.
5. Fixation e. Sudden Aha! reaction that provides instant realization of the solution.
6. Confirmation bias f. Tendency to search for support for our own views and ignore contradictory evidence.
7. Overconfidence g. Ignoring evidence that proves our beliefs are wrong; closes our mind to new ideas.
8. Creativity h. Overestimating the accuracy of our beliefs and judgments; allows us to be happy and to make decisions easily, but puts us at risk for errors.
9. Framing i. Wording a question or statement so that it evokes a desired response; can influence others’ decisions and produce a misleading result.
10. Belief perseverance j. The ability to produce novel and valuable ideas.

1. b, 2. c, 3. e, 4. d, 5. a, 6. f, 7. h, 8. j, 9. i, 10. g