Creativity 1(2) 2014

Editors: Janina Uszynska-Jarmoc and Maciej Karwowski

Theories – Research – Applications

www.creativity.uwb.edu.pl

Volume 1, Issue 2, 2014

ISSN: 2354-0036

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Editorial Team: Editor: Janina Uszynska-Jarmoc (University of Bialystok, Poland) Editor: Maciej Karwowski (Academy of Special Education, Poland) Statistical editor: Jacek Gralewski (Academy of Special Education, Poland) English language editor: Barbara Politynska-Lewko (Medical University of Bialystok, Poland) Technical editors: Piotr Remza and Karol Kowalczuk (University of Bialystok, Poland) Editorial assistant: Beata Kunat (University of Bialystok, Poland)

Advisory Board: Ronald A. Beghetto (University of Connecticut, USA) Mathias Benedek (University of Graz, Austria) Katarzyna Citko (University of Bialystok, Poland) Michal Chruszczewski (University of Warsaw, Poland) Agata Cudowska (University of Bialystok, Poland) Marta Galewska-Kustra (Academy of Special Education, Poland) Vlad Petre Glăveanu (Aalborg University, Denmark) Malgorzata Goclowska (University of Amsterdam, Netherlands) Magdalena Grohman (University of Texas at Dallas, USA) Anna Hui (City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong) James C. Kaufman (University of Connecticut, USA) Dorota Kubicka (Jagiellonian University, Poland) Izabela Lebuda (Academy of Special Education, Poland) Wieslawa Limont (Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland) Todd Lubart (University of Paris Descartes, France) Monika Modrzejewska-Swigulska (University of Lodz, Poland) Aleksander Nalaskowski (Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland) Katarzyna Olbrycht (University of Silesia, Poland) Roland S. Persson (Jonkoping University, Sweden) Jean Pretz (Elizabethown College, USA) Elzbieta Rudowicz (Pomerianin Medical University, Poland) Mark A. Runco (Torrance Creativity Center, University of Georgia, Athens) Ugur Sak (Anadolu University, Turkey) Andrzej Sekowski (Catholic University of Lublin, Poland) Paul Silvia (University of North Carolina, USA) Krzysztof Szmidt (University of Lodz, Poland) Urszula Szuscik (University of Silesia, Poland) Lene Tanggaard (Aalborg University, Denmark) Aleksandra Tokarz (Jagiellonian University, Poland) Dorota Turska (Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, Poland) Dmitry Ushakov (Russian Academy of Science, Russia) Brady Wagoner (Aalborg University, Denmark) Monika Wroblewska (University of Bialystok, Poland)

Artwork on the cover: Izabela Lebuda

©Copyright by Faculty of Pedagogy and Psychology, University of Bialystok This journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial - ShareAlike 4.0 Unported License. Publisher: Faculty of Pedagogy and Psychology University of Bialystok 20 Swierkowa St., 15-328 Bialystok, Poland tel. +48857457283 e-mail: [email protected] http://www.creativity.uwb.edu.pl ISSN: 2354-0036

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CONTENTS

Maciej Karwowski The Creativity Crisis (is not) as Plain as the Nose on Your Face: A Few Introductory Comments .....186

Dean Keith Simonton A 45-Year Perspective on Creativity Research: Comments on Glăveanu’s Critique ...... 190

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Izabela Lebuda Is the Psychology of Creativity in Terminal Crisis? Comments on Glăveanu’s Article “ The Psychology of Creativity: A Critical Reading” ...... 195

John Baer The Crisis in Creativity Research Stems From Too Little Fragmentation, Not Too Much ...... 200

Ronald A. Beghetto Is The Sky Falling or Expanding? A Promising Turning Point in the Psychology of Creativity ...... 206

Mathias Benedek, Emanuel Jauk Creativity - Lost in Simplification? ...... 213

James C. Kaufman Joining the Conversation: A Commentary on Glăveanu’s Critical Reading ...... 220

David H. Cropley Commentary on The Psychology of Creativity: A Critical Reading by Vlad P. Glăveanu ...... 223

Jonathan A. Plucker A Critical Response to “ The Psychology of Creativity: A Critical Reading” ...... 228

Paul J. Silvia Why Big Theories are Fruitless, Fragmentation is Ideal, Defining Creativity is Overrated and Method- Driven Research is Urgent: Some Thoughts on the Flourishing State of Creativity Science ...... 233

Michael H. Chruszczewski Boredom, Messianism, and Primordial Broth ...... 240

Alfonso Montuori Transdisciplinary Reflections on Glăveanu’s “ Crisis” of the Psychology of Creativity ...... 246

Roni Reiter-Palmon Can we Really Have an Integrative Theory of Creativity? The Case of Creative Cognition ...... 256

Eric Shiu A Commentary on a Manuscript Entitled The Psychology of Creativity: A Critical Reading ...... 261

Vlad Petre Glăveanu Theory and Context / Theory in Context: Towards an Expanded View of the Creativity Field ...... 268

The Authors ...... 281

Reviewers — CTRA 2014, Vol. 1, Issue 1&2 ...... 283

Notes for Contributors ...... 284

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The Creativity Crisis (is not) as Plain as the Nose on Your Face: A Few Introductory Comments

Maciej Karwowski Academy of Special Education, Poland E-mail address: [email protected]

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: Is there a crisis in creativity science? According to the feature article (Glăveanu, 2014 – in the first issue of this jour- Middle-range theories nal), there can be no doubt that there is. However, as the Creative crisis current issue shows, there is no agreement among creativity scholars that this is the case. This editorial does not aim at providing an additional critique of Glăveanu’s perspective. Instead, I rather re-iterate some previously raised arguments ISSN: 2354-0036 (Karwowski, 2012), and call for middle-range theorizing DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.02.01 in creativity science.

Having provocative, yet thorough papers for the inaugural issue of a new journal is the dream of every editor and a gift when it happens. Hence, as we highlighted in our first editorial (Karwowski & Uszynska-Jarmoc, 2014), we were more than happy, to open the first issue of CTRA (“ Creativity: Theories – Research – Applications” ) with an article written by Vlad Petre Glăveanu of Aalborg University, and we are grateful for his engagement in this exchange. In his article, Glăveanu challenged the way that mainstream creativity science is functioning, seeing the psychology of creativity as a discipline in crisis. However, as the commentaries included in the current issue show, this claim is far from being obvious and widely accepted. Leading creativity scholars have devoted their time and energy to constructively criticize Glăveanu’s position and have provided several fresh insights about their perceptions of the current state of the art of creativity science. As the editor I wish to thank all commentators, who responded to our call and submitted articles. It is delightful to say, that we have received almost thirty papers, focusing on different questions raised by the lead article. Following completion of the editorial process, we have decided to devote two issues of the journal (this and the next) to the presentation of these papers: a decision based on the content of the commentaries. This issue as a whole deals with quite a general question, whether “ there is really a crisis in creativity science?” , and contains commentaries written by Dean Keith Simon- ton, Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi and Izabela Lebuda, John Baer, Ronald Beghetto, Mathias

187 The Creativity Crisis (is not) as Plain as the Nose on Your Face: ... / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014

Benedek and Emanuel Jauk, James Kaufman, David Cropley, Jonathan Plucker, Paul Silvia, Michal Chruszczewski, Alfonso Montuori, Roni Reiter-Palmon, Eric Shiu, as well as Vlad Glăveanu’s response. Having such great scholars on board guarantees a high- quality discussion: full of knowledge, but also not void of controversies. The main controversy surely lies in the perception and evaluation of the current reality of creativity science – the very general question of whether there is a crisis at all? Most of the commentators perceive today’s psychology of creativity as a flourishing field. Several commentators also disagree with the claim that more general theories in creativity science are either useful or required at all. Some time ago, commenting on another thought-provoking article of Glăveanu (2012), I argued that in the social sciences (creativity science included) middle-range theories (Merton, 1968) work best, building bridges between theoretical ideas and research results, and allowing the development of empirically testable theories, instead of often unfalsifiable grand theories (Karwowski, 2012). Wide, grand theories (Baer, 2011) are sometimes useful as paradigm-builders, but simultaneously are rarely testable and – as a result – too often end by being more a kind of ideology in science than the science itself. Rarely, for sure too rarely, grand theories are effectively translated into research programs – the only one, relevant to creativity, which comes to my mind at this moment is Campbell-Simonton’s Blind Variation Selec- tive Retention Theory, which has been vigorously tested, thanks to the continuous work of Dean Simonton (1998, 1999, 2011, see also Simonton, this issue). More generally however, grand theories are often much more fruitless than scholars – especially those humanistically oriented – would ever admit. Quite the opposite is observed in the case of middle-range theories – theoretical models which are well-operationalized, and possible to re-organize effectively. Even wide theoretical models, like James Kaufman’s and Ron Beghetto’s “ Four-C Model of Creativity” (Kaufman & Beghetto, 2009), could be translated into a number of empirically testable hypotheses, allowing us better understanding not only of the relationship between different forms and levels of creativity, but also the pathway from creative potential (mini-c and little-c) to creative achievement. Hence, my personal opinion has not changed, and I still think that creativity science works as normal science does (Kuhn, 1962): usually focusing much more on small-level incremental changes and improvements, than revolutionary changes and huge discoveries. It is somehow paradoxical, that although laypeople and experts perceive creativity as quite a revolutionary activity, the great majority of creativity scholars work more as adaptors than innovators – using the well-known Kirton (1976) distinction, or more as experimentalists than conceptualists – to use Galenson’s (2009) terms. We add small

188 Maciej Karwowski / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 bricks of results and ideas to the building of the creativity literature. But to flourish, the field needs conceptualists and experimentalists, adaptors and innovators. Vlad Petre Glăveanu, without any doubt, is an innovator and conceptualist in the field. Indeed, in his extensively published work, he not only criticizes the status quo of creativity science (Glăveanu, 2012, 2014), but also proposes several new and interesting theoretical ideas (Glăveanu, 2010, 2012a, 2013, in press), which enrich our understanding of creativity as a social phenomenon and may form an inspiration for ambitious empirical projects. It may be the case that, when scholars in the certain field of science focus more on discussing the field’s condition, than spending their time on research, it is likely to be devastating for this area of research. On the other hand however, in creativity science and in our journals, we too rarely discuss this status quo from the meta-perspective (see for instance Makel, 2014; Richards & de Cock, 1999). Thus, it is the great pleasure of the whole CTRA team, to have such an exchange of perspectives in the pages of our journal. We wish our readers enjoyment and new insights, while reading it. And finally, we would like to end with the reminder that this is not the last word on the subject – the forthcoming issue (1) of volume 2, to be published in early 2015 will contain commentaries by such scholars as Mark Runco, Beth Hennessey, Seana Moran, Todd Lubart and Xavier Carroff, Anatoliy Kharkhurin, Jacek Gralewski, Anna Hui, Katarzyna Citko, Min Tang, Ai-Girl Tan, Eva Hoff and Ingegerd Carlsson, Roland Persson, Lene Tanggaard, and Brady Wagoner, as well as Glăveanu’s response to this set of commentaries. While wishing our readers, authors, and friends happy holidays and a productive New Year in 2015, we would like to invite and encourage scholars from all over the world to submit their theoretical work, research articles, as well as examples of creative practice to CTRA. Let us build this new journal together.

REFERENCES Baer, J. (2011). Why grand theories of creativity distort, distract, and disappoint. Interna- tional Journal of Creativity and Problem Solving, 21, 73-100. Galenson, D.W. (2009). Old masters and young geniuses: The two life cycles of human creativity. Journal of Applied Economics, 12, 1-9. Glăveanu, V.P. (2014). The psychology of creativity: A critical reading. Creativity: Theo- ries – Research – Applications, 1, 10-33, DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.01.02. Glăveanu, V.P. (2013). Rewriting the language of creativity: The Five A's framework. Re- view of General Psychology, 17, 69-81. Glăveanu, V.P. (2012). From dichotomous to relational thinking in the psychology of creativity: A review of great debates. Creativity and Leisure: An Intercultural and Cross-disciplinary Journal, 1, 83-97.

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Glăveanu, V.P. (2012a). Habitual creativity: revising habit, reconceptualizing creativity. Review of General Psychology, 16, 78-92. Glăveanu, V.P. (2010). Paradigms in the study of creativity: Introducing the perspective of cultural psychology. New Ideas in Psychology, 28, 79-93. Glăveanu, V.P. (in press). Creativity as a sociocultural act. Journal of Creative Behavior. Karwowski, M. (2012). Middle and grand theorizing in the psychology of creativity. Crea- tivity and Leisure: An Intercultural and Cross-disciplinary Journal, 1, 109-115. Karwowski, M. & Uszynska-Jarmoc, J. (2014). Creativity: The show must go on. Creativi- ty: Theories – Research – Applications, 1, 4-9, DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.01.01. Kaufman, J.C., & Beghetto, R.A. (2009). Beyond big and little: The Four C Model of Crea- tivity. Review of General Psychology,13, 1-12. Kirton, M. (1976). Adaptors and innovators: A description and measure. Journal of Ap- plied Psychology, 61, 622-629. Kuhn, T.S. (1962) The Structure of scientific revolutions, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Makel, M.C. (2014). The empirical march: Making science better at self-correction. Psy- chology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 8, 2-7. Merton, R.K. (1968). Social theory and social structure. New York: Free Press. Rickards, T. & De Cock, C. (1999). Sociological paradigms and organizational creativity. In R.E. Purser & A. Montuori (Eds.). Social creativity (vol. II, pp. 235-257). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Simonton, D.K. (1998). Donald Campbell's model of the creative process: Creativity as blind variation and selective retention. Journal of Creative Behavior, 32, 153-158. Simonton, D.K. (1999). Creativity as blind variation and selective retention: Is the creative process Darwinian? Psychological Inquiry, 10, 309-328. Simonton, D.K. (2011). Creativity and discovery as blind variation and selective retention: Multiple-variant definitions and blind-sighted integration. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 5, 222-228.

Corresponding author at: Maciej Karwowski, Department of Educational Sciences, Aca- demy of Special Education, 40 Szczesliwicka St., 02-353 Warsaw, Poland. E-mail: [email protected]

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A 45-Year Perspective on Creativity Research:

Comments on Glăveanu’s Critique

Dean Keith Simonton Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis, USA E-mail address: [email protected]

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: In response to Glăveanu’s critique of creativity research, this commentator argues that the highly productive research pro- Bold conjectures gram that he has carried out over the past 45 years exempli- Conceptual definitions fies almost all of the recommendations put forward in the Analytical units critique. In particular, this extensive program has (a) asked Novel methodologies bold, new, and surprising questions, (b) reflected on defini- Theoretical innovations tions rather than simply taking them for granted, (c) challenged traditional units of analysis, (d) looked for unique, interesting samples and developed new methods, Article history: and (e) built new theory rather than just cite it. The pro- Received 18 September 2014 gram’s researcher might only be accused of failing to think Received in revised form 20 December 2014 practically about his conclusions. The comment closes Accepted 21 December 2014 by discussing the difficulties involved in pursuing such a rich research program as well as speculating on whether the field ISSN: 2354-0036 of creativity really should have numerous researchers en- DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.02.02 gaged in such programs.

Although still only in my mid-60s, I consider myself now a “ grand old man” of creativity research. I first began to familiarize myself with this research topic in the late 1960s, when I was an undergraduate. Although the 1970 thesis that resulted was not published until a decade later, some of its empirical predictions were tested in my 1973 “ master’s thesis” which was published in 1975. Since earning my doctoral degree in 1976 for a dissertation on the “ social psychology of creativity,” I have averaged about 10 publications per year – journal articles, chapters, books, encyclopedia entries, etc. – more than two thirds of which address some theoretical, empirical, or methodological topic concerning creativity. I am still publishing in top refereed journals today. All told, with the exception of one or two older colleagues (who I will refrain from naming), I probably can claim the long- est long-term perspective on this research area than anybody currently active in the field. Better yet, over the past four decades I have carried out a research program that ex- emplifies almost all of the half-dozen recommendations put forward in Glăveanu’s critique. Let me check them off one by one.

191 A 45-Year Perspective on Creativity Research: Comments on Glăveanu’s Critique / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014

1. Ask bold, new, and surprising questions? Check! Rather than toot my own horn, I will just mention the honors that my research has received, including a best book award, several best article awards, and numerous career awards from different professional organizations (most notably, perhaps, the E. Paul Torrance Award from the National Asso- ciation for Gifted Children which explicitly honored the creativity of my creativity research). I think it is not immodest to claim that I have empirically tested hypotheses that nobody ever thought were capable of testing – and continue to do so. For example, I recently published three articles (two empirical and one theoretical) that should completely change the debate about the relation between creativity and psychopathology (Damian & Simonton, 2014; Simonton, 2014a, 2014b). Yes, the implications are that striking! 2. Reflect on definitions, do not simply take them for granted? I have devoted considerable effort to developing a three-criterion, quantitative and multiplicative definition of creativity that I believe has critical implications both theoretical and empirical (Simonton, 2012). For example, this definition has been extended to the critical distinction between little-c and Big-C creativity (Simonton, 2013c). Moreover, the definition provides the foundation not just for a major theory of creativity (Simonton, 2013a; see more below) but also for a novel approach to the question of free will (Simonton, 2013b). 3. Challenge traditional units of analysis? Again, check! Indeed, I know of no researcher living or deceased who has more varied the analytical units in his or her inquiries. Be- sides the individual creator (whether multiple case or single case), my work has extended from generational time-series analyses of whole civilizations and nations to the analysis of creative products, including films, poems, plays, artistic sketches, and musical themes. 4. Look for unique, interesting samples and develop new methods? Check again! Alt- hough I have published laboratory experiments using undergraduate participants, the overwhelming majority of my studies have scrutinized eminent creators and creative products representative of almost all of the world’s great civilizations: ancient Greece and Rome, modern European, Islamic, Chinese, and Japanese. Not only do the samples represent domains of creativity as diverse as technology, science, philosophy, literature, music, art, and film, but I have focused on specialized subsamples to address certain questions, such as eminent African Americans. This historiometric work has incorporated cross -cultural studies and computerized content analyses, applied advanced statistical methods as varied as time-series analyses, structural equation models, both confirmatory and ex- ploratory factor analyses, and cluster analysis. Moreover, I have elaborated my theoretical efforts using mathematical models and Monte Carlo simulations – speaking of which … 5. Build theory, don’t just cite it? Check once more! The efforts I have devoted to de-

192 Dean Keith Simonton / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 veloping a comprehensive and precise theory of creativity are well known. My fellow creativity researchers may or may not appreciate the idea that creativity can be best explained in terms of blind variation and selective retention, but at least I cannot be faulted for not working out the formal details and making the necessary connections with the cognitive, personality, developmental, and sociocultural aspects of the phenomenon. In fact, at present this work constitutes the only current theory of creativity that has generated and tested precise and unique empirical predictions. Nor was this any fly-by-night endeavor. These efforts began in the 1980s and continue today (e.g., Simonton, 2010). 6. Think practically about your conclusions? Oops, no. Nobody’s perfect. I am not an educational, industrial/organizational, or clinical psychologist but rather a psychological scientist engaged in pure research. Given that most of my inquiries concentrate on Big-C creativity, it becomes less likely that such research will come up with useful suggestions about increasing little-c creativity. The best I can say for myself on this score is that a couple of my most mainstream studies have rather direct implications for increasing everyday creativity (e.g., Ritter et al., 2012). But I’m ok with being able check “ yes!” on five out of six items on Glăveanu’s wish list. Presumably, if many other creativity researchers score as high, even if on different items, our research area should no longer find itself in crisis. Furthermore, if I could do it, why not others too? Can I serve as a role model? At this point, I must interject two reservations First, pursuing such a research program is not easy. I have elsewhere recounted all of the obstacles that were thrown in my way, so I will not detail them here (Simonton, 2002). Worse yet, the current job market in academe – at least in countries following the North American model – has raised even more barriers. The current emphasis is on quantity over quality, with the subsequent necessity of publishing numerous short studies in high-prestige journals with incredibly rigorous rejection rates that require multiple revisions and resubmissions. Young job candidates often find themselves triaged from the get-go just because they have no publication yet in Psychological Science. In 1974 I managed to get a ladder-track position in the University of Arkansas without a single publication listed on my CV. Would that even be possible today? Second, and perhaps most critically, we should be careful what we wish for. Does the field really need more researchers who generate their own methods, theories, definitions, and substantive questions? Wouldn’t creativity research become even more scattered and incoherent? One advantage of everybody doing the same mainstream research is that everyone knows where the stream is going. But if many decide to start in different

193 A 45-Year Perspective on Creativity Research: Comments on Glăveanu’s Critique / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 watersheds, they may find themselves boating different streams and eventually sailing on oceans far apart. To me, the only way to preserve unity in such diversity is to make sure that everybody is on the same page with respect to fundamentals – particularly core definitions and basic theory. Although I myself have offered recommendations with respect to both of these desiderata, I am under no illusions about whether that consensus will ever happen. Creativity researchers are too creative. I hope to live sufficiently longer to learn whether these two reservations are justified.

REFERENCES

Damian, R.I. & Simonton, D.K. (2014, August 4). Psychopathology, adversity, and creativity: Diversifying experiences in the development of eminent African-Americans. Jour- nal of Personality and Social Psychology. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000011 Ritter, S.M., Damian, R.I., Simonton, D.K., van Baaren, R.B., Strick, M., Derks, J., & Dijksterhuis, A. (2012). Diversifying experiences enhance cognitive flexibility. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48, 961-964. Simonton, D.K. (2002). It’s absolutely impossible? A longitudinal study of one psychologist’s response to conventional naysayers. In R.J. Sternberg (Ed.), Psychologists defy- ing the crowd: Stories of those who battled the establishment and won (pp. 238-254). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Simonton, D.K. (2010). Creativity as blind-variation and selective-retention: Combinatorial models of exceptional creativity. Physics of Life Reviews, 7, 156-179. Simonton, D.K. (2012). Taking the US Patent Office creativity criteria seriously: A quantitative three-criterion definition and its implications. Creativity Research Jour- nal, 24, 97-106. Simonton, D.K. (2013a). Creative thought as blind variation and selective retention: Why sightedness is inversely related to creativity. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 33, 253-266. Simonton, D.K. (2013b). Creative thoughts as acts of free will: A two-stage formal integration. Review of General Psychology, 17, 374-383. Simonton, D.K (2013c). What is a creative idea? Little-c versus Big-C creativity. In J. Chan & K. Thomas (Eds.), Handbook of research on creativity (pp. 69-83). Chelten- ham Glos, UK: Edward Elgar. Simonton, D.K. (2014a). The mad-genius paradox: Can creative people be more mentally healthy but highly creative people more mentally ill? Perspectives on Psychological Science, 9, 470-480.

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Simonton, D.K. (2014b). More method in the mad-genius controversy: A historiometric study of 204 historic creators. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 8, 53-61.

Corresponding author at: Dean Keith Simonton, Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis, Davis CA 95616 USA. E-mail: [email protected]

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Is the Psychology of Creativity in Terminal Crisis? Comments on Glăveanu’s Article “The Psychology of Creativity: A Critical Reading”*

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Izabela Lebuda Claremont Graduate University, USA Academy of Special Education, Poland E-mail address: [email protected] E-mail address: [email protected]

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: The comment is organized around two questions, which were raised after reading the article: The Psychology of Cre- Crisis in Psychology of creativity ativity: A Critical Reading. Is there indeed a crisis, which may Development of the field be threatening the psychology of creativity and if there is The systems model of creativity one, does the solution lie along the lines of developing an "increased awareness and responsibility" in relation to the Article history: future of the discipline. The discussion of these two ques- Received 27 September 2014 tions is based on the systems conception of creativity. Received in revised form 28 December 2014 Accepted 29 December 2014

ISSN: 2354-0036 DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.02.03

More or less systematic reflections on the condition of the psychology of creativity have been taking place for years (Chan, 2013; Csikszentmihalyi, 1988; Hennessey & Amabile, 2010; Mayer, 1999; Mumford, 2003; Sawyer, 2012). Perhaps this "concern" results from the constantly self-critical stance of research in general, or is a typical feature of a "young" sub-discipline requiring support in its development, and intent on constructively overcoming emergent problems (or crises). We applaud Professor Glaveanu's attempt to overcome what he characterizes as a "pervasive and difficult" crisis in the domain of creativity research. However, we are not at all sure that a) there is indeed a crisis which may be threatening the domain, b) if there is one, that the solution lies along the lines of developing an "increased awareness and responsibility" in relation to the future of the discipline. Let us discuss these two points. The author presents the following reasons as evidence that a crisis exists: Creativity researchers tend not to reveal their "paradigmatic assumptions" (Glăveanu, 2014, p. 13); their questions are "method-driven" (ibid.); underpinning assumptions remain unques-

*This article was written thanks to the funding received from the program Mobility Plus (1152/1/MOB/2014/0) from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, Poland.

196 Is the Psychology of Creativity in Terminal Crisis? Comments on Glăveanu’s Article … / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 tioned (Glăveanu, 2014, p. 14); they tend to fragment the phenomenon studied by being too analytic (Glăveanu, 2014, p. 19); by relying too much on psychometrics, by decontex- tualizing the creative process as if one could actually reproduce it on demand in a laboratory situation without compromising the essence of what is being studied. All of these are legitimate points. However, they are not specific to creativity studies, but apply to any kind of psychological research, whether neurological, cognitive, social, motivational or clinical – when such research is badly conceived and executed. So we take Glăveanu's analysis as relevant to all research, not specifically to that focused on creativity. The fact is, all research is always in a state of "crisis", by definition. If it were not, it would cease to grow and be creative. A few generations ago many physicists were of the opinion that their discipline had achieved a stage of maturity, where no further major changes could happen. Then, in the first decades of the last century, quantum mechanics opened up a whole new range of unknowns for physicists to explore – and tem- porarily the crisis was averted. But let us assume that Glăveanu's analyses are accurate and that the psychology of creativity is beset by problems more than other disciplines. How should we go about bringing the process back on track? The six steps he lists at the end of the article are reasonable suggestions for any scientist to follow and to pass on to his/her students. Howev- er, as a generative set of ideas for revitalizing creativity research, we find them rather bland and bureaucratic. They bring to mind a story that is told by the descendants of Niels Bohr about their illustrious relative. According to the story, after Bohr received his Nobel Prize in 1923 for developing the model that started quantum mechanics, he was invited to Moscow to give a talk at the lab of Lev Landau, who was the then star of Rus- sian physics, well supported by the Soviet government. During the visit, a Russian jour- nalist asked Bohr at a press conference: "Professor Bohr, how do you explain the fact that your little lab in the small country of Denmark has achieved such remarkable results in physics, while the Moscow lab, despite huge investments by our government, has failed to achieve them?" After a minute of hesitation, Bohr answered along the following lines: "I think our success is due to the fact that if I make a mistake, anyone in the lab feels free to call me stupid." However, either because of a misunderstanding or because it seemed a more logical explanation, Bohr's answer was translated into Russian as: ". . . Because if anyone in my lab makes a mistake, I feel free to call him stupid." After the conference, the KGB called Landau in, and asked how come he didn't call his students stupid. "But I do, I do . . ." answered poor Landau. "Apparently not often enough!" responded the KGB officer and ordered Landau to call his students stupid more often. Even though

197 Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Izabela Lebuda / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014

Landau received the Nobel Prize in physics in 1962, his lab did not produce much after the cure ordered by the secret police was applied. The reason this historical example came to mind after reading Glăveanu's article is that creativity rarely flourishes by decree, or by imposing rules, or following plans – no matter how reasonable they sound. The one constant requirement for getting to anything resembling creativity is unyielding curiosity about a topic that matters to the person more than almost anything else (Abuhamdeh & Csikszentmihalyi, 2012). And as for the individual's contribution – we need freedom, we need stimulation, we need to take risks, we need people telling us we are stupid if we make mistakes – but above all else, we need the experience of joy that comes from lifting the veil of reality and seeing what might be behind it (Amabile, 1996; Csikszentmihalyi, 1997). The rest – whatever is required to pursue the curiosity and to bring forth new results – is also necessary, but largely outside the control of the person. These are cultural resources and social supports without which, even the potentially most creative idea will languish and leave no trace. We do need to take into account the socio-cultural matrix if we wish to understand how the ideas ger- minating in a person's head will turn into components of society and culture (Brannigan, 1981; Csikszentmihalyi, 1997; 1999; Simonton, 1991). This view of scientific work, suggests that the crisis indicated by Professor Glaveanu may be a natural phase in the development of the field. Socialization to the field and achieving a professional level, as well as achieving "peak condition", particularly in the social sciences, requires time (Simonton, 1991; 2004). The first presentation of a new idea rarely results in success, but assuming things go well, the creator, probably after a series of revisions, will have a chance to present the work to a wider audience. Recognition of the discovery or innovation in science is measured, inter alia, by the number of citations and awards (Feist, 1993; 1997); it takes longer when the degree of structure in the field is looser (Simonton, 2009) and it is difficult to minimize the variance in the formal assessments of competent judges (Simonton, 2013). If the theory or method pass- es all the "tests", it has a chance of entering the domain permanently, be an inspiration to other researchers and to be implemented in practice. Professor Glăveanu indicates theories that are familiar to every psychologist of creativity (Glăveanu, 2014, p. 12); we would like to note, however, that none of them can be seen as new. When we look at the list of today's most influential psychologists, including researchers of creativity, we can clearly see that their legacy was built up over decades (Diener, Oishi & Park, 2014). We are far from arguing that it is enough to ensure freedom to researchers and ask them to be patient, and then expect that brilliant theories of creativity and reliable methods

198 Is the Psychology of Creativity in Terminal Crisis? Comments on Glăveanu’s Article … / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 of measurements will spring up like mushrooms after the rain. Curiosity, interest, hard work – and love of the work itself are also surely needed. Furthermore it is necessary not to cut corners, to take the easy way out, and be satisfied with superficial conclusions. In other words, if we want the psychology of creativity to gain and maintain respect, we have to do good science. REFERENCES

Abuhamdeh, S. & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2012). Attentional involvement and intrinsic motivation. Motivation and Emotion, 3, 257-267. Amabile, T.M. (1996). Creativity in Context. Boulder, Co: Westview Press. Brannigan, A. (1981). The Social Basis of Scientific Discoveries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chan, J. (2013). Researching creativity and creativity research. In K. Thomas & J. Chan (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Creativity (pp. 21-32). Cheltenham, Northampton: Edward Elgar. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1988). Society, culture and person: a systems view of creativity. In R. Sternberg (Ed.), The Nature of Creativity: Contemporary Psychological Perspectives (pp. 325-329). New York: Cambridge University Press. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1997). Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Inno- vation. New York: Harper Collins. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1999). Implication of a system perspective for the study of creativity. In R. Sternberg (Ed.), Handbook of Creativity (pp. 313-335). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Diener, E., Oishi, S., & Park, J. (2014). An incomplete list of eminent psychologists of the modern era. Archives of Scientific Psychology, 2, 20-32. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/ arc0000006 Feist, G.J. (1993). A structural model of scientific eminence. Psychological Science, 4, 366-371. Feist, G.J. (1997). Quantity, quality, and depth of research as influences on scientific eminence: is quantity most important? Creativity Research Journal, 10, 325-335. Glăveanu, V.P. (2014). The Psychology of Creativity: A Critical Reading. Creativity: Theories — Research — Applications, 1, 10-32, DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.01.02. Hennessey, B.A. & Amabile, T. (2010). Creativity. Annual Review of Psychology, 62, 569-598. Mayer, R.E. (1999). Fifty years of creativity research. In R.J. Sternberg (Ed.), Handbook of Creativity (pp. 449-460), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Mumford, M.D. (2003). Where have we been, where are we going? Taking stock in creativity research. Creativity Research Journal, 15, 107–120. Sawyer, R.K. (2012). Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Simonton, D.K. (1991). Career landmarks in science: individual differences and interdisciplinary contrasts. Developmental Psychology, 1, 119-130. Simonton, D.K. (2004). Creativity in Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Simonton, D.K. (2009). Varieties of (Scientific) Creativity: A Hierarchical Model of Domain -Specific Disposition, Development, an Achievement. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4, 441-452. Simonton, D.K (2013). What is a creative idea? Little-c versus Big-C creativity. In J. Chan & K. Thomas (Eds.), Handbook of research on creativity (pp. 69-83). Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.

Corresponding author at: Izabela Lebuda, Department of Educational Sciences, Acad- emy of Special Education, 40 Szczesliwicka St., 02353 Warsaw, Poland. E-mail: [email protected]

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Vol. 1, Issue 2, 2014

Theories – Research – Applications

The Crisis in Creativity Research Stems From Too Little Fragmentation, Not Too Much John Baer Rider University Lawrenceville, USA E-mail address: [email protected]

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: Glăveanu is right that there is a crisis in creativity research, but his prescription would make things worse, not better. It is Fragmentation the attempt to build grand, domain-transcending, all- Domain-specificity encompassing theories that has crippled creativity research and led to a field in which it is the norm for research results to contradict each other. Creativity is more like expertise (where every domain has its own definition and understanding of what constitutes expertise) than intelligence (where g reigns, albeit not without critics). The skills, traits, and moti- vations that lead to creative performance in physics, poetry, and painting are not fungible: one’s intrinsic motivation to write poetry cannot be transmuted into a love of painting, one’s openness to experience in art does not make one more open to new ideas in physics, and one’s physics- related divergent-thinking skill will not lead to more creative Article history: poems. Intrinsic motivation, openness to experience, and Received 25 September 2014 divergent thinking may promote creativity in many (but prob- Received in revised form 18 December 2014 ably not all) domains, but they are different in each domain, Accepted 21 December 2014 as will be their effects. Treating them as domain-general skills or attributes invites confusion. We need more fragmen- ISSN: 2354-0036 tation, in the sense of more domain-specific theories, if we DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.02.04 want to make progress in understanding creativity.

Glăveanu’s (2014) paper, “ The Psychology of Creativity: A Critical Reading,” is very interesting, and there are many areas in which I find myself in agreement with his analysis: “ the psychology of creativity is close to a crisis” (Glăveanu, 2014, p. 10) “ the definition and assessment of creativity have long been a subject of disagreement and dissatisfaction among psychologists” (Glăveanu, 2014, p. 14) “ The whole edifice of psychometric creativity testing. . . is mainly built around divergent thinking tasks . . . We can legitimately ask, how is this experiential and ontological richness of creativity as a phenomenon ever contained in tasks like ‘please generate as many uses as possible for a brick’?” (Glăveanu, 2014, p. 16) “ Finding the neurological correlates of creativity is a current fascination, but what this

201 The Crisis in Creativity Research Stems From Too Little Fragmentation, Not Too Much / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 really tells us (or can legitimately tell us) about creativity escapes many researchers engaged in this area of investigation” (Glăveanu, 2014, p. 13) “ most of the assumptions underpinning the [creativity] research remain unfortunately unquestioned” (Glăveanu, 2014, p. 14) “ Corporate training is full nowadays of pseudo-scientific conclusions and tricks of the trade coming from supposed creativity studies. Their main fault . . . is the implicit assumption that one size fits all and that what works within one context will probably work in another” (Glăveanu, 2014, p. 25). It is on the first of these claims — that the psychology of creativity is in crisis — that I will focus, both because this is his central claim and because I believe his analysis miss- es the most important explanation for this crisis. Like Glăveanu, I believe recognizing this crisis is essential if creativity research is to make progress. Unlike Glăveanu, I don’t think that “ fragmentation and dispersion” (Glăveanu, 2014, p. 10) are problematic or that “ one of the most problematic aspects faced by the psychology of creativity today [is] an increasing accumulation of research findings without being matched by theory- building” (Glăveanu, 2014, p. 22). I think fragmentation and dispersion are the direction creativity research must go if it is to make any progress at all, and I believe there are far too many grand theories of creativity already. Abstract concepts (like creativity) bring together things that are similar. Some concepts bring together things that are all quite similar in many respects, whereas other concepts bring together things for which it is difficult to identify a single feature that all members of the group share. For example, the concept “ billiards” brings together a group of closely related things. “ Sports” share many similarities but are a more diverse group, making it harder to identify the shared features of all the things we call sports. “ Games” are tricki- er still; as Wittgenstein (1953/2001) noted, the things we call games may have overlapping similarities but no single defining feature shared by all. Studying billiards would be fairly easy. Studying sports would be harder, and studying games as a group would sorely test the creativity of the researcher (and would almost certainly result in a constricted definition that included some but not all games). Defini- tions are elusive with concepts like sports and perhaps impossible with concepts like games. But to do research, as Glăveanu reminds us, we need definitions. He notes that “ offering a clear definition makes one vulnerable to criticism” (Glăveanu, 2014, p. 14), but he is nonetheless correct in insisting that we must have them. Consider two concepts that are related to creativity: intelligence and expertise. There is dispute about how fully unified the concept of general intelligence may be, but general

202 John Baer / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 intelligence has been a very productive concept in psychological theory, research, and testing (Neisser et al, 1996). If someone exhibits intelligence in one area, it is very likely that person will exhibit intelligence in other areas to a similar degree. Intelligence is fungible, like money: It can be used profitably in many very different kinds of endeavor. Expertise is quite different. No one assumes that because someone is an expert in Japanese art that person will also know a great deal about French cuisine, airplane mechanics, or neurosurgery, or that expertise is readily transferable across domains. There are no tests of general expertise comparable to IQ tests, and although everyone agrees that expertise is important, it is clear that the set of things pulled together by the term “ expertise” is a diverse lot indeed, varying greatly by domain — much more like “ games” than “ billiards.” When researchers study expertise it is quite natural to define and study it in terms of domains. Creativity is more like expertise than intelligence in being very domain specific (Baer, 1993, 2010, 2011, in press). Should we really expect creativity in poetry or dance or painting to predict creativity in engineering or cooking or interpersonal relations? Feist (2004) commented that it is “ a very appealing, and ultimately firmly American, notion that a creative person could be creative in any domain he or she chose. All the person would have to do would be to decide where to apply her or his talents and efforts, practice or train a lot, and voila, you have creative achievement. On this view, talent trumps domain and it really is somewhat arbitrary in which domain the creative achievement is expressed.” Although appealing, Feist concluded that “ this is a rather naïve and ultimately false position and that creative talent is in fact domain specific . . . creativity and talent are usually not among the domain general skills” (Glăveanu, 2014, p. 57). Domain specificity has huge implications for creativity theory and research. Rather than look for the kinds of grand theories that might be appropriate for a concept like intelligence, creativity researchers need to look at creativity domain by domain, as one must do with expertise. Glăveanu complained that “ Scholars seem to have abandoned the ‘big’ questions in favour of increasingly specialised inquiries leading them to develop subfields of a subfield” (Glăveanu, 2014, p. 12), but the only way to make progress when dealing with a domain-specific concept like creativity is to think small. Glăveanu argued that “ most of the assumptions underpinning the research remain unfortunately unquestioned” (Glăveanu, 2014, p. 14). I believe this is also the key flaw in his analysis: He has failed to question the assumption of domain generality that has plagued creativity research and is the reason the literature is littered with conflicting results and contradicting measures of creativity. (Want a different result? Simply use a different test of creativity.)

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Glăveanu wrote that “ we need to acknowledge the importance of ‘grand theories’ for organising and guiding our research and, most significantly, we need to acknowledge that we are guided by such theories and paradigmatic views even when we think we are not” (Glăveanu, 2014, p. 22). I agree that we need to acknowledge the power that grand theories have over us — including the unfortunate power of the most deceptive idea of all, the assumption that a grand theory is even possible in creativity. These ideas do indeed guide us, even when we fail to recognize their influence. But domain specificity has shown that no grand theory can possibly work, so rather than guide, these theories mis- lead us, pushing us to think of creativity as a much more homogeneous and unified concept than it is. This is the crisis in creativity, and this is why creativity research seems to spin its wheels but go nowhere. As one example of this, consider the longstanding debate about mental illness and creativity, which is as unproductive as it is endless (see, e.g., Bartlett, 2014; Simonton, 2014). As long as creativity researchers insist on thinking of creativity as a domain-general attribute, the debate will never end. As Simonton (2010, pp. 226-228) wrote, "the rate and intensity of adulthood symptoms vary according to the particular domains in which creative genius is expressed. . . . geniuses in the natural sciences tend to be more mentally healthy than in the social sciences; geniuses in the social sciences, more so than those in the humanities; and geniuses in the humanities, more so than those in the arts". Looking at the question domain by domain, the question can be answered; looking at it as a creativity-wide question, however, it will never be resolved because it depends on which domains one happens to include in one’s sample. (Want a different answer? Simply examine a different domain.) We need more fragmentation and dispersion — more recognition that creativity in one area may have nothing to do with creativity in other areas — and fewer grand theories of creativity. Glăveanu applauded the Amusement Park Theory of Creativity (Baer & Kaufman, 2005; Kaufman & Baer, 2004, 2005), arguing that we “ need more initiatives like these if the field is to make a real contribution to scientific debates and practice” (Glăveanu, 2014, p. 24). I agree. The Amusement Park Theory argues that creativity var- ies across domains in a hierarchical fashion: Creativity in closely related domains will evidence similarities (and the more closely related the domains, the greater such similarities will be), whereas creativity in unrelated domains may be like the elements of the set we call “ games,” about which we can make no general claims whatsoever. As Glăveanu proposed, let’s “ Ask bold, new, and surprising questions” and “ Reflect on definitions, do not simply take them for granted” (Glăveanu, 2014, p. 27). But let’s ask questions and reflect on definitions that look at creativity as it actually is — very domain

204 John Baer / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 specific — and not as we might wish it to be (domain general). Then we can make progress — fragmented progress, but real progress — in creativity research. Then we can began to understand why creativity research has produced so many conflicting and con- tradictory research results, and we can begin to make sense of those diverse findings. Seeking grand theories only leads to illusions and confusion, and to the continuing and long-standing crisis in creativity research of which Glăveanu has reminded us (see, e.g., Glover, Ronning, & Reynolds, 1989, for similar warnings 25 years ago). As long as we have impossible expectations of creativity theory it will always be in crisis. We can study it, just as we can study expertise, but we need to do so domain by domain. In doing so we may note interesting similarities among some domains, and there will be striking differences as well. Glăveanu reminds us that Torrance said “ creativity is almost infinite” (Glăveanu, 2014, p. 18). We should expect great complexity — and few simple, all encompassing answers — from a concept with such extraordinary reach.

REFERENCES

Baer, J. (1993). Creativity and divergent thinking: A task-specific approach. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Baer, J. (2010). Is creativity domain specific? In J.C. Kaufman & R.J. Sternberg (Eds.), Cambridge handbook of creativity (pp. 321-341). Cambridge University Press. Baer, J. (2011). Why grand theories of creativity distort, distract, and disappoint. Interna- tional Journal of Creativity and Problem Solving, 21(1). 73-100. Baer, J. (in press). Domain specificity in creativity. San Diego: Elsevier. Baer, J. & Kaufman, J.C. (2005). Bridging generality and specificity: The Amusement Park Theoretical (APT) model of creativity. Roeper Review, 27, 158-163. Bartlett, T. (2014, September 19). Madness and the muse. The Chronicle of Higher Edu- cation. Retrieved September 20, 2014 at http://m.chronicle.com/article/Madnessthe- Muse/148845/ . Feist, G.J. (2004). The evolved fluid specificity of human creative talent. In R.J. Stern- berg, E.L. Grigorenko, & J.L. Singer (Eds.), Creativity: From potential to realization (pp. 57-82). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Glăveanu, V.P. (2014). The psychology of creativity: A critical reading. Creativity: Theo- ries — Research — Applications, 1, 10-32, DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.01.02. Glover, J.A., Ronning, R.R., & Reynolds, C.R. (1989). Handbook of creativity. New York: Plenum Press.

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Kaufman, J.C. & Baer, J. (2004). The Amusement Park Theoretical (APT) model of creativity. The Korean Journal of Thinking & Problem Solving, 14(2), 15-25. Kaufman, J.C. & Baer, J. (2005). The Amusement Park Theory of creativity. In J.C. Kauf- man & J. Baer (Eds.), Creativity across domains: Faces of the muse (pp. 321-328). Hillsdale, New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Neisser, U., Boodoo, G., Bouchard, T.J., Boykin, A.W., Brody, N., Ceci, S.J., Halpern, D.F., Loehlin, J.C., Perloff, R., Sternberg, R.J. & Urbina, S. (1996). Intelligence: Knowns and unknowns. American Psychologist, 51, 77-101. Simonton, D.K. (2010). So you want to become a creative genius? You must be crazy! In D. Cropley, J. Kaufmann, A. Cropley, & M. Runco (Eds.), The dark side of creativity (pp. 218-234). New York: Cambridge University Press. Simonton, D.K. (2014). More method in the mad-genius controversy: A historiometric study of 204 historic creators. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 8(1), 53-61. Wittgenstein, L. (1953/2001). Philosophical investigations. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Corresponding author at: John Baer, Rider University, Memorial Hall 102, Lawrence- ville, NJ 08648-3099, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

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Vol. 1, Issue 2, 2014

Theories – Research – Applications Is The Sky Falling or Expanding? A Promising Turning Point in the Psychology of Creativity

Ronald A. Beghetto University of Connecticut, USA E-mail address: [email protected]

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: Is the psychology of creativity in a state of crisis? In this commentary, I explore this question and argue that the field Psychology of Creativity of creativity studies faces an important turning point, which Theory signifies a promising expansion and maturity of the field. Integrative Models I then discuss, by way of example, how integrative models can serve as an important vehicle for moving the field for- Article history: ward. I close with a brief discussion of how integrative mod- Received 1 November 2014 els allow creativity researchers to capitalize on opportunities Received in revised form 21 December 2014 presented by the expansive growth occurring in the psychol- Accepted 22 December 2014 ogy of creativity.

ISSN: 2354-0036 DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.02.05

Is the psychology of creativity in a state of crisis? Glăveanu’s (2014) provocative essay points to several features of the field, which he interprets as signs that a crisis may be- close at hand. These signs include, the diffuse and micro-focused nature of the questions asked, the taken-for-granted definitions used, the narrow units of analysis employed, the limited methods applied, the lack of theory developed, and the inadequate applicability of conclusions drawn. How might creativity researchers respond to such claims? One way is to simply dismiss them as rhetorical hyperbole. The basis of such a response may be driven by an attempt to maintain the status quo by deflecting any criticisms. Another, more subtle, way of dismissing Glăveanu’s points would be to agree that a crisis is at hand, but suggest that it is a different sort of crisis. Proponents of an alternative crisis might argue that the real crisis with the psychology of creativity is not that the field needs fresh theories or more original studies, but, in fact, there is already too much of a focus on originality, which can lead researchers dangerously off-track (see Makel, 2014 for a discussion). Yet another way to respond would be to recognize that crisis also means a turning point and, in the case of the psychology of creativity, a sign that there is a promising expansion and maturity of the field. It is along the lines of this latter re-

207 Is The Sky Falling or Expanding? … / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 sponse that I focus my remarks.

EXPANDING THE HORIZONS OF CREATIVITY RESEARCH

Glăveanu challenges us to take a more creative approach to our work. To help guide us in doing so, he puts forth six general principles that he hopes can serve as an agenda for the future of the psychology of creativity. Those principles include: (1) ask bold, new, and surprising questions; (2) reflect on definitions, do not simply take them for granted; (3) challenge traditional units of analysis; (4) look for unique, interesting samples and develop new methods; (5) build theory, don’t just cite it; and (6) think practically about your conclusions. In what follows, I hope to illustrate by way of example how integrative models can serve as a good starting point for instantiating Glăveanu’s six principals. Specifically, I use the example of imagination, creativity, and innovation (ICI). First, I briefly discuss the fragmentation surrounding ICI. Next, I introduce an initial sketch of an integrative model. I then close by discussing how integrative models can allow creativity researchers to capitalize on opportunities presented by the expansive growth occurring in the psychology of creativity.

IMAGINATION, CREATIVITY, AND INNOVATION

How might we understand creativity in the context of imagination and innovation? Creativ- ity scholars, across several disciplines (e.g., psychology, business, philosophy, education), have examined these constructs, but often in isolation. Sometimes they are described as distinct constructs (e.g., how innovation is different from creativity, see Gilson & Shalley, 2004). Other times one concept may be referred to as an aspect of a more general process (e.g., referring to imagination as an aspect of creative cognition, see Ward, 1994). Still other times they are used synonymously. Although scholars have explored these three constructs in various ways, few have attempted to understand or examine the relationship amongst these constructs.1 I have yet to come across an integrative model that adequately conceptualizes the relationships and differences among imagination, creativity, and innovation. Indeed, as Glăveanu notes, we often break apart (or blur) creativity and related constructs. When this happens we un- necessarily restrict the kinds of questions we ask, the kinds of methods we employ, and the kinds of insights we can draw.

1 Some initial efforts, however, have been made in this direction (Renzulli & Beghetto, 2014).

208 Ronald A. Beghetto / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014

(RE)PRESENTING IMAGINATION — CREATIVITY — INNOVATION (ICI)

How might creativity researchers conceptualize and explore the relationship among ICI when previous work in this area seems so fragmented, blurred, and disjointed? One way to start would be to sketch out an integrative model. Of course, without additional theoretical work, such a sketch would serve more as a pedagogical tool than a fully realized model. Even so, such a sketch can highlight the potential promise that integrative models hold for the psychology of creativity. This is because integrative models offer a way of making sense of scholarly efforts by situating them in the broader landscape of the field. A good first step in developing an integrative model of ICI would be to start by putting each of the three ICI constructs on equal footing, unconstrain the potential relationships, and make room for the specification of various mediating and moderating factors. Figure 1 represents my initial sketch of such a framework (inspired by Engestrom’s activity system, e.g., Engestrom, 1999).

Figure 1 ICI Integrative Framework. As illustrated in Figure 1, each ICI construct serves as a “ quilting point” (point de capiton, Lacan, 2007) – anchoring and stitching together an integrative system that can house a myriad of potential sub-concepts and relationships. Moreover, by putting the constructs on equal footing, creativity researchers can avoid the temptation of privileging creativity in the relationship and, instead, simultaneously consider the three constructs in a broader, more integrative context. Indeed, when considering the three constructs in simultaneous

209 Is The Sky Falling or Expanding? … / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 relationship with each other, standard definitions of imagination, creativity, and innovation may require revision and rethinking. Moreover, classic lines of research (e.g., divergent thought, problem finding), which have traditionally been classified under the heading of one construct (e.g., creativity) might be better understood as a component of another construct in the system (e.g., imagination). Also, by unconstraining the relationships in the system, researchers can conceptualize and examine a wide array of potential associations among these constructs - including reciprocal, bi-directional, mediated, and moderated relationships. Not only will this allow researchers to conceptualize new relationships among the three ICI constructs it also opens up possibilities for identifying and examining new relationships among the factors that mediate and moderate the three ICI constructs. Finally, given that the ICI framework simultaneously represents these three constructs in a broader system of potential relationships, it can provoke researchers to generate new insights for how they might situate their existing projects in a broader framework and may even point to entirely new programs of research. In this way, integrative models serve two key roles in helping support and sustain a field a study. First they provide an overarching context to help organize and make sense of what might otherwise be viewed as fragmented efforts. Second, they can help stimulate “ possibility thinking” (Craft, 2010) and propel a field in new and important directions. In what follows, I highlight two corollaries to Glăveanu’s six principles that aim to un- derscore how integrative models can help organize existing efforts and help bridge the gap between where the field currently is (and has been) and where it could (and perhaps should) go from here. Integrating Zooming-in and Zooming-out. Integrative frameworks enable creativity researchers to zoom-in and zoom-out on phenomena of interest. In this way, creativity researchers can situate their more micro-focused efforts within the broader landscape of the field. Having the ability to zoom-out also enables researchers to consider multiple units of analysis and examine constructs from a new vantage point. Indeed, Glăveanu highlights the potential costs and limitations that can result from creativity researchers focusing too narrowly on particular units of analysis (e.g., a focus on the creative mind) and using only select methodologies (e.g., psychometrics). Zooming in and out of integrative frameworks also helps researchers consider the relationship among various embedded layers of phenomena. In the case of ICI, for example, the largest grain-size could be the ICI triangle itself. A smaller grain size could be specific relationships of the triangle (e.g., the relationship between imagination and creativity).

210 Ronald A. Beghetto / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014

An even smaller grain-size could be exploring various facets of particular constructs (e.g., imagination). Being able to zoom in and out of an integrative framework serves the important function of reminding researchers that even the most micro-phenomena are still embedded in a larger activity system. The same can be said of the methodologies and analytic techniques used. What becomes most important, then, is not the inherited tradition of methods and units of analysis, but the questions asked about the particular phenomena of interest and how that work can be situated in (or even expand beyond) the broader framework. In this way, the usual methodologies and UOAs need not be discarded, but used more judiciously. Moreover, opportunities for developing new (or adapting other discipline’s) methods can be made more apparent. Integrating Bucket Builders and Bucket Fillers. Integrative frameworks also make room for bucket building and bucket filling. Bucket building refers here to scholars who focus their efforts on building theory. Bucket filling, on the other hand, refers to scholars who focus their efforts on empirical work. Under ideal conditions2 such efforts are compli- mentary and mutually supportive. Bucket building establishes new theories that help structure and make sense of empirical work. Bucket filling compliments bucket building by adding empirical flesh to the theoretical skeleton, breathing life into the theories, identifying important limitations and weaknesses, and signaling when it might be time to build a new bucket. Indeed, theories that are never empirically examined represent little more than empty husks of compelling narrative. Similarly, research results that are not adequately interpreted by theory represent little more than empirical pebbles that get tossed onto an already overflowing heap of unstructured and difficult to interpret findings. Theory building and empirical testing clearly go hand-in-hand, but bringing theory and research together is quite challenging without having an integrative model to provide the macro-context. With respect to imagination, creativity, and innovation, the initial sketch of the ICI framework provides a context wherein prior theoretical and empirical efforts might be organized and new programs of theoretical and empirical work can be outlined. Integrative models also provide avenues for considering how theory and research might be applied in practical contexts. Given that integrative models create space for both theory building and empirical testing, there is room for considering how theories and empirical findings might be applied to (and vary across) practical contexts. This, of course, 2 Although parity between theory building and empirical analysis is ideal, I would argue that there is a severe lack of emphasis placed on developing theory-building skills in graduate training programs. Consequently, many new scholars lack the knowledge, confidence and ability to develop new theoretical models. Indeed, we require doctoral students to take many hours of courses on research methods and various analytic techniques, but rarely do we require (or even have on the books) courses focused on theory building. Incorporating theory building into graduate training seems like a necessary and feasible step we can take to help support the development of integrative models in the psychology of creativity (Beghetto, 2014).

211 Is The Sky Falling or Expanding? … / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 doesn’t mean that all the work done within an integrative framework needs to have imme- diate, applied implications. There is a non-trivial gap between describing phenomena and developing interventions or practical applications based on those descriptions and expla- nations. The landscape of K12 education, for example, is littered with half-baked instruc- tional techniques and applications drawn too hastily from descriptive and explanatory work. That said, integrative frameworks offer a “ big tent” for creativity researchers, wherein scholars can work toward developing interventions and applications based on their findings. CONCLUSION

When it comes to the crisis in the psychology of creativity, I would say the sky is not falling, but expanding. It is an exciting time for creativity researchers. We are at an important turning point. Given the rapid growth in the field, the time seems right for us to focus our efforts on building integrative models that will help us organize and deepen our knowledge of creativity. The sketch of the ICI framework I presented herein was used primarily for illustrative purposes, but it could be developed to bring together lines of research focused on imagination, creativity, and innovation. Developing it into a full-fledged integrative model would, of course, require much more theory building and empirical re- finement. I therefore encourage anyone interested in developing the ICI integrative shell to do so and start adding some much needed theoretical and empirical flesh to it. Doing so might pave the way for similar efforts aimed at integrating, organizing, and expanding the burgeoning knowledge that those in the psychology of creativity have amassed over more than a century of work.

REFERENCES

Beghetto, R.A. (2014). Toward avoiding an empirical march to nowhere. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 8, 18-20. Craft, A. (2010). Possibility Thinking and Wise Creativity: Educational Futures in Eng- land? (pp. 289-312). In R.A. Beghetto & J.C. Kaufman (Eds.). Nurturing Creativity in the Classroom. New York: Cambridge University Press. Engestrom, Y. (1999). Activity theory and individual and social transformation. In Y. Engestrom, R. Miettinen, & R.L. Punamaki (Eds.). Perspectives on activity theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gilson, L.L. & Shalley, C.E. (2004). A little creativity goes a long way: An examination of teams’ engagement in creative processes. Journal of Management, 30, 453-470.

212 Ronald A. Beghetto / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014

Glăveanu, V.P. (2014). The psychology of creativity: A critical reading. Creativity: Theories — Research — Applications, 1, 10-32, DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.01.02. Lacan, J. (2007). Ecrits: The first complete edition in English. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Makel, M.C. (2014). The empirical march: Making science better at self-correction. Psy- chology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 8, 2-7. Renzulli, J.S. & Beghetto, R.A. (2014). The school imagination, creativity, and innovation index and portfolio. Unpublished proposal, Department of Educational Psychology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut. Ward, T.B. (1994). Structured imagination: The role of category structure in exemplar generation. Cognitive Psychology, 27, 1-40.

Corresponding author at: Ronald A. Beghetto, Department of Educational Psychology, Neag School of Education, University of Connecticut 249 Glenbrook Road Unit 3064 Storrs, CT 06269–3064. E-mail: [email protected]

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Vol. 1, Issue 2, 2014

Theories – Research – Applications Creativity - Lost in Simplification?

Mathias Benedek Emanuel Jauk University of Graz, Austria University of Graz, Austria E-mail address: [email protected] E-mail address: [email protected]

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: The target article claims that creativity research is in crisis, which is associated with the excessive oversimplification Neuroscience of creativity employed in quantitative creativity research. We oppose this Cumulative science view by showing that lab measures of creative cognitive po- Basic cognitive processes tential are valid with respect to real-life creativity and hence represent a valuable means of empirical creativity research. Neuroscientific research in particular, which is often viewed as a considerably artificial paradigm for the study of creativity, is a powerful complemental method to unveil basic cognitive mechanisms (e.g., attention and memory processes) involved in creative thought and to extend our understanding of the creating brain. Conceptual clarity and methodological Article history: rigor necessarily go along with simplification in natural sci- Received 7 November 2014 ence, which does not generally forfeit validity but rather facil- Received in revised form 19 December 2014 itates the cumulative gain of dependable knowledge. This is Accepted 20 December 2014 particularly important for creativity research, a discipline that risks being seen as an immature science when it attempts to ISSN: 2354-0036 explain more than it actually can. DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.02.06

The target article by Glăveanu (2014) provides a comprehensive critique on the current state of affairs in creativity research. It is claimed that creativity research is in crisis. Key signs or reasons for this crisis are seen in the increasing fragmentation of topics (cf. Hen- nessey & Amabile, 2010) with research focusing on very small units of analysis that may distort, rather than represent our understanding of creativity. Glăveanu calls in particular for a stronger contextualization of research, in order to better grasp the multi-faceted phenomenon of creativity in its contextual richness. Similar claims have been made previously. For example, Glover, Ronning and Reynolds (1989) were concerned that creativity research was a “ ’degenerating’ research program” (p. XI), with no journals or organization providing leadership in the field. This situation led them to compile the first Handbook of Creativity, aiming to provide structure for the field and to point out potentially promising research agendas. Later reviews acknowledged the quantitative and qualitative progress in the field as indicated by relevant new journals, handbooks, and a committed APA division 10, but still highlighted the importance of following the path of a cumulative science

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(e.g., Mumford, 2003; Simonton, 2000; Torrance, 2003).

DO WE KILL CREATIVITY IN THE LAB?

A general theme in the target article is that the quantification of creativity leads to an oversimplification, where the chosen units of analysis are so small that they no longer represent the original phenomenon in a meaningful way. So, do we kill creativity in the lab? This concern is for example, represented in the question “ How can we ever relate back, in a meaningful way, people’s capacity to generate ideas on demand, about things they might have no or little interest for, to their everyday activity and experience as creative agents?” (Glăveanu, 2014, p. 22). At first glance, this kind of argument sounds like a common objection to the natural science approach that is often espoused by fields like the humanities. Following this rationale, one might equally question whether it could ever make sense to study slimy snails to understand human memory or have electrons collide, to understand the cohesion of the universe. Speaking with artists, one sometimes observes similar reactions: the attempt to quantify creativity is viewed as an act of reductionist blasphemy – it just seems impossible to challenge the mystical aura of creativity, which is more readily associated with the kiss of the muse than any quantifiable trait or cognitive process. However, the question posed by Glăveanu (2014) is actually not a theoretical, but an empirical one. And the simple answer is: We can. Evidence from cross-sectional and longitudinal studies, as well as meta-analytic evidence, shows consistently that divergent thinking ability predicts actual creative achievement (e.g., Jauk, Benedek & Neubauer, 2014; Kim, 2008; Plucker, 1999; Torrance, 1993; but see also Baer, 1998). Moreover, divergent thinking ability has been found to be sensitive to differences in subgenres of specific domains (e.g. jazz music vs. classical music; Benedek, Borovnjak, Kruse-Weber, & Neubauer, 2014) and even to performance skills within such a subgenre (i.e., improvisation performance in jazz musicians; Beaty et al., 2013). Of course, divergent thinking ability can only explain a limited part of the variance in creative achievement. But this is just what is to be expected according to multi-componential models of creativity, which assume interactions with other important traits (personality, cognitive ability and domain- specific expertise) as well as situational and environmental factors (Amabile, 1983; Ey- senck, 1999; Simonton, 2014). All the more so, it seems astonishing that, even when disregarding all these important contextual factors, a domain-general cognitive ability, like divergent thinking, can still explain a relevant part of (domain-specific) real-life creative outcomes. It is hence safe to conclude that we do not kill creativity in the lab, but are dealing with a valid construct of high empirical value. Still, it is an ongoing process

215 Mathias Benedek, Emanuel Jauk / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 to question available measures (Beaty, Nusbaum, & Silvia, 2014; Lee, Huggins, & Ther- riault, 2014), refine them (e.g., Benedek, Mühlmann, Jauk, & Neubauer, 2013; Plucker, Qian, & Wang, 2011; Silvia et al., 2008), and look for other, potentially even more relevant ones. Based on solid evidence, we can then proceed to study more complex interactions between relevant factors (e.g., Jauk et al., 2014; King, Walker, & Broyles, 1996), thus progressing from simple to increasingly complex models.

THE CASE OF NEUROSCIENCE IN CREATIVITY RESEARCH

We briefly want to address the case of neuroscience, which was regarded in the target article as a current fancy that cannot say much about creativity. In fact, this topic is sometimes viewed with scepticism even within the field of quantitative creativity research. Most of this research is focused on the process of creative idea generation and imagination, and hence aims at understanding how our brain forms novel concepts from previous experience. Assuming that this process may be essentially similar in the creative play of a child and in the creative insights of an artist or researcher, it arguably concerns the most fundamental and specific aspect of creative cognition. Furthermore, unveiling the brain mechanisms underlying such elementary processes of creative cognition represents a particularly exciting endeavour – at least for the cognitive neuroscientist. In neuroscience research, creative idea generation is commonly implemented by means of basic divergent thinking tasks, but the processes under investigation are cut down even further to a duration of just a few seconds. This is probably bad news to those who believe that creativity can only be understood in terms of the experiential development of the individual, but goods news to those who think that a few minutes of idea generation involve a complex mixture of cognitive processes and strategies. It may not come as a surprise that early studies, which examined brain activation during long and highly diverse tasks such as story generation, visual design or musical improvisation, found little consistency in brain activation across studies (Arden, Chavez, Grazioplene, & Jung, 2010; Dietrich & Kanso, 2010). Neuroscientific studies generally require very precise assumptions on the involvement and timing of specific cognitive processes. Now, after focusing on more specific tasks and processes, the field has produced the first reliable findings (Vartanian et al., 2013). We consider the neuroscientific approach to be a powerful complementary method in the investigation of cognitive processes that are not easily accessible via other common methods, such as tests and self-report. This includes questions on the role of attention and memory retrieval in creative thought (e.g., Benedek et al., 2014; Fink & Benedek, 2014). Moreover, it enables us to extend our understanding of the general functioning

216 Creativity - Lost in Simplification? / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 of our brains to the important realm of creative cognition. For example, neuroscience research has helped to qualify the popular notion that creativity is “ located” in the “ associative-intuitive” right hemisphere and demonstrated that creative thought involves many ordinary and few extraordinary processes. But, it is just one method and its ultimate value will depend on the strength of the theorizing involved in the design of studies and the interpretation of findings (Abraham, 2013).

THE ARDUOUS PATH OF CUMULATIVE SCIENCE

With a phenomenon like creativity, which is highly complex and not well understood, simplification is a common approach in order to identify tractable problems. Solving those problems is the way of “ normal science” leading to the accumulation of dependable knowledge (Kuhn, 1962). This particularly involves the establishment of replicable effects, which requires asking the same “ old questions” again and again. Step by step, available models become expanded or revised in order to accommodate new and conflicting findings, following the path of cumulative science (Mischel, 2005; cf. Vartanian, 2014). This process cannot be easily side-stepped by immediately jumping to new, grand theories (Karwowski, 2012), unless those theories can be shown to better explain and integrate available evidence. Otherwise, we run the risk of just rewriting the language of creativity without contributing to an increased understanding, but eventually rather to further fragmentation of research. This may also apply to the aim of increasing contextualization in research. Such contextualization is informative, as long as it is specific in precisely describing the contexts and factors that should or should not lead to certain observations. It is, however, not helpful when contextualization takes the form of an exercise in compil- ing extensive lists of potentially relevant contexts and factors without further specificity, as this might forfeit falsifiability. The path of cumulative science most likely involves a lot of “ dirty” empirical work that should not be despised for not tackling all questions at once. We agree that in this process, it is important to remain aware that research is typically focused on a specific part of the puzzle, which also should be specified when describing research. Moreover, it is certainly advisable to look beyond one’s own nose from time to time, in order not to lose track of the bigger picture. Along these lines, we propose that one particularly fruitful avenue for future research might be to examine whether concepts that are thought to be specific to creativity research can be re-thought in terms of well- defined cognitive constructs, as established in cognitive science. This way, we might eventually end up understanding, for example, creative idea generation as goal-directed, multiple-constrained memory search process. Would we then have killed creativity after

217 Mathias Benedek, Emanuel Jauk / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 all? At least, further integration into general theories of human cognition might kill some illusions about its peculiarity – an important step along the path of cumulative science.

REFERENCES

Abraham, A. (2013). The promises and perils of the neuroscience of creativity. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7, 246. Abraham, A., Pieritz, K., Thybush, K., Rutter, B., Kröger, S., Schweckendiek, J., Stark, R., Windmann, S., & Hermann, C. (2012). Creativity and the brain: Uncovering the neural signature of conceptual expansion. Neuropsychologia, 50, 1906-1917. Amabile, T.M. (1983). The social psychology of creativity: A componential conceptualiza- tion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45, 357–376. Arden, R., Chavez, R.S., Grazioplene, R., & Jung, R.E. (2010). Neuroimaging creativity: A psychometric view. Behavioral Brain Research, 214, 143-156. Baer, J. (1998). The case for domain specificity of creativity. Creativity Research Journal, 11, 173-177. Beaty, R.E., Smeekens, B.A., Silvia, P.J., Hodges, D.A., & Kane, M.J. (2013). A first look at the role of domain-general cognitive and creative abilities in jazz improvisation. Psy- chomusicology: Music, Mind, and Brain, 23, 262-268. Beaty, R.E., Nusbaum, E.C., & Silvia, P.J. (2014). Does insight problem solving predict real-world creativity? Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 8, 287-292. Benedek, M., Borovnjak, B., Neubauer, A.C., & Kruse-Weber, S. (2014). Creativity and personality in classical, jazz and folk musicians. Personality and Individual Differences, 63, 117-121. Benedek, M., Jauk, E., Fink, A., Koschutnig, K., Reishofer, G., Ebner, F., & Neubauer, A.C. (2014). To create or to recall? Neural mechanisms underlying the generation of creative new ideas. NeuroImage, 88, 125-133. Benedek, M., Mühlmann, C., Jauk, E., & Neubauer, A.C. (2013). Assessment of Diver- gent Thinking by means of the Subjective Top-Scoring Method: Effects of the Number of Top-Ideas and Time-on-Task on Reliability and Validity. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 7, 341-349. Dietrich, A. & Kanso, R. (2010). A Review of EEG, ERP, and Neuroimaging Studies of Creativity and Insight. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 822-848. Eysenck, H.J. (1995). Genius. The natural history of creativity. Cambridge, UK: Cam- bridge University Press. Fink, A. & Benedek, M. (2014). EEG alpha power and creative ideation. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 44, 111-123.

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Glăveanu, V.P. (2014). The psychology of creativity: a critical reading. Creativity: Theories — Research — Applications, 1, 10-32, DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.01.02. Glover, J.A., Ronning, R.R. & Reynolds, C.R. (1989). Handbook of creativity. New York: Plenum Press. Hennesey, B.A. & Amabile, T.M. (2010). Creativity. Annual Review of Psychology, 61, 569-598. Jauk, E., Benedek, M. & Neubauer, A.C. (2014). The Road to Creative Achievement: A Latent Variable Model of Ability and Personality Predictors. European Journal of Per- sonality, 28, 95-105. Karwowski, M. (2012). Middle and grand theorizing in the psychology of creativity. Crea- tivity and Leisure. An Intercultural and Cross-disciplinary Journal, 1, 109-115. Kim, K.H. (2008). Meta-analyses of the relationship of creative achievement to both IQ and divergent thinking test scores. Journal of Creative Behavior, 42, 106-130. King, L.A., Walker, L.M., & Broyles, S.J. (1996). Creativity and the five-factor model. Jour- nal of Research in Personality, 30, 189-203. Kuhn, T.S. (1962). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lee, C.S., Huggins, A.C., & Therriault, D.J. (2014). A measure of creativity or intelligence? Examining internal and external structure validity evidence of the Remote As- sociates Test. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 8, 446-460. Mischel, W. (2005). Alternative futures for our science. APS Observer, 18(3). Retrieved from http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications/observer/2005/march -05/alternative-futures-for-ourscience.html Mumford, M.D. (2003). Where have we been, where are we going? Taking stock in creativity research. Creativity Research Journal, 15, 107-120. Plucker, J.A. (1999). Is the proof in the pudding? Reanalyses of Torrance’s (1958 to present) longitudinal data. Creativity Research Journal, 12, 103-114. Plucker, J.A., Qian, M. & Wang, S. (2011). Is originality in the eye of the beholder? Com- parison of scoring techniques in the assessment of divergent thinking. The Journal of Creative Behavior, 45, 1-22. Silvia, P.J., Winterstein, B.B., Willse, J.T., Barona, C.M., Cram, J.T., Hess, K.I., & Richard, C.A. (2008). Assessing creativity with divergent thinking tasks: Exploring the reliability and validity of new subjective scoring methods. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 2, 68-85.

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Simonton, D.K. (2000). Creativity. Cognitive, personal, developmental, and social aspects. American Psychologist, 55, 151-158. Simonton, D.K. (2014). Creative performance, expertise acquisition, individual differences, and developmental antecedents: An integrative research agenda. Intelligence, 42, 66-73. Torrance, E.P. (1993). The beyonders in a thirty year longitudinal study of creativity achievement. Roeper Review, 15, 131-135. Torrance, E.P. (2003). The millenium: Time for looking forward and looking back. The Journal of Secondary Gifted Education, 15, 6-12. Vartanian, O. (2014). Toward a cumulative psychological science of aesthetics, creativity, and the arts. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 8, 15-17. Vartanian, O., Bristaol, A.S., & Kaufman, J.C. (Eds.) (2013). Neuroscience of creativity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Corresponding author at: Mathias Benedek, Department of Psychology, University of Graz, Maiffredygasse 12b, A-8010 Graz E-mail: [email protected]

Corresponding author at: Emanuel Jauk, Department of Psychology, University of Graz, Maiffredygasse 12b, A-8010 Graz E-mail: [email protected]

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Theories – Research – Applications Joining the Conversation: A Commentary on Glăveanu’s Critical Reading James C. Kaufman University of Connecticut, USA E-mail: [email protected]

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: In this commentary, I add my thoughts to Glăveanu’s excellent target article. I add two points to move the dialogue for- Collaboration ward. One point is that although as a field we do have our Dialogue portion of the blame, other disciplines must also share the burden. When new areas “ discover” creativity they often begin anew, or claim there is no consensus, or else start and Article history: end with Guilford and Torrance. However, my second point Received 24 October 2014 is that the answer, to me, is via collaboration and dialogue. Received in revised form 19 December 2014 The people who are “ scholarly bilingual” – who “ speak” cre- Accepted 20 December 2014 ativity jargon but also understand the ins and outs of another ISSN: 2354-0036 field – are the keys. Conversations and collaborations can DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.02.07 help advance the field.

I’m delighted to get a chance to comment on the excellent and provocative paper by Vlad Glăveanu (2014). Many of the issues he raises are ones I have addressed in other works (such as the Four-C theoretical work with Ronald Beghetto; Kaufman & Beghetto, 2009, 2013). But Glăveanu takes pain to emphasize that he is making a selective review of the literature, and I don’t intend this commentary to be a standard “ look at the work I’ve done that isn’t cited!” piece. Instead I want to suggest two additional principles that he alludes to in the text. One is hinted at when he cites Plucker, Beghetto and Dow’s (2004) exploration of why creativity doesn’t play a bigger role in educational psychology. Glăveanu correctly places some of the blame at our feet – which I accept – but I also contend that when other fields “ discover” the concept of creativity, they rarely do their homework in the slightest – or else they stop in the 1960’s. As Cropley (in press) notes, when engineers (among many other disciplines) decide to study creativity they broadly announce that there is no ac- ceptable definition or consensus about what it is – which is, of course, nonsense. Wheth- er or not our standard definition is flawed (it is), could stand to be challenged (it could), or is hard to implement (it might be), there’s a striking agreement about the basics of what creativity is. When other areas (which includes my “ home field” of psychology –

221 Joining the Conversation: A Commentary on Glăveanu’s Critical Reading / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 there are many papers published on creativity in top journals by experts in other subdisci- plines) study creativity, they must avoid wallowing in the same hackneyed myths that Plucker et al. (2004) outline. As a second added principle, however, we must actively seek out related work. Glăveanu himself is one of the masters of this effort to incorporate the research of related fields. Whether it is called imagination, improvisation, innovation, or something else, creativity or some related facet is studied in numerous other fields, yet there is strikingly little communication. My colleagues and I have tried to address this gap (e.g., Reiter-Palmon, Beghetto, & Kaufman, 2013), but we are a drop in the ocean. There are several scholars out there whom I call scholarly bilingual – they speak “ creativity” but other fields also speak. My friends and colleagues Oshin Vartanian, Roni Reiter-Palmon, and David Crop- ley are just a few that quickly come to mind, who can translate the jargon of neuroscience, business, and engineering research (respectively) into creativity-speak. One of the goals of my career has been to get people to speak to each other. I grew up as the child of IQ test developers (indeed, I still am) and it struck me, when I much later took cognitive psychology classes, how many basic questions could be (and were) answered with IQ test data. Cognitive psychologists often looked down on IQ test developers (too much money involved) and would in the process over-value their studies with a sample of 40 college students and under-value or ignore the normative studies of IQ tests with very similar tasks that had samples in the thousands. I am scared that we are doing this exact same thing in creativity – overlooking essential work in organizational psychology that could be applied to the classroom, or vice versa. The best way to solve this dilemma is with dialogue and connections. Glăveanu has started many dialogues – including this one – and is as excited as I am about connecting different disciplines, cultures, domains and methodologies. I have only tackled a fraction of the issues he has raised, and I look forward to seeing how other commentaries engage in this dialogue – and, even more, continuing these conversations outside of the written page and at conventions, visits, and Skype talks!

REFERENCES

Cropley D.A. (in press). Teaching engineers to think creatively: Barriers and challenges in STEM disciplines. To appear in R. Wegerif, L.Li, & J.C. Kaufman (Eds.), The Routledge international handbook of research on teaching thinking. London: Routledge. Glăveanu, V.P. (2014). The psychology of creativity: A critical reading. Creativity: Theories — Research — Applications, 1, 10-32, DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.01.02.

222 James C. Kaufman / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014

Kaufman, J.C. & Beghetto, R.A. (2009). Beyond big and little: The Four C Model of Crea- tivity. Review of General Psychology, 13, 1-12. Kaufman, J.C., & Beghetto, R.A. (2013). In praise of Clark Kent: Creative metacognition and the importance of teaching kids when (not) to be creative. Roeper Review, 35, 155-165 Plucker, J.A., Beghetto, R.A., & Dow, G.T. (2004). Why isn’t creativity more important to educational psychologists? Potentials, pitfalls, and future directions in creativity research. Educational Psychologist, 39, 83-96. Reiter-Palmon, R., Beghetto, R.A., & Kaufman, J.C. (2014). Looking at creativity through a Business-Psychology-Education (BPE) lens: The challenge and benefits of listening to each other. In E. Shiu (Ed.), Creativity research: An interdisciplinary and multidisci- plinary research handbook (pp. 9-30). New York: Routledge.

Corresponding author at: James C. Kaufman, University of Connecticut, Neag School of Education, 2131 Hillside Road, Storrs, CT, 06269-3007. E-mail: [email protected]

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Theories – Research – Applications Commentary on The Psychology of Creativity: A Critical Reading by Vlad P. Glăveanu

David H. Cropley University of South Australia E-mail address: [email protected]

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: The psychology of creativity is in crisis! This is the assertion of Glăveanu’s thought-provoking and wide-ranging review. 4P paradigm The present commentary responds to each of Glăveanu’s Inconvenient samples six conclusions – supporting some and challenging others – finding much to drive an exciting future of research in creativity. Bold, new and surprising questions do, indeed, need to be asked in this field. Reflection on definitions of creativity is, as Glăveanu asserts, important, but should not divert researchers from moving forward, confident that a consensus does exist. Reductionist approaches in creativity research should not overwhelm attempts to integrate the contributions of the 4Ps as a system. Creativity research should seek out and study inconvenient samples – professional practitioners, for example. Qualitative, theory-building approaches to creativity research need to be encouraged as a counter-balance to quantitative theory-testing. Lastly, and perhaps most im- portantly for the future health of creativity, researchers need Article history: to demonstrate to the wider scientific community the value Received 3 November 2014 that creativity brings to other disciplines. If the community of Received in revised form 18 December 2014 creativity researchers, psychological or otherwise, contrib- Accepted 19 December 2014 utes to Glăveanu’s suggestions for future research, then the ISSN: 2354-0036 fragmentation and dispersion he identifies are, in fact, the DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.02.08 seeds of future health.

COMMENTARY Glăveanu’s (2014) article raises many interesting and important points about the nature and status of creativity research, with perhaps the most important being the need for “ dialogue and collaboration” (Glăveanu, 2014, p. 28). While I agree that there is much that could be done differently, and possibly better, I would stop short of claiming that “ the psychology of creativity is close to a crisis” (Glăveanu, 2014, p. 10). Nevertheless, like the recent special section on Replications in Psychology prompted by Makel’s article in the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts (Makel, 2014), wide-ranging discussion should be encouraged and supported.

224 Commentary on The Psychology of Creativity: A Critical Reading by Vlad P. Glăveanu / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014

My own position in the debate is influenced by two facts. First, my creativity heritage, so to speak, is largely psychological in nature. Although not a psychologist, I came to the field through the tutelage of researchers embedded in the psychology of creativity, so that if Schools of Thought can be said to exist in creativity research, then I tend to see myself as a product of the Psychological School of Creativity. Second, my professional heritage is engineering. Where this influences my views on creativity is probably most strongly seen in my particular interest in practical applications of creativity. As an engineer, what concerns me most – and the question I most often have to address when talking to colleagues and potential engineering clients – is the “ so what” of creativity. What value does it add to a discipline like engineering? Why should an engineering firm, or the engineering department of a University, for that matter, care about creativity? Glăveanu’s article therefore strikes several strong chords for me, although with some differences in detail. In a very general sense, for example, I am not particularly troubled by the “ increased fragmentation and dispersion” that he cites (Glăveanu, 2014, p. 10). Indeed, I do not see how growth can be anything other than divergent, and the idea of convergent growth (Glăveanu, 2014, p. 10) seems inherently limiting. Convergent growth, to me, implies constraint and limitation, or worse, gatekeeping. The question of what creativity studies are developing towards does not, in my opinion need to be answered in a way that limits possibilities – it is sufficient, to say that it IS developing. To put this differently, if it must develop towards something, it is sufficient that the goal is an increase in the body of knowledge, however broad, diffuse or fragmented that might be. I am in favour of an approach that is essentially market-driven – certain themes, methods, theories and so on will prevail, because they have explanatory power and help to explain the value of creativity, while others will fade out naturally because they lack explanatory power. The important point is that the value and ultimate success of certain lines of creativity research is an emergent property of the system. Indeed, if we knew which lines of attack to pursue, in advance – if we knew what is what we were supposed to be doing – then, in the words of Albert Einstein, “ it wouldn’t be called research, would it?!” Glăveanu’s article covers a lot of ground and while I would like to address many of his points – to support some, or to extend or contest others – space does not permit a lengthy commentary. Instead, I will address his six conclusions for future research, and hope that, for the remainder, the opportunity arises in journals like this one to engage in these debates that he correctly points out are vital to the health of creativity research. 1. Ask bold, new, and surprising questions. I agree with this point, and would highlight a concern of my own. The consumer – of the research – should be ultimate judge of the

225 David H. Cropley / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 value and worth of research. There is a danger that journal reviewers, for example, act as gatekeepers rather than quality controllers. My view is that the function of reviewers and editors is to weed out papers that are methodologically unsound, or poorly written, or that contain factual errors, but not to block papers that contain new or untested ideas. If in doubt, let the reader be the judge of what constitutes a bold, new, or surprising question. 2. Reflect on definitions, do not simply take them for granted. To some extent – yes. However, in engineering, for example, I see many papers that show a desire to explore creativity, but never get past the initial hurdle of “ what is creativity?” The typical response seems to be to ignore the extant body of knowledge, i.e. the psychology of creativity, and instead, start from first principles. The problem with this approach is that, ironically, these engineers are spending a great deal of time and effort reinventing the creativity wheel, and the initial burst of enthusiasm fizzles out after the effort of trying to define creativity. In other words, little progress is made, and little is added to the body of knowledge. In application areas, like engineering, more progress would be made by taking some of the existing work on creativity for granted – not least the definition – and working forward from that point. 3. Challenge traditional units of analysis. I agree with Glăveanu’s point that much of creativity research is very reductionist, or Cartesian, in nature. Outside of creativity research, my own day-to-day teaching is in the field of systems engineering, and we teach that a complex system cannot be analysed, or understood, by cutting it into its constituent parts. Doctors do not learn about life by cutting living systems into their component parts, because life is an emergent property of the system. It is manifest only at the level of the system, when the components of the system are interacting and exchanging energy, information and/or mass. Glăveanu’s point is that creativity is a system, and there are limitations in trying to study it by reducing it to its component parts – the 4Ps – each in isolation from the other. 4. Look for unique, interesting samples and develop new methods. I support Glăveanu’s call for research in creativity to move “ beyond psychology students and acknowledged creators as participants” (Glăveanu, 2014, p. 28). Of course, researchers are constrained by practicalities of data collection, but we need to have a debate about this and ask, for example, if it is better to have a convenience sample of 500 psychology students, or a sample of only 50 school children, or engineering students, or Nobel Laure- ates. Simonton (2014) discusses a broadly similar issue in his response to Makel’s (2014) article. 5. Build theory, don’t just cite it. I agree with Glăveanu’s point here – “ literature reviews and discussion sections are not simply an occasion to cite the works you are ex-

226 Commentary on The Psychology of Creativity: A Critical Reading by Vlad P. Glăveanu / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 pected to cite…” (Glăveanu, 2014, p. 28) – but I see two possible causes. We need to guard against the positive feedback loop that can be created by the review process. If we place too much emphasis on reinforcing what we feel are standard works, there is a danger that papers converge on a small number of expected references at the exclusion of other material. The solution is not to stop asking researchers to make sure they have cited important works, but to invite them to add other works at the periphery, and to accept these even if they are unfamiliar. A second issue here, touched on by Glăveanu, is the relative lack of qualitative research in creativity – or perhaps, the lack of availability of avenues to publish more qualitative work. One way to categorise the difference between qualitative and quantitative research is that the former is theory building, while the latter is theory testing. If we want creativity researchers to build theory, then there needs to be an outlet for qualitative studies that do this. 6.Think practically about your conclusions. The key point raised here by Glăveanu relates to the “ so what?” In my own discipline, I think there is a desperate need and desire to understand the contribution that creativity (and innovation) make, in real, practical terms to the process of solving technological problems. I have attempted to address this myself (Cropley, 2015), but I feel that mine is still largely a lone voice. The same might be said of other applications of creativity. There is a strong desire in engineering, education and other disciplines to understand and make use of creativity for practical purposes, and we need to sell the value of creativity to these disciplines in an effective and clear manner. I will close as I started. I do not think that the psychology of creativity is as close to crisis as Glăveanu suggests. However, this does not mean that debate, discussion and action are not warranted. The health of any area of research should be measured by the level of internal debate, and its openness to new and different points of view, theories and methods. Could the psychology of creativity do better in this respect? No doubt. Is the psychology of creativity – or creativity research more generally – in crisis? It may be, to a degree, fragmented, dispersed and chaotic, but I see these as signs of discipline that is still in its adolescence – and this will naturally change and coalesce as it continues to mature. REFERENCES

Cropley, D.H. (2015). Creativity in Engineering: Novel solutions to complex problems. San Diego: Academic Press. Glăveanu, V.P. (2014). The Psychology of Creativity: A Critical Reading. Creativity: Theo- ries - Research - Applications, 1, 10-32, DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.01.02.

227 David H. Cropley / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014

Makel, M.C. (2014). The empirical march: Making science better at self-correction. Psy- chology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 8, 1, 2-7. Simonton, D.K. (2014). Significant Samples - Not Significant Tests! The Often Over- looked Solution to the Replication Problem. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 8, 1, 11-12.

Corresponding author at: David H. Cropley, Defence and Systems Institute, University of South Australia, Building W, Mawson Lakes Campus, Mawson Lakes, SA 5158, Au- stralia. Email: [email protected]

228

Vol. 1, Issue 2, 2014

Theories – Research – Applications

A Critical Response to “The Psychology of Creativity: A Critical Reading” Jonathan A. Plucker University of Connecticut, USA E-mail address: [email protected]

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: Glăveanu (2014b) provides a wide-ranging analysis and critique of the science of creativity. Many of his points are fair Paradigmatic assumptions and reasonable, and addressing the questions he poses will Culture unquestionably advance the field. But definitional issues re- Definitions ceive too much attention, and some of the arguments Article history: are over-extended. The six recommendations are difficult Received 21 November 2014 to argue against, but would following all of them lead to the Received in revised form 18 December 2014 more impactful field that Glăveanu desires? Accepted 19 December 2014

ISSN: 2354-0036 DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.02.09

Glăveanu’s (2014b) analysis of the field of creativity is provocative and provides further evidence that he is among the field’s most insightful thinkers. Writing from his sociocultural perspective, he provides an in-depth analysis of the field and proposes six recommendations for moving the field forward. Glăveanu carefully frames his paper by noting that his analysis is focused largely on “ ‘mainstream’ research” (Glăveanu, 2014b, p. 11), and he softens the knife-edge of his comments by stating that, “ my own work shows signs of at least some of the questiona- ble practices I discuss below” (Glăveanu, 2014b, p. 11).This is a reasonable approach and provides a good foundation for the paper. I largely agreed with Glăveanu’s analysis, and my hard copy of his paper is covered with highlights and comments on points on which we agree. For example, he observes that, “ We seem to be asking every kind of question about creativity without listening enough to what others are doing or what they have found” (Glăveanu, 2014b, p. 10) and notes that this is a problem in the entire field of psychology, not just the psychology of creativity. He suggests that the role of time has been largely ignored, that we have become too reductionist in how we study and talk about creativity and that many of the idio- syncrasies and traditions of the field tend to disconnect our work from the needs of teachers, families, managers, artists and other practitioners.

229 A Critical Response to “ The Psychology of Creativity: A Critical Reading” / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014

All of these points, and many others throughout the paper, feel very accurate to me. His thoughts on the limitations of historiometry and consensual assessment techniques strike me as especially insightful, as do the extensive comments on needed improvements to theory-building within the field (see also Vartanian, 2014). Quite simply, the field can do better in these and related areas, and Glăveanu deserves considerable credit for his willingness to share these observations. I could write many pages emphasizing our considerable points of agreement, but that is not the purpose of this set of critiques, and I ask the reader to keep this in mind when considering the following constructive criticisms. I have only minor concerns with the general tone and approach of the analysis. For example, many of these issues are common across social science fields (and, I suspect, many other fields). For example, he questions the attraction of neuropsychological research on creativity, leading to concerns about creativity research being largely method- driven. Absolutely, but every social science field experiences this phenomenon – try publishing a paper about education that does not use hierarchical linear modeling! These fads and tendencies are largely the result of human nature, and creativity researchers should not be faulted for having the same tendencies. In a similar vein, Glăveanu’s concerns about the types of questions being asked and answered are well-taken, but they go a bit too far. For example, creativity journals are increasingly publishing research from Chinese scholars, and much of this research involves replication of studies that have been well-researched in Western cultures. This development may give the impression of a lack of originality and boundary-pushing that Glăveanu decries, but we need to be sensitive to our Chinese colleagues’ desire to replicate previous work to determine if it is relevant to the Chinese context. This is both reasonable and an important and necessary step for advancing the science of creativity (see Makel, Plucker & Hegarty, 2012; Makel & Plucker, 2014a, 2014b). For example, Yi, Hu, Plucker and McWilliams (2013) conducted a conceptual replication of Torrance’s (1968) seminal study on the fourth grade slump. Few previous replications have been successful, but Yi et al. were curious about whether a Chinese sample of students would show developmental differences related to their grade level. The results were significantly different from previous research, in that the students exhibited a slump, contrary to many studies with Western samples, but the slump occurred much later than Torrance observed. It also extended the previous research by examining the role of school climate on creativity. Was this study motivated by questions that were “ bold, new, and surprising” (Glăveanu, 2014b, p. 27)? Not really, but the study provided helpful information for practitioners (another of Glăveanu’s recommendations) and some insights into

230 Jonathan A. Plucker / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 the role societal and organizational variables may play in the development of creativity. Given Glăveanu’s sociocultural perspective, his emphasis on the need for a distributed approach to creativity development (Glăveanu, 2014a) is not surprising, and it corre- sponds well with my colleagues’ work with distributed conceptions of talent development (McWilliams & Plucker, 2014; Plucker & Barab, 2005). That said, I do not find this concept to be described in sufficient detail. How would a sociocultural model of distributed creativity look different from the individual differences and systems theories approaches that are widely used today? More discussion of this vision would be of great assistance to the field. Our only area of major disagreement is found in the lengthy section on definitional issues. Intriguingly, he cites our paper on these issues (Plucker, Beghetto & Dow, 2004), in which we called for better use and explicit stating of definitions in creativity research, but then he does not share our proposed definition that addresses many of his concerns. Glăveanu correctly states that Stein’s (1953, p. 311) definition, emphasizing novelty and usefulness, is the basis for most research in the field, but he does not note that the Stein definition has subtle aspects that address some of his own sociocultural concerns. Stein very specifically noted that a creativity product needed to be “ accepted … by a group in some point in time” . Stein has never been given enough credit for his acknowledgement that creativity is in the eye of the beholder (and that his definition accounts for this relativi- ty), and that judgments about a work’s creativity may vary across time. Our definition sought to extend this and related conceptualizations by formally acknowledging the role of context, which includes but can go far beyond time, group context, and other external variables: “ Creativity is the interaction among aptitude, process, and environment by which an individual or group produces a perceptible product that is both novel and useful as defined within a social context” (Plucker, Beghetto & Dow, 2004, p. 90, emphasis in original). Quite frankly, continued discussion about definitions feels like we are chasing each other down the proverbial rabbit hole. Variations on what we proposed in 2004 (e.g., Si- monton, 2012) are, from our perspective, already included in the definition, and little progress is being made here. However, a less-emphasized point in Glăveanu’s analysis, the “ need to make explicit one’s paradigmatic assumptions” (Glăveanu, 2014b, p. 13, emphasis in original), is very fair. Journal editors should require any published creativity research to provide the authors’ definition of creativity and, if relevant, paradigmatic lens at the beginning of each paper. That alone would address many of Glăveanu’s major concerns and provide the field with a stronger conceptual foundation as it moves forward. Somewhat surprisingly, I find the recommendations (Glăveanu, 2014b, pp. 27-28) to be the least provocative part of the paper, in large part because they do not necessari-

231 A Critical Response to “ The Psychology of Creativity: A Critical Reading” / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 ly focus on the author’s main question, when he observes early on that the field is rapidly developing, but “ developing towards what?” (Glăveanu, 2014b, p. 10, emphasis in original). I am not sure this question is ever answered in the paper, and the recommendations dance around this issue. For example, one can hardly deny that we should be asking “ bold, new, and surprising questions,” (Glăveanu, 2014b, p. 27), but if the field does not have a shared understanding of our ultimate goals, then will asking bold, new questions do anything more than make the same old material feel more exciting, when it really is not? Oddly, the aspect of the paper that most excites me – the call for a new, unified direction for the field and a move away from rampant reductionism – is somewhat can- celled out by recommendations that are mostly reductionist (e.g., ask better questions, take definitions more seriously, reconsider units of analysis, develop new methods, build better theory, have more practical conclusions). I agree with most of these recommendations, but one could follow each of them and the directionless – or multi-directional – nature of the field would be unchanged. Our scholarship would be undoubtedly improved, but to what end? Glăveanu deserves a great deal of credit for pushing us to reexamine the field, but I am sure he agrees that this is merely the start of a much more involved, lengthy conversation.

REFERENCES

Glăveanu, V.P. (2014a). Distributed creativity: Thinking outside the box of the creative individual. London: Springer. Glăveanu, V.P. (2014b). The psychology of creativity: A critical reading. Creativity: Theories — Research — Applications, 1, 1, 10-32. DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.01.02. Makel, M.C., Plucker, J. & Hegarty, C.B. (2012). Replications in psychology research: How often do they really occur? Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7, 537-542. DOI: 10.1177/1745691612460688. Makel, M.C. & Plucker, J. (2014a). Facts are more important than novelty: Replication in the education sciences. Educational Researcher, 43, 304-316. DOI: 10.3102/0013189X14545513. Makel, M.C. & Plucker, J. (2014b). Creativity is more than novelty: Reconsidering replication as a creativity act. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 8, 27-29. McWilliams, J. & Plucker, J. (2014). Brain cancer, meat glue, and shifting models of out- standing human behavior: Smart contexts for the 21st century. Talent Development and Excellence, 6, 1, 47-55. Plucker, J.A., Beghetto, R.A. & Dow, G.T. (2004). Why isn’t creativity more important to educational psychologists? Potentials, pitfalls, and future directions in creativity research. Educational Psychologist, 39, 2, 83-96.

232 Jonathan A. Plucker / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014

Plucker, J. & Barab, S.A. (2005). The importance of contexts in theories of giftedness: Learning to embrace the messy joys of subjectivity. In R.J. Sternberg & J.A. Davidson (Eds.), Conceptions of giftedness (2nd ed.) (pp. 201-216). New York: Cambridge Uni- versity Press. Simonton, D.K. (2012). Taking the US Patent Office criteria seriously: A quantitative three -criterion creativity definition and its implications. Creativity Research Journal, 24, 2-3, 97-106. Stein, M. (1953). Creativity and culture. Journal of Psychology, 36, 311-322. Torrance, E.P. (1968). A longitudinal examination of the fourth grade slump in creativity. Gifted Child Quarterly, 12, 4, 195-199. Vartanian, O. (2014). Toward a cumulative psychological science of aesthetics, creativity, and the arts. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 8, 1, 15-17. DOI: 10.1037/a0035723. Yi, X., Hu, X., Plucker, J., & McWilliams, J. (2013). Is there a developmental slump in creativity in China? The relationship between organizational climate and creativity development in Chinese adolescents. Journal of Creative Behavior, 47, 22-40.

Corresponding author at: Jonathan A. Plucker, Neag School of Education, University of Con- necticut, 2131 Hillside Road U-3007, Storrs, CT 06269-3007. E-mail: [email protected]

233

Vol. 1, Issue 2, 2014

Theories – Research – Applications Why Big Theories are Fruitless, Fragmentation is Ideal, Defining Creativity is Overrated and Method-Driven Research is Urgent: Some Thoughts on the Flourishing State of Creativity Science

Paul J. Silvia University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA E-mail address: [email protected]

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: This comment considers Glăveanu’s observations about the state of creativity studies. I agree with Glăveanu’s view Big theories of creativity research but disagree that it is bad. The history Healthy pluralism of psychology shows that “ big theories” inevitably fail to ful- Method-driven creativity science fill their promise. Instead, as George Kelly argued long ago, complex problems with many facets are better served by a mix of big and small theories. Likewise, the diversity of creativity research is a sign of healthy pluralism, not lamentable fragmentation. Science doesn’t proceed via central planning, and claims of “ fragmentation” and “ wasted effort” raise dis- Article history: turbing questions about who gets to decide what other scien- Received 28 October 2014 tists should study. Finally, creativity research should be more Received in revised form 18 December 2014 method-driven than it is. Methods are interesting in their own Accepted 19 December 2014 right, and they can be heuristics for generating good ideas as well as tools for solving problems. All told, this era of cre- ISSN: 2354-0036 ativity research will be remembered as a period DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.02.10 of renaissance rather than decline.

I’m happy to have a chance to read and reflect on Glăveanu’s (2014) essay on the state of creativity studies. We Americans are justifiably known for our thick-headed optimism — “ It will all be okay” could be our motto, alongside “ Does that come in a bigger size?” — so it is easy for us to miss signs of impending disasters. Fields do occasionally wither or wander into dead ends. In experimental social psychology, one field I work in, a classic critical piece (Ring, 1967) predicted a doom that did come to pass. Is the science of creativity headed for a similar crisis? My own perspective on this topic is shaped by having too many irons in too many fires. Much of my work is in creativity, but I have separate lines of work in aesthetics, motivation, emotion, psychophysiology, experience-sampling methods and psychopathology. I also have a humanities side that reads and appreciates history and criticism. Traveling in many circles has provided a sort of anthropological perspective on the growing field of creativity.

234 Why Big Theories are Fruitless, Fragmentation is Ideal, … / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014

BIG THEORIES ARE OVERRATED AND PROBABLY COUNTERPRODUCTIVE

If psychology has learned anything since its inception, it should be that big, grand theories fail to deliver on their promises. Like alluring boyfriends, they swear they’ll make it up to us and never let us down again and we buy into it, perhaps out of the same naïve belief that this time we might have really found “ the one,” the perfect mate that can meet all our needs. Until recently, for example, personality psychology was dominated by grand theories (Dumont, 2010), and what did they buy us? Did the Freudian decades open or constrain the study of personality? Doesn’t matter—that slightly perverted suitor got dumped for staid and stolid Hullian theory (Hull, 1943; 1952). And how did that Hullian model of motivation, personality, and culture work out? The fact that almost no psychologist under 35 has heard of Clark Hull, probably the most influential experimental psychologist of his era, says much about the perils of putting our eggs in one basket, no matter how big and grand it looks. Psychology has largely stopped searching for “ Mr. Right” grand theories and become more promiscuous. It has a lot of “ Mr. Right Nows,” mid-range theories and small-scale models that work best for focused problems. And long live licentiousness. In his landmark writings on personal constructs, George Kelly (1955, 1958) argued that scientific theories have both a broad range of convenience — the region of things they can speak to — and a narrow focus of convenience — the small set of things they explain most incisively. Theories that share the same range of convenience — such as the many theories of creativity — don’t necessarily conflict, provided they have different foci of convenience. In a sense, all theories can say a little about a lot (their range) and a lot about a little (their focus). One implication of Kelly’s reasoning is that we will always need more than one theory because theories usually have different foci. Take, for example, any of the broad theories of creativity mentioned by Glăveanu, such as Amabile’s (1996) componential theory or Sawyer’s (2012) sociocultural theory. Sawyer’s theory has a broad range, but it is most detailed and focused when applied to problems like the interactions between domains, audiences and gatekeepers. Amabile’s theory, too, has a broad range, but it is best known for its detailed guidance on motivational aspects of creativity. For other problems, such as the cognitive dynamics of idea generation, these theories give at best fairly general guidance. In contrast, problem-solving models of creativity can be painfully detailed about how people generate ideas (e.g., Finke, Ward & Smith, 1992), but they offer only vague generalities about how groups generate ideas in real-world creative domains or how motivation might affect creativity. The approaches have overlapping ranges but

235 Paul J. Silvia / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 non-overlapping foci, as Kelly would say. We should use a sociocultural theory to understand how creative domains evolve, but use cognitive theories to understand how knowledge constrains idea production. In Kelly’s writings, scientific and personal theories are tools people use to make sense of the world and predict what might happen. For complex problems, no single theory can explain all facets equally well. The choice between small models, mid-range theories and big frameworks is false, just as the choice between owning a hammer or a screwdriver is false.

FRAGMENTATION OR PLURALISM

One person’s fragmentation is another person’s pluralism. The fact that creativity has sparked the inspiration of so many people in so many different fields of scholarship seems like something to celebrate, not lament. We don’t all publish in the same journals, go to the same conferences, understand everything each other writes, or even agree on much, but that’s what things look like when a vigorous interdisciplinary community tackles a big problem. Consider the example of major depressive disorder. Within psychology, this is studied by people with interests in genetics, neuroscience, gender, relationship processes, cognitive psychology, human emotions and many other subfields. But it is also studied by historians, cultural anthropologists, critical theorists, literary scholars and many other thinkers who look at depression through lenses that psychologists might find foreign. You can view this in two ways. One is as horrible fragmentation, as an inefficient use of energy, as a woeful lack of communication and coordination between far-flung tribes. Or you could see it as vital pluralism, as a sign of intellectual dynamism, as the momen- tary state of a long-term intellectual project. My own work on depression, for example, is pretty narrow. I don’t and probably won’t ever dabble in historical, cultural, or critical methods. But I’m glad people are doing that, and I see them as intellectual kinfolk, not as misguided others who are “ doing it wrong.” And the same for creativity. Its division of intellectual labor is a sign of maturity and progress. My own creativity work is far from cultural, critical, sociological and anthropological approaches — I think inside small boxes, where my tiny candles do a better job of banishing the darkness. But I’m glad other people are doing other kinds of work. I read widely in creativity and can appreciate the sacred texts of neighboring tribes. And what, indeed, is the alternative to an intellectual division of labor that some see as fragmentation? One is to encourage everyone to do everything, to convert our myopic specialists into big-picture polymaths. This is unrealistic — we can only do so much. The years needed to learn critical methods cannot also be spent learning neuroscience methods, social theory, computational linguistics and the many other methods brought

236 Why Big Theories are Fruitless, Fragmentation is Ideal, … / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 to bear on creativity. This, of course, is why we divide labor, why geneticists collaborate with psychologists instead of getting PhDs in both fields. Another option is to eliminate some of the occupations and focus everyone’s effort on the most promising path. Like Mao’s Great Leap Forward, which sought to make farmers and blacksmiths of everyone, this too would lead to famine (Dikötter, 2010). In short, I see diversity instead of fragmentation, energy instead of cacophony, net- works instead of tribes. And I will confess that my humanities side, the part that gets cof- fee with colleagues in history, gender studies and social theory, does wonder if there’s more than a whiff of “ intellectual capitalism” in complaints about fragmentation. Is the process of scholarship a factory that must churn out and distribute the commodity of knowledge as efficiently as possible? Must we all use only the methods that have the highest “ yield” of output per unit of time invested? Must the whole enterprise be “ managed” from the top to ensure a standardized product that meets the market’s needs? Should we keep wayward laborers in line when they stray from what the powerful have defined as desirable production practices? A critical theorist might say that the discourse of fragmentation needs to be problematized.

DON’T DEFINE CREATIVITY

If the science of creativity were a gritty knowledge factory, a general definition of creativity would be its banal mission statement: something just specific enough to describe what it does yet just vague enough to avoid hurting someone’s feelings. I’m glad there’s no consensual definition of creativity, and I would rather people stop defining it. If I edited one of the creativity journals, I’d probably ask most authors to delete the standard boiler- plate definitions that one usually sees, but I admit that my views on writing articles (Silvia, 2015) are probably best kept out of the hands of today’s impressionable youth. Do we see creativity as a static thing, as a noun (Billig, 2013)? And if so, do we see it as the same thing for all contexts? Are all creativity scholars studying the same sense of creativity, or even the same thing? Would all intellectual, social, or practical purposes find the same definition fruitful? For example, there’s a sense of creativity implied by micro-level research on what the brain is doing when people try to come up with clever metaphors for common experiences (Benedek et al., 2014). This sense of creativity — coming up with a small-scale idea that people similar to you find clever, funny, or compelling — seems different from the creativity studied in research on the success of movies, how teachers improvise in the classroom, the science of machine learning, and the history of why some arts flourish in some communities. We don’t need a definition that applies to all of these fields. Some people will study different sides or facets of the same creativity;

237 Paul J. Silvia / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 others will study different creativities entirely.

RESEARCH SHOULD BE MORE METHOD-DRIVEN

People talk about “ method-driven research” like this is something bad. Usually this phrase is said dismissively by people who would like us to all be more theory-driven — by their theories, usually. But I think creativity research should be more method driven than it is. It is rational and desirable to try new methods on for size. When you have a hammer, everything does look like a nail, including things you never thought of as being nail-like that might benefit from a good thumping. Methods are systems for testing ideas but also heuristics for generating them. They might crack open a hard problem, put parochial debates in perspective, or open a door we didn’t see before. New methods might also be interesting things worth studying for their own sake, even if the knowledge-factory fore- men think such research projects are myopic and unproductive, something better done after clocking out. For example, I use experience sampling methods (e.g., Nusbaum et al., 2014; Silvia et al., 2014), but I also study them (e.g., Burgin, Silvia, Eddington, & Kwapil, 2013; Silvia, Walsh, Myin-Germeys, & Kwapil, 2013). These intricate methods, for whatever reason, strike me as challenging and interesting in their own right. Similarly, what’s wrong with studying methodological and measurement issues in creativity? Why not? It would be weird if everyone studied them, but it’s good for a field when at least some people study its nuts-and-bolts. Of course, methods aren’t tools that only lab researchers use. The broad category of non-quantitative methods — the rich families of historical, interpretive, narrative, phe- nomenological and hermeneutic methods, for example — grows quickly, too. Innovative methods evolve in these families at least as quickly as new methods evolve in quantitative research. We won’t know if they’re useful until we try them. Consider, for example, a perspective like enactive intersubjectivity (Fuchs & De Jaeger, 2009). This might be fer- tile for creativity research on collaborative creativity. But it might not. Someone should tinker with this method and see if it buys us anything. Likewise, consider “ black box” machine-learning models for studying dynamic social interactions. These might buy us something for understanding collaborative creativity. But they might not.

CONCLUSION

I agree with nearly all of Glăveanu’s observations about the state of creativity studies, but we reach different conclusions: what might seem like flaws strike me as strengths to build on. Creativity research is flourishing, and I’m glad it is the way it is. The sky isn’t slowly falling — we’re growing taller.

238 Why Big Theories are Fruitless, Fragmentation is Ideal, … / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014

REFERENCES

Amabile, T.M. (1996). Creativity in context. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Benedek, M., Beaty, R.E., Jauk, E., Koschutnig, K., Fink, A., Silvia, & Neubauer, A.C. (2014). Creating metaphors: The neural basis of figurative language production. NeuroImage, 90, 99-106. Billig, M. (2013). Learn to write badly: How to succeed in the social sciences. New York: Cambridge University Press. Burgin, C.J., Silvia, P.J., Eddington, K.M., & Kwapil, T.R. (2013). Palm or cell? Compar- ing personal digital assistants and cell phones for experience sampling research. So- cial Science Computer Review, 31, 244-251. Dikötter, F. (2010). Mao’s great famine: The history of China’s most devastating catastro- phe, 1958-1962. New York: Walker & Co. Dumont, F. (2010). A history of personality psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press. Finke, R.A., Ward, T.B., & Smith, S.M. (1992). Creative cognition: Theory, research, and applications. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Fuchs, T. & De Jaeger, H. (2009). Enactive intersubjectivity: Participatory sense-making and mutual incorporation. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 8, 465-486. Glăveanu, V.P. (2014). The psychology of creativity: A critical reading. Creativity: Theories — Research — Applications, 1, 10-32, DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.01.02. Hull, C.L. (1943). Principles of behavior. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Hull, C.L. (1952). A behavior system. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Kelly, G.A. (1955). The psychology of personal constructs, Vol. 1: A theory of personality. New York: Norton. Kelly, G.A. (1958). Man’s construction of his alternatives. In G. Lindzey (Ed.), Assess- ment of human motives (pp. 33-64). New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston. Nusbaum, E.C., Silvia, P.J., Beaty, R.E., Burgin, C.J., Hodges, D.A., & Kwapil, T.R. (2014). Listening between the notes: Aesthetic chills in everyday music listening. Psy- chology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 8, 104-109. Ring, K. (1967). Experimental social psychology: Some sober questions about some friv- olous values. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 3, 113-123. Sawyer, R.K. (2012). Explaining creativity: The science of human innovation (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Silvia, P.J. (2015). Write it up: Practical strategies for writing and publishing journal articles. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

239 Paul J. Silvia / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014

Silvia, P.J., Beaty, R.E., Nusbaum, E.C., Eddington, K.M., Levin-Aspenson, H., & Kwapil, T.R. (2014). Everyday creativity in daily life: An experience-sampling study of “ little c” creativity. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 8, 183-188. Silvia, P.J., Kwapil, T.R., Walsh, M.A. & Myin-Germeys, I. (2014). Planned missing data designs in experience sampling research: Monte Carlo simulations of efficient designs for assessing within-person constructs. Behavior Research Methods, 46, 41 -54.

Corresponding author at: Paul J. Silvia, Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, P. O. Box 26170, Greensboro, NC 27402, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

240

Vol. 1, Issue 2, 2014

Theories – Research – Applications

Boredom, Messianism, and Primordial Broth

Michael H. Chruszczewski University of Warsaw, Poland E-mail address: [email protected]

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: The paper presented is a commentary on Prof. Vlad P. Glăveanu's paper published in the previous volume of the Creativity journal. In reaction to his inspiring and valuable text, while Crisis confirming the vast majority of his detailed observations, Glăveanu I have articulated a different opinion about its main conclusion: the presence of a crisis in the domain of the psycholo- Article history: gy of creativity. In my opinion such a crisis does not exist. Received 29 October 2014 On the contrary: intense, though rather unsystematic, devel- Received in revised form 2 December 2014 opment may be observed within the discipline. This stand- Accepted 15 December 2014 point is explained in detail in my commentary.

ISSN: 2354-0036 DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.02.11

IS IT WORTH WAITING FOR THE MESSIAH?

In 2003, in a digressive footnote to my doctoral thesis (published six years later), I somewhat viciously expressed my personal opinion: “ in comparison with other fields of the humanities and even with social sciences, the philosophy of psychology (i.e., its metames- sage, or fundamental assumptions) is marked by unusually strong conservatism. In the absence of discussions over the principals (due to lack of interest), conservatism mani- fests itself implicitly — in scientific practice (Chruszczewski, 2009, p. 111). In other words, instead of babbling, one should do research. Of course the way to do research is commonly known, i.e., experimentalism, inductive statistics. Theorizing should be — as far as possible — avoided, at least until one gets old; however even then it is safer to content oneself with criticizing younger colleagues (preferably in anonymous reviews). I am all the more grateful to Prof. Glăveanu for his invigorating article (Glăveanu, 2014) because even though discussions on essential issues, including the way of doing science (contrary to the verbatim understanding of what I have written above), have taken place in the history of psychology, they have always been far too scarce. I would also like to mention

241 Boredom, Messianism, and Primordial Broth / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 here, on the one hand, the opinions of Ambrose (1996) and Karwowski (2012) which converge with many of Glăveanu’s theses, and on the other hand, the text of Baer (2011), which is highly critical of metanarrative nostalgia. They both provide a very interesting theoretical context for the following comments on Glăveanu’s article. I will restrain myself from repeating here all the detailed arguments made by the author, with whom by the way, I am often inclined to agree. I will only mention, among other things, the great quantitative increase in research on the psychology of creativity coun- tered, at the same time, by a strong deficit in valuable synthesis and new theories, and the phenomenon of focusing research on and through research techniques, which includes the emphasis on improvement of measurement methods, rather than on problems. This has been true for a long time now, for already Hudson (1967) wrote about the risk of statistical and test reductionism in psychology, and yet “ the world has moved forward” since his times. Nevertheless, some concepts in the psychology of creativity, including those stemming from multivariate analysis, are still quite sophisticated, whilst, for example, in the psychology of personality, the factorial approach has reached its Olympus of reductionism in the form of one general factor of personality (Musek, 2007). At this point, the question comes to mind: is only the psychology of creativity in crisis? I will return to this problem later. Glăveanu’s remark that the study of creativity, as indeed other types of research as well, does not take place in a socio-political vacuum, but on the contrary, is part and parcel of a certain ideology, is in my view rare, precious and original. The individualistic orientation on competing entities who contribute to the production of values of which the final goal is to increase both consumption and socioeconomic hiatus, which he considers dominant in theories and research on creativity (while dealt with critically from a left- wing standpoint), is also worthy of appreciation and wider discussion. The fact that sociology, for example, has had no problem in recognizing the political context of ways of practicing scientific discourse, while psychology has an almost clinical problem with it, is also astonishing. There is also a need, as Glăveanu points out, for critical reflection upon the definitions that determine the directions of research and types of questions posed, while other questions are left unspoken. At the same time he writes — in the spirit of Lyotard (1979/1984), or even Sartre (1943/1972), if not Hegel himself (1807/1977) — that every act of analysis is a kind of violence against reality. How rare an observation among representatives of the empirical sciences! But can modern methodology provide a conclusive study of such systematic, dynamic,

242 Michael H. Chruszczewski / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 contextually entangled and time-varying relations as the phenomenon of creativity, as in my opinion Glăveanu understands it? I am afraid that such methods are (so far?) nonex- istent, or else they are not known to most researchers (including me). An interesting har- binger of methodological progress which might also be employed within the realm of the psychology of creativity is perhaps the apparatus of dynamical social psychology, though unfortunately somewhat complicated (Nowak & Vallacher, 1998). If we do not stand up to the challenge, we may face an all too familiar postmodern im- passe: not wanting to give priority to any point of view at the expense of another and avoiding cognitive violence of the whole at the expense of its parts, we may mistake total- ism for totalitarianism and due to the fear of falling into an unlawful dictatorship of thought we will not be able to say anything categorically about anything, or merely describing ten- tative, transient, kaleidoscopic configurations of phenomena while disregarding any kind of classification. In the case of science which aspires to intersubjectivity this leads, however, to aporia and epistemic failure, unless we are ready to trust the popular, contemporary, feminist philosopher Butler (1990, p. 15) who writes that “ without the presupposition or goal of “ unity” , which is, in either case, always instituted at a conceptual level, provi- sional unities might emerge in the context of concrete actions that have purposes other than the articulation of identity.” However, it is unlikely that psychologists representing a rather essentialist orientation would voluntarily agree to such a thing. Nevertheless, such processes can occur without their conscious consent. It is a peculiar paradox that Glăveanu, aware of restrictions inherent in the cognitive apparatus of contemporary psychology of creativity, deconstructs this apparatus, while complaining about the dispersion of results and the lack of great theoretical syntheses. It is either-or. For a long time we have been departing from scientific theories (and in the domain of culture from world-views) that are general, comprehensive and aspiring, however not always explicitly, to the rank of absolute truth in favour of theories that are local, particular, specific and relative. This can be observed in psychology, including the psychology of creativity, e.g., in the discussion on its generality or specificity (i.e., Baer, 1998). Such divergence, which maximizes the variety of results, contexts and perspectives, could be potentially creative, if there were to be a reconfiguration of components together with their (in a way convergent) synthesis. Should we yearn for the return of great, or at least big metanarratives? Prof. Glăveanu recalls some great names from the past. However, the issue is that earlier in the history of psychology, theories of larger calibre were sometimes shaped by the rhetorical talents of their authors, and their often imposing general knowledge, the courage to express per-

243 Boredom, Messianism, and Primordial Broth / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 sonal beliefs and their extreme insensitivity to criticism, rather than by arguments which proceed from observation and research carried out by them. Freud, Jung and Laing are examples of this. Today the situation is different. And let us also not forget that the veraci- ty of numerous elements of these early theories was negated on the basis of more objec- tive reasons. Of course I am well aware that creative and innovative concepts do not have to be entirely correct or agreeable with all available data. A creator does not have to be the grandmaster of accuracy. Opening a new perspective is oftentimes more important than a carefully written prescription. Unfortunately, it seems to me that in today’s era, dominated by the worship of scrupulous, efficient and — as far as possible — continuous scientific productivity, which should additionally be accepted in the review system adopted by journals, revolutionary ideas are far more difficult to postulate (cf. Charlton, 2009). Thus, there are no great theorists in our field or else they are not heard, or otherwise deemed untrustworthy. Maybe we should return to Butler’s remark and hope that a certain level of deregula- tion of the system (here: the psychology of creativity) and overburdening it with test results will lead back to spontaneous, parallel and bottom-up reorganizations which will be like new bubbles in a broth that has been bubbling for some time. Forasmuch waiting for a new grand theorist may be, I am afraid, like waiting for the messiah.

IS IT REALLY THAT BAD?

Despite its limitations, the psychology of creativity has been booming since Guilford. So is it actually that bad? It is always easier to diagnose a critical state of something, if we first determine what the ambitious criteria of ‘normal’ are. Does such an intention not echo in the text under discussion? Glăveanu’s ideas are, after all, convincing, his claims to reality are usually accurate and the outlined aspirations — extremely ambitious (although they are heuristically and thus quite generally, delineated). If we want to bring his theoretical thinking to the extreme (even if it is a logical extreme) we might say that the day when we reach a good theory of creativity par excellence, will be the day on which we learn what specific conditions are required to create a philosophical treatise, lead a political group to victory or write a drama. In my opinion such a day will never come. Therefore, I would like to oppose the impression that might impose itself after reading Glăveanu’s very interesting article that the psychology of creativity — perhaps in comparison with other fields of psychology — is in some special way deficient, stuck in a particular crisis, and, while creating nothing new, merely administers outdated concepts by sub- stituting conceptual thinking with methodological impetus. In my view, the psychology of creativity is not in a different position from the rest of psychology, and perhaps some of

244 Michael H. Chruszczewski / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 the other socio-humanistic fields as well, although I lack sufficient orientation to make this claim with full conviction. And if we were to focus on the psychology of intelligence or personality, would we not see similar symptoms of crisis? And is it inevitably a crisis? One can criticize methods of questionnaire and test diagnoses for their peculiar artifici- ality. Cannot experimental situations be artificial as well? Tests of divergent production can represent the totality of the creative process only to a very limited extent. But cannot the same be said about IQ tests in relation to the processes of thinking and solving problems? And yet IQ tests are, within their own limits, accurate and reliable (indeed more so than “ creativity tests” ), and their employment in research—due to the objectification of mental assessments — has yielded very good results. Is knowledge of the genetic basis of human behaviour not scattered? Or was there recently a breakthrough in developmental psychology thanks to some new Vygotsky? Or rather, as I inclined to think, do we still have theoretical polyphony and a huge variety of research? Such questions are endless. We can also ask a different question: are these signs of exhaustion, or maybe of unsystematic development? Conclusion: there is not a greater crisis in the psychology of creativity than in other areas of psychology; what is more, I am not sure whether psychology (including the psychology of creativity) is in crisis at all, although — when reading Glăveanu — I believe it is! However, some time after reading his article, I think that this “ crisis” is an inevitable stage of development which follows understandable boredom caused by the exploitation of common research directions, easy acceptance of existing definitional and conceptual systems and finally of the hypertrophy of data analyzed by routine methods. However, if the “ crisis” is to be “ overcome” it will happen “ bottom-up” rather than “ top-down” . The real hope lies neither in a theorist-messiah nor genius-creator, but in the primordial broth — bubbling with the promise of startling reconfigurations — which we all co-create.

REFERENCES

Ambrose, D. (1996). Unifying theories of creativity: metaphorical thought and the unifica- tion process. New Ideas in Psychology, 14, 3, 257‒267. Baer, J. (1998). The case for domain specificity of creativity. Creativity Research Journal, 11, 2, 173–177. Baer, J. (2011). Why grand theories of creativity distort, distract, and disappoint. The In- ternational Journal of Creativity & Problem Solving, 21, 1, 73‒100. Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge, Chapman & Hall.

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Charlton, B.G. (2009). Why are modern scientists so dull? How science selects for perse- verance and sociability at the expense of intelligence and creativity. Medical Hypothe- ses, 72, 3, 237–243. Chruszczewski, M.H. (2009). Profile uzdolnien. Intelektualne i osobowosciowe skladniki uzdolnien plastycznych i muzycznych. [The profiles of giftedness. Intellectual and personality components of artistic and musical talents] Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwer- sytetu Warszawskiego. Glăveanu, V.P. (2014). The psychology of creativity: a critical reading. Creativity. Theo- ries ‒ Research ‒ Applications, 1, 1, 10‒32, DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.01.02. Hegel, G.W.F. (1977). Phenomenology of spirit. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hudson, L. (1967). Contrary imaginations. A psychological study of the English school- boy. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Karwowski, M. (2012). Middle and grand theorizing in the psychology of creativity. Crea- tivity and Leisure: An Intercultural and Cross-disciplinary Journal, 1, 109-115. Lyotard, J.F. (1984). The postmodern condition: a report on knowledge. Minneapolis: Uni- versity of Minnesota Press. Musek, J. (2007). A general factor of personality: evidence for the big one in the five- factor model. Journal of Research in Personality, 41, 6, 1213–1233. Nowak, A. & Vallacher, R.R. (1998). Dynamical social psychology. New York: The Guil- ford Press. Sartre, J.P. (1972). Being and nothingness. London: Methuen & Co.

Corresponding author at: Michael H. Chruszczewski, Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw, 5/7 Stawki St., 00-183 Warsaw, Poland. E-mail: [email protected]

246

Vol. 1, Issue 2, 2014

Theories – Research – Applications

Transdisciplinary Reflections on Glăveanu’s “Crisis” of the Psychology of Creativity Alfonso Montuori California Institute of Integral Studies, USA E-mail address: [email protected]

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: Glăveanu’s essay is a call for a radical re-examination not only of the psychology of creativity, but of the entire academ- Transdisciplinarity ic enterprise. It challenges our disciplinary fragmentation and Creative inquiry reminds us of the importance of stepping back and under- Epistemological assumptions standing the larger enterprise of inquiry, the need to relate Article history: theory and practice, to communicate among disciplines and Received 16 November 2014 research programs, and to integrate. Transdisciplinarity is an Received in revised form 24 December 2014 emerging approach that helps in understanding the challeng- Accepted 27 December 2014 es ahead, and provides directions for future work.

ISSN: 2354-0036 DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.02.12

Vlad Glăveanu’s essay, in which he argues that creativity research, and specifically the psychology of creativity, is a discipline in crisis, is a welcome breath of fresh air and a serious and provocative challenge for creativity researchers (Glăveanu, 2014b). The implications of his argument are far-reaching. They resonate strongly with the need for a broader questioning of the epistemological foundations of academia today (Alhadeff- Jones, 2010; Bocchi & Ceruti, 2004; Delors, 1996; Gidley, 2007; Giroux, 2010; McGregor & Volckmann, 2011; Morin, Ciurana, & Motta, 2003; Oliver & Waldron Gershman, 1989). Glăveanu’s article resonates strongly with my own research agenda, which has focused quite explicitly on the construction of knowledge, and specifically the construction of what we call creativity and creativity research (Eisler & Montuori, 2007; Montuori, 2005a; 2011e; 2011f; Montuori & Purser, 1995; 1996; 1999). Because of this strong resonance, I have taken the liberty of including a personal dimension to this reflection. My introduction to the world creativity research was through the work of Frank Barron, who went on to become my mentor, colleague and dear friend. Frank saw himself as very much part of the larger community of the psychology of creativity. But he also admitted to me he was always viewed as a bit of an “ odd fellow” by some of his peers, something he didn’t see as entirely problematic, and perhaps even appropriate, given the subject

247 Transdisciplinary Reflections on Glăveanu’s “ Crisis” of the Psychology of Creativity / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014

(Barron, 1968, 1993). Barron was a founding member of IPAR where legendary studies of creativity employed a holistic approach, and was known for his psychometric research. But as he sometimes told me, with a twinkle in his eye, the larger community was per- plexed and in some cases quite disapproving of his frequent references to the poet Wil- liam Butler Yeats and to other non-psychologists. This was because Barron was not discussing Yeats just as a creator, as a subject of research, but also as a colleague, a fellow researcher in the psychology of creativity, engaged in explorations of the creative person and process. “ Why does Barron cite poets instead of empirical research,” his colleagues would wonder, sometimes in print. Equally disturbing to the community, it seems, were the liberal references to Bergson, Berdyaev, C.S. Peirce and other philosophers and artists who had explored creativity. It seems to me, that a community that celebrates “ openness to experience” should not close itself off to these important sources and to important larger questions. As Glăveanu points out, the Creativity Research Journal’s recent shift to requiring exclusively quantitative work, all of the time, is a sign of the times and not exactly heartening for those of us who like to draw on wider sources and now see most integrative work on creativity in the hands of journalists like Jonathan Lehrer and Steven Johnson, who are free to roam the literature without restrictions (Johnson, 2010; Lehrer, 2012). Glăveanu (2014, p. 13) writes that: “ Scholars seem to have abandoned the ‘big’ questions in favour of increasingly specialised inquiries leading them to develop subfields of a subfield (adding small bricks to an existing edifice) rather than contributing to our overall understanding of creativity” (consider the edifice itself). This is an important critique that echoes the work of the French philosopher Edgar Morin (Morin, 2008a; 2008b; 1999) on transdisciplinarity, and a topic of considerable interest to me. Academia is also struggling with the mood of a postmodern suspicion of metanarratives, of any attempt to address the “ big picture” , coupled with a focus on the measura- ble, the empirical, and, of course, the brain! This has led, as Glăveanu points out, to a proliferation of more and more specialized research projects that mostly do not communicate with other projects, let alone most other people. In other words, academia is essentially a world of increasingly non-communicating hyper-specialized silos that are not integrated in larger frameworks (Taylor, 2009). This is a problem not limited to the psychology of creativity, as Morin has gone to great lengths to point out (Morin, 1990; 2001; 2008a; 2008b; 1999; Morin & Kern, 1999; Morin & Le Moigne, 1999). In 1993, for example, management theorist Jeffrey Pfeffer launched a strong and controversial critique of the excessive pluralism in his discipline, arguing that it should be ignored in favor of an

248 Alfonso Montuori / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 agreement to set up a larger research agenda addressing fundamental questions (Pfeffer, 1993). I agree with Glavenau that it is precisely these big questions concerning what he calls the edifice of creativity that need to be addressed. This includes the kinds of epistemological questions about the construction of knowledge and the relationship between theory and practice that have recently fallen out of favor. In our age of transition, creativity has become the subject of much attention. Futurists argue that the key competence for cop- ing with our complex and troubled times is creativity. Creativity is now being hailed as a key competence for leaders, business is enamored with creativity and innovation and increasingly, sociologists are pointing to the importance of “ creating” our lives: surely it is also time for creativity researchers to become more, not less, engaged with the larger discourse and explore the implications and applications of their work, as well as engage critically with the larger issue of how creativity is understood and applied (Bauman, 2005; 2007; Castells, 2000; Harman, 1998; Morin & Kern, 1999; Sardar, 2010; Slater, 2008). Compare the narrowness Glăveanu speaks of, with Frank Barron (1995, p. 6), situating his own research agenda: “ The psychology of the individual, the person, is the study of a world in itself. Yet, that world intersects and intermingles with the world of other individuals, so that very soon we must consider community, habitat, the intersection of the personal with cultural history, expectations of the future, and perhaps above all else in the human case, values and philosophy of life.” And again: “ The problem of psychic creation is a special case of the problem of novelty in all of nature. By what process do new forms come into being? The specification of the conditions under which novelty appears in human psychical functioning is the task to which the psychology of creativity addresses itself. In doing so, it links itself to the general scientific enterprise of describing the evolution of forms in the natural world” (Barron, 1969, p. 9). The intellectual adventure Barron presents is “ homeless” in a strictly disciplinary sense (Montuori, 2005a). It travels between disciplines, it moves across domains of knowledge, rather than remaining in a disciplinary box. Frank had a broad general culture that drew on philosophy, the subject of his undergraduate degree, literature and the arts, as well as the sciences. This broad background, something that is not encouraged in education today, coupled with his deep understanding of his own specialization, made his far- reaching explorations so compelling and ahead of their time. Today there is perhaps even

249 Transdisciplinary Reflections on Glăveanu’s “ Crisis” of the Psychology of Creativity / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 less of a place for this intellectual nomadism in the psychology of creativity than there was in Frank’s day. Glăveanu (2014, p. 12) further states that: “ Here lies perhaps one problem within the discipline: plenty of divergence and relatively little (constructive) accumulation. We seem to be asking every kind of question about creativity without listening enough to what others are doing or what they have found.” Compounding this problem is the eagerness in academia to use only the most recent references, to stay on top of the latest research, and often skip over the extensive research that has already been conducted, relegating it to being a matter of merely historical interest. This increasing disciplinary hyper-specialization and fragmentation is surely one of the main reasons for Beghetto’s concern that the psychology of creativity is not being used in education (Plucker, Beghetto, & Dow, 2004), at a time when there is a real crisis of creativity in education (Lovitts, 2005; 2008; Montuori, 2011b; 2012; Robinson, 2001). The practitioner is faced with a profusion of interesting research papers and data points, but no real sense of how to apply this in the larger educational context, no framework within which to integrate, and no real sense of where all this relevant knowledge can even be found, because relevant research may be in the psychology of creativity, but also in educational research, sociology, and any number of other mostly non-communicating disciplines. Consequently new fields emerge, like “ design,” which explicitly address creativity, but often with minimal references to the research in the psychology of creativity. Moreo- ver, before the emergence of transdisciplinarity there was no integrative discipline of disciplines, no framework for putting this all together let alone applying it. As another transdisciplinary thinker, Gregory Bateson (2002, p. 19) wrote: “ At present, there is no existing science whose special interest is the combining of pieces of information. But I shall argue that the evolutionary process must depend upon such double increments of information. Every evolutionary step is an addition of information to an already existing system. Because this is so, the combinations, har- monies, and discords between successive pieces and layers of information will present many problems of survival and determine many directions of change.” Over 10 years ago I designed a Master’s in Leadership and a Transdisciplinary Ph.D. program at my institution based on the fundamental assumption that education can be a creative process (Montuori, 2010a; 2010b). Not surprisingly, this effort at the implementation and operationalization of creativity also led me to reflect on the larger questions of what creativity is in an academic context, how it can be fostered in the classroom, and

250 Alfonso Montuori / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 so on. The very basic definitions of creativity were not sufficient: yes, a dissertation is supposed to be an original and useful contribution to one’s field. In that very basic sense, the traditional definition applies. But really it only applies to the extent that it tells us the dissertation is, or should be — by definition! — a creative product. How does that translate into the everyday activities of the graduate student? Into the writing of a literature review (Montuori, 2005b; 2013)? It is a sad irony that even though the Ph.D. dissertation is supposed to be an original contribution to one’s field, hardly any doctoral programs (or graduate programs) discuss creativity or the creative process. Plagiarism, on the other hand, gets a mention. I have written elsewhere about the challenges of developing graduate programs that foster creativity, and I have proposed what I call “ Creative Inquiry” as an approach to introducing creativity as central dimension of education (Montuori, 2006; 2008b; 2011a; 2011c; 2011d; Montuori & Donnelly, 2013). Space does not permit me to explore this topic in detail, but I do want to focus on another aspect of my work in education, because it ties in very closely with Glăveanu’s assessment of what is needed to revive creativity research. Glăveanu calls for us to delve more deeply into existing research and our paradigmatic assumptions as researchers. Expressing his concern for disciplinary fragmentation Glăveanu (2014, p. 13) states that: “ (T)his concern goes beyond simply referencing relevant literature, it refers to the need to make explicit one’s paradigmatic assumptions.” Transdisciplinarity differentiates between disciplinary work, which is intra-paradigmatic, and where the assumptions of the discipline itself are hardly ever questioned, and transdisciplinary work, which involves an awareness and questioning of multiple sets of paradigmatic assumptions, including one’s own, and requires the integration of the inquirer into the inquiry (Montuori, 2005a; 2008a; 2010a). Intra-disciplinary work is akin to what Kuhn called normal science (Kuhn, 1996). In other words, getting on with the problems of the established research agenda, within the mostly unquestioned established assumptions. There’s nothing wrong with this, of course. As the physicist and transdisciplinary philosopher Nicolescu (2002, p. 122) states: “ The transdisciplinary method does not replace the methodology of each discipline, which remains as it is. Instead the transdisciplinary method enriches each of these disciplines, by bringing them new and indispensable insights, which cannot be produced by disciplinary methods.” Disciplinary research needs to be supplemented by a reflection on our individual, as well as our disciplinary and philosophical paradigmatic assumptions, and an integration of per-

251 Transdisciplinary Reflections on Glăveanu’s “ Crisis” of the Psychology of Creativity / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 tinent knowledge from whatever sources are available for purposes of application. Much of the popular creativity literature proposes following a step-by-step “ how to” recipe, while ignoring, or at best cherry-picking from the vast research literature. A more informed application arguably requires a transdisciplinary approach. Applying creativity research to education requires an ability to integrate, draw from multiple relevant sources, and implementation by a specific person or persons in a specific context. I would argue that transdisciplinary scholar-practitioners may be akin to “ para-professionals,” inevitably not experts in all relevant specialized research fields, but more broadly oriented towards ongoing integration and application, an ongoing dialogue between theory and practice, between theorists and practitioners, and constantly seeking to enrich one with the other in the crucibles of experience and reflection (Ogilvy, 1977). This requires an orientation towards more practical, applied knowledge as well as a higher-level awareness of the construction of knowledge, found in the philosophy of social science.1 In summary, Glăveanu’s rich and provocative essay is a call for a radical re-examination not only of the psychology of creativity, but of the entire academic enterprise. It challenges our disciplinary fragmentation, our increasing entrenchment within the quantitative and (lately) the neuro-scientific, and is a call for self-reflection, historical and contextual awareness, as well as a recognition of philosophical questions and frames, and above all a generative dialogue about these issues. This re-visioning of creativity will likely require the development of alternative spaces, journals, conferences, dialogues and explorations. Glăveanu’s own efforts at developing a cultural psychology of creativity and articulating the various paradigms of creativity, as well as the article discussed here, provide important steps in this direction (Glăveanu, 2010a; 2010b; 2011; 2014a; 2014b; Glăveanu & Lubart, 2014). I can only hope that his work will stimulate further reflection as well as

1 As I have argued elsewhere (Montuori, 2005a) that transdisciplinarity can be summarized as requiring four dimen- sions. A focus that is inquiry-driven rather than discipline driven. This does not involve a rejection of disciplinary knowledge, but the development of pertinent knowledge for the purposes of action in the world. In other words, it is the demands of our situation and application that guide our inquiry. A stress on the construction of knowledge through an appreciation of the meta-paradigmatic dimension — in other words, the underlying assumptions that form the paradigm through which disciplines and perspectives construct knowledge, and consequently the way various understandings of our situation are constructed. Disciplinary knowledge generally does not question its paradigmatic assumptions. An understanding of the organization of knowledge, isomorphic at the cognitive and the institutional level, the history of reduction and disjunction (what Morin calls “ simple thought” ) and the importance of contextualization and connection (or “ complex thought” ). In a “ live” situation of integration and application, where we draw on an ecology of ideas, we must go beyond analysis to bring in synthesis and take into account the networked phenomenon of interconnected- ness. The integration of the knower in the process of inquiry, which means that rather than attempting to eliminate the knower, the effort becomes one of acknowledging and making transparent the knower’s assumptions and the process through which s/he constructs knowledge.

252 Alfonso Montuori / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 action in the development of a more open, distributed, integrative creativity research that is both theoretically richer as well as more aware of, and concerned with, practical applications. REFERENCES

Alhadeff-Jones, M. (2010). Challenging the limits of critique in education through Morin's paradigm of complexity. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 29, 5, 477-490. Barron, F. (1968). Creativity and personal freedom. New York: Van Nostrand. Barron, F. (1993). Controllable oddness as a resource in creativity. Psychological Inquiry, 4, 3, 182-184. Bateson, G. (2002). Mind and nature: A necessary unity. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Bauman, Z. (2005). Liquid life. London: Polity Press. Bauman, Z. (2007). Liquid times. Living in an age of uncertainty. London: Polity Press. Bocchi, G. & Ceruti, M. (2004). Educazione e globalizzazione [Education and globaliza- tion]. Milano: Raffaello Cortina. Castells, M. (2000). The rise of the network society (New Edition). (The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture Volume 1). New York: Wiley-Blackwell. Delors, J. (1996). Learning: The treasure within. Report to UNESCO of the International Commission of Education for the Twenty-first Century. Paris: UNESCO. Eisler, R. & Montuori, A. (2007). Creativity, society, and the hidden subtext of gender: A new contextualized approach. World Futures. The Journal General Evolution, 63, 7, 479-499. Gidley, J.M. (2007). Educational imperatives of the evolution of consciousness: the integral visions of Rudolf Steiner and Ken Wilber. International Journal of Children's Spirit- uality, 12, 2, 117-135. Giroux, H.A. (2010). Education and the crisis of public values. New York: Peter Lang. Glăveanu, V.P. (2010a). Paradigms in the study of creativity: Introducing the perspective of cultural psychology. New ideas in psychology, 28, 79-93. Glăveanu, V.P. (2010b). Principles for a cultural psychology of creativity. Culture & Psy- chology, 16, 2, 147-163. Glăveanu, V.P. (2011). How are we creative together? Comparing sociocognitive and sociocultural answers. Theory & Psychology, 21, 4, 473-492. Glăveanu, V.P. (2014a). Distributed creativity: Thinking outside the box of the creative individual. New York: Springer. Glăveanu, V.P. (2014b). The psychology of creativity: A critical reading. Creativity. Theories — Research — Applications, 1, p. 10-32, DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.01.02.

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Glăveanu, V.P. & Lubart, T. (2014). Decentring the creative self: How others make creativity possible in creative professional fields. Creativity and Innovation Management, 23, 1, 29-43. Harman, W.W. (1998). Global mind change: The promise of the last years of the 20th century. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler. Johnson, S. (2010). Where good ideas come from. The natural history of innovation. New York: Riverhead. Kuhn, T. (1996). The structure of scientific revolutions (3d ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lehrer, J. (2012). Imagine. How creativity works. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Lovitts, B.E. (2005). Being a good course-taker is not enough: a theoretical perspective on the transition to independent research. Studies in Higher Education, 30 (April 2), 137-154. Lovitts, B.E. (2008). The transition to independent research: Who makes it, who doesn't, and why. Journal of Higher Education, 79, 3, 296-325. McGregor, S. & Volckmann, R. (2011). Transversity: Transdisciplinary approaches in higher education. Tucson, AZ: Integral Publishers. Montuori, A. (2005a). Gregory Bateson and the challenge of transdisciplinarity. Cybernet- ics and Human Knowing, 12, 1-2, 147-158, 112. Montuori, A. (2005b). Literature review as creative inquiry. Reframing scholarship as a creative process. Journal of Transformative Education, 3(4), 374-393. Montuori, A. (2006). The quest for a new education: From oppositional identities to creative inquiry. ReVision, 28, 3, 4-20. Montuori, A. (2008a). Foreword. In B. Nicolescu (Ed.), Transdisciplinarity. Theory and practice (pp. IX-XVII). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Montuori, A. (2008b). The joy of inquiry. Journal of Transformative Education, 6, 1, 8-27. Montuori, A. (2010a). Research and the research degree: Transdisciplinarity and Creative Inquiry. In M. Maldonato & R. Pietrobon (Eds.), Research on scientific research. A transdisciplinary study (pp. 110-135). Brighton & Portland: Sussex Academic Press. Montuori, A. (2010b). Transformative leadership for the 21st century. Reflections on the design of a graduate leadership curriculum. ReVision, 30, 3-4, 4-14. Montuori, A. (2011a). Creative inquiry. In N.M. Seel (Ed.), The encyclopedia of the science of learning. Heidelberg: Springer. Montuori, A. (2011b). Creativity in transformative education: An exploration in doctoral education. In M. Alhadeff-Jones & A. Kokkos (Eds.), Transformative Learning in time of crisis: Individual and collective challenges: Proceedings of the 9th International Confer- ence on Transformative Learning (pp. 204-210). Athens, Greece.

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Montuori, A. (2011c). Narcissistic learning. In N.M. Seel (Ed.), The encyclopedia of the science of learning. Heidelberg: Springer. Montuori, A. (2011d). Reproductive learning. In N.M. Seel (Ed.), The encyclopedia of the science of learning. Heidelberg: Springer. Montuori, A. (2011e). Social psychology. In M. Runco & S. Pritzker (Eds.), The encyclopedia of creativity. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Montuori, A. (2011f). Systems approach. In M. Runco & S. Pritzker (Eds.), The encyclopedia of creativity (Vol. 2, pp. 414-421). San Diego: Academic Press. Montuori, A. (2012). Creative Inquiry: Confronting the challenges of scholarship in the 21st century. Futures. The Journal of Policy, Planning and Future Studies, 44, 1, 64-70. Montuori, A. (2013). The complexity of transdisciplinary literature reviews. Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education, 10, 1/2, 45-55. Montuori, A. & Donnelly, G. (2013). Creative Inquiry and scholarship: Applications and implications in a doctoral degree. World Futures, 69, 1, 1-19. Montuori, A. & Purser, R. (1995). Deconstructing the lone genius myth: Towards a contextual view of creativity. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 35, 3, 69-112. Montuori, A. & Purser, R. (1996). Context and creativity: Beyond social determinism and the isolated genius. A Rejoinder to Hale. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 36, 2. Montuori, A. & Purser, R. (1999). Introduction. In A. Montuori & R. Purser (Eds.), Social creativity (Vol. 1). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Morin, E. (1990). Science avec conscience [Science with conscience]. Paris: Seuil. Morin, E. (2001). Seven complex lessons in education for the future. Paris: UNESCO. Morin, E. (2008a). On complexity. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Morin, E. (2008b). The reform of thought, transdisciplinarity, and the reform of the university. In B. Nicolescu (Ed.), Transdisciplinarity. Theory and practice (pp. 23-32). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Morin, E. (Ed.). (1999). Relier les conaissances: Le défi du XXIe siècle [Reconnecting knowledge: The challenge of the 21st century]. Paris: Seuil. Morin, E., Ciurana, E.R., & Motta, R. (2003). Éduquer pour l'ère planétaire [Educating for the planetary era]. Paris: Balland. Morin, E. & Kern, B. (1999). Homeland Earth: A manifesto for the new millennium. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Morin, E. & Le Moigne, J.L. (1999). L'intelligence de la complexité [The intelligence of complexity.]. Paris: L'Harmattan. Nicolescu, B. (2002). Manifesto of transdisciplinarity. Albany: SUNY Press.

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Ogilvy, J. (1977). Many dimensional man. New York: Harper. Oliver, D.W. & Waldron Gershman, K. (1989). Education, Modernity, and fractured mean- ing. Albany: SUNY Press. Pfeffer, J. (1993). Barriers to the advance of organizational science: Paradigm development as a dependent variable. Academy of Management Review, 18, 4, 599-620. Plucker, J.A., Beghetto, R.A. & Dow, G.T. (2004). Why isn't creativity more important to educational psychologists? Potentials, pitfalls, and future directions in creativity research. Educational Psychologist, 39, 2, 83-96. Robinson, K. (2001). Out of our minds: Learning to be creative. London: Capstone. Sardar, Z. (2010). Welcome to postnormal times. Futures, 42, 5, 435-444. Slater, P. (2008). The chrysalis effect. Brighton & Portland: Sussex Academic. Taylor, M. (2009, April 26). End of the university as we know it, New York Times. Re- trieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27taylor.html?_r=3&smid=fb- share&pagewanted=print

Corresponding author at: Alfonso Montuori, California Institute of Integral Studies 1453 Mission St. San Francisco, CA 94103 USA E-mail: [email protected]

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Theories – Research – Applications

Can we Really Have an Integrative Theory of Creativity? The Case of Creative Cognition Roni Reiter-Palmon Department of Psychology, University of Nebraska Omaha, USA E-mail: [email protected]

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: In this commentary to Glăveanu (2014), I address one specific issue raised – that of the need for a grand or unifying Creative cognition theory of creativity. I discuss whether our understanding Problem identification of creative cognition has progressed sufficiently to allow for Idea evaluation the development of, or inclusion in, a grand theory of creativ- Article history: ity. Specifically, I argue that there are many gaps in our un- Received 28 October 2014 derstanding of two major processes, problem identification Received in revised form 19 December 2014 and construction and idea evaluation and choice. I further Accepted 20 December 2014 provide some suggestions for how we can move the field forward on these individual aspects, and still strive for inte- ISSN: 2354-0036 gration. DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.02.13

In his paper, Glăveanu (2014) provides an overview of the field and research in creativity, and suggests that we must move toward a more integrative approach. I do not disagree. Indeed, at times, it does feel that we are doing fairly narrow work, and that we forget to consider how all the various findings tie together, and how they fit with a larger theoretical framework. As research in the area of creativity has expanded, and exploded, in recent years, keeping track of these disparate findings, and making sense of sometimes conflicting findings has become more difficult. That said, I believe that there are still some areas in which we have a significant lack of knowledge, and proceeding to a unifying approach, a grand theory, without the basic knowledge can be problematic. One example of an area where we have a much more limited understanding is that of the cognitive processes associated with creative thinking. While many theories of cognition have been proposed (Finke, Ward, & Smith; 1992; Mer- rifield, Guilford, Christensen, & Frick; 1962; Mumford, Mobley, Uhlman, Reiter-Palmon, & Doares, 1991; Osborn, 1953; Sternberg, 1988; Wallace, 1926), testing of all the specific processes proposed has lagged behind. Reiter-Palmon and Illies (2004) suggested that there are some common processes across the different models such as problem identification and construction, idea generation and idea evaluation and selection. When looking

257 Can we Really Have an Integrative Theory of Creativity? ... / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 at these three processes, it is clear that idea generation has been extensively evaluated. In fact, in some cases, idea generation has become the de-facto measure and definition of creativity (Reiter-Palmon, Herman, & Yammarino, 2008). While research on idea generation has been plentiful, that is less so the case with the other two processes. As a result, what we know about these two important processes is limited. In the case of problem identification and construction, we know that creative individuals tend to engage in the process and be better at it, than less creative individuals (Getzels & Csikszentmihalyi, 1975; Okuda, Runco, & Berger, 1991; Reiter-Palmon, Mum- ford, & Threlfall, 1998), that experts spend more time in problem construction than novic- es (Kay, 1991; Rostan, 1994; Voss, Wolfe, Lawrence, & Engle, 1991) and that when individuals are asked to actively engage in the process, they are more likely to come up with creative ideas (Redmond, Mumford, & Teach, 1993; Reiter-Palmon, Mumford, O’Connor Boes, & Runco, 1997). With regard to idea evaluation and choice, we know that individuals can accurately evaluate ideas for originality (Runco & Basadur, 1993; Runco & Chand, 1995). That said, other work suggests that more creative individuals are more accurate in their evaluations (Basadur, Runco, & Vega, 2000). While idea evaluation was found to be related to divergent thought more so than convergent thought (Runco & Smith, 1992), factors that influence idea generation seem to influence idea evaluation in a different way (Herman & Reiter-Palmon, 2011). Finally, the standards that influence idea evaluation are different based on domain (Sullivan & Ford, 2005) However, there is still much we do not know about these two processes. For example, multiple methods have been used to elicit active engagement problem identification and construction (Reiter-Palmon & Robinson, 2009) though it is not clear whether and how these methods may differ in terms of their effect on the process of problem identification and construction and resulting creativity. In addition, it has been suggested that problem identification and construction is related to experience (Gick & Holyoak, 1983), and research indeed suggests that experts spend more time constructing an ill-defined problem, however, the exact nature of the role of experience in how the problem is constructed has not been examined. For idea evaluation, the relationship between idea evaluation and idea choice has not been fully examined. For both problem identification and construction and idea evaluation, the differences between the processes at the individual and team level have not been examined. It is not clear if these processes operate in the same way at the team level, or in what way are individual cognitions aggregated or combined to create a team problem construction or team evaluation (Reiter-Palmon, Wigert, & de Vreede, 2011). While understanding how these processes operate and the basic factors that influence them is important, following the call by Glăveanu, I would like to suggest some additional

258 Roni Reiter-Palmon / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 important issues that require a broader and integrative perspective to study. That said, given the limited basic research, I do not believe this particular area is yet ripe for a grand integrative theory. Instead, I would suggest that in addition to studying and understanding each process in isolation, we are indeed ready for the next step – integrating these processes with other factors that influence creativity. One area in which we need to focus on integration is within the study of the processes themselves. Investigations into how the specific processes interact with one another and affect one another are limited. For example, how does structuring the results from problem identification and construction influence the information that is being searched? How do the goals developed in the problem construction phase influence the standards used to evaluate solutions? How do the number and creativity of the ideas generated influence idea evaluation and selection? Further, while it has been suggested that these processes may not necessarily occur in a sequen- tial manner (Mumford et al., 1991), and that individuals may cycle back and forth between the processes, how and when this is done is not well understood. Other important integrative research questions have to do with the potential influences of other factors such as personality, motivation, social processes, leadership and culture (at both the organization and national level) on the application of these processes. For example, research suggests that problem construction effectiveness is related to personality (Reiter-Palmon, Mumford, & Threlfall, 1998) and that promotion and prevention foci, a motivational characteristic, have different and opposite relationships with idea generation and idea evaluation (Herman & Reiter-Palmon, 2011). The role of additional personality and motivational characteristics such as goal orientation, emotional stability, creative self-efficacy, task interest and intrinsic motivation should be further investigated. Further, it is important to delineate the effects of these variables on the different processes independently and interactively. Similarly, it is not clear how culture (be it depart- mental, organizational or national) or social processes (such as communication, cohesion or conflict) will influence creative cognitive processes. For example, do cultures that emphasize risk taking promote idea evaluation and selection of more risky, and potentially more original, ideas? Do open discussions within teams facilitate sharing different perspective about the problem, and the development of broader and more comprehensive problem identification and construction? Glăveanu (2014) suggests that it is important that we move from disjointed individual findings to a more coherent state of affairs in the study of creativity. I agree that the field is ready, to some extent, to move beyond single findings into studying more complex relationships. I have reviewed the state of research on early and late cognitive processes, those that precede idea generation and those that come after. While I agree that we must

259 Can we Really Have an Integrative Theory of Creativity? ... / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 strive for a more unifying approach to the study of creativity, the research has not progressed in a uniform fashion across the different areas of creativity. Creative cognition is one aspect where progress has been slow, at least in some areas, and therefore, we may not be able to develop a global approach.

REFERENCES

Basadur, M.S., Runco, M.A., & Vega, L.A. (2000). Understanding how creative thinking skills, attitudes, and behaviors work together: A causal process model. Journal of Cre- ative Behavior, 34, 77-100. Finke, R.A., Ward, T.B., & Smith, S.M. (1992). Creative cognition: Theory, research, and applications. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Ford, C. & Sullivan, D.M. (2005). A time for everything: How the timing of novel contributions influences project team outcomes. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 25, 279-292. Getzels, J.W. & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1975). From problem solving to problem finding. In I.A. Taylor & J.W. Getzels (Eds.), Perspectives in creativity (pp. 90-116). Chicago, IL: Aldine. Gick, M.L. & Holyoak, K.J. (1983). Schema induction and analogical transfer. Cognitive Psychology, 15, 1-38. Glăveanu, V.P. (2014). The psychology of creativity: A critical reading. Creativity. Theories — Research — Applications, 1, p. 10-32, DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.01.02. Herman, A. & Reiter-Palmon, R. (2011). The effect of regulatory focus on idea generation and idea evaluation. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 5, 13-21. Kay, S. (1991). The figural problem solving and problem finding of professional and semi- professional artists and nonartists. Creativity Research Journal, 13, 185-195. Merrifield, P.R., Guilford, J.P., Christensen, P.R., & Frick, J.W. (1962). The role of intellectual factors in problem solving. Psychological Monographs, 76, 1-21. Mumford, M.D., Mobley, M.I., Uhlman, C.E., Reiter-Palmon, R., & Doares, L.M. (1991). Process analytic models of creative capacities. Creativity Research Journal, 4, 91-122. Okuda, S.M., Runco, M.A., & Berger, D.E. (1991). Creativity and the finding and solving of real-world problems. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 9, 45-53. Osborn, A.F. (1953). Applied imagination: Principles and procedures for creative problem -solving. New York, NY: Charles Scribner & Sons. Redmond, M.R., Mumford, M.D., & Teach, R. (1993). Putting creativity to work: Effects of leader behavior on subordinate creativity. Organizational Behavior and Human Deci- sion Processes, 55, 120-151. Reiter-Palmon, R. & Illies, J.J. (2004). Leadership and creativity: Understanding leadership from a creative problem-solving perspective. Leadership Quarterly, 15, 55-77.

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Reiter-Palmon, R., Herman, A.E., & Yammarino, F. (2008). Creativity and cognitive processes: A multi-level linkage between individual and team cognition. In Mumford, M.D., Hunter, S.T., & Bedell-Avers, K.E. (Eds.), Multi — level Issues in Creativity and Inno- vation, (vol. 7, pp. 203-267). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Reiter-Palmon, R., Mumford, M.D., O’Connor Boes, J., & Runco, M.A. (1997). Problem construction and creativity: The role of ability, cue consistency, and active processing. Creativity Research Journal, 10, 9-23. Reiter-Palmon, R., Mumford, M.D., & Threlfall, K.V. (1998). Solving everyday problems creatively: The role of problem construction and personality type. Creativity Research Journal, 11, 187-197. Reiter-Palmon, R. & Robinson, E.J. (2009). Problem identification and construction: What do we know, what is the future? The Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 3, 43-47. Reiter-Palmon, R., Wigert, B., & de Vreede, T. (2011). Team creativity and innovation: The effect of team composition, social processes and cognition. Handbook of Organi- zational Creativity (pp. 295-326). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Rostan, S.M. (1994). Problem finding, problem solving, and cognitive controls: An empirical investigation of critically acclaimed productivity. Creativity Research Journal, 7, 97-110. Runco, M.A. & Basadur, M.S. (1993). Assessing ideational and evaluative skills and creative styles and attitudes. Creativity and Innovation Management, 2, 166-173. Runco, M.A. & Chand, I. (1995). Cognition and creativity. Educational Psychology Re- view, 7, 243-268. Runco, M.A. & Smith, W.R. (1992). Interpersonal and intrapersonal evaluations of creative ideas. Personality and Individual Differences, 13, 295-302. Sternberg, R.J. (1988). A three-facet model of creativity. In R.J. Sternberg (Ed.), The nature of creativity: Contemporary psychological perspectives (pp. 125-147). New York: Cambridge University Press. Voss, J.F., Wolfe, C.R., Lawrence, J.A. & Engle, R.A. (1991). From representation to decision: An analysis of problem solving in international relations. In R.J. Sternberg & P.S. Frensch (Eds.), Complex problem solving: Principles and mechanisms (pp. 119- 158). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Wallas, G. (1926). The Art of Thought. New York: Harcourt Brace. Ward, T.B., Smith, S.M., & Finke, R.A. (1999). Creative cognition. In R.J. Sternberg (Ed.), Handbook of creativity (pp.189-212). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Corresponding author at: Roni Reiter-Palmon, Department of Psychology, University of Nebra- ska at Omaha, 6001 Dodge Street, Omaha, NE 38182-0274, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

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Vol. 1 Issue 2, 2014

Theories – Research – Applications A Commentary on a Manuscript Entitled The Psychology of Creativity: A Critical Reading Eric Shiu University of Birmingham, United Kingdom E-mail address: [email protected]

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: Dr Eric Shiu agreed with Professor Vlad Petre Glăveanu that although the amount of research on creativity is increasing, Innovation a corresponding theoretical breakthrough is not apparent. Cross-disciplinary cooperation One main culprit is the overwhelming dominance of the quantitative approach in creativity research. Another is the lack of consensus in the definition of creativity. Shiu draws from his research experience in both innovation and creativity research, and feels that the path of academic development for the innovation field is healthier. For instance there is more consensus in the definition of innovation, the categorization of innovation and the process of innovation than in creativity. Echoing Glăveanu’s recommendation to study creativity in its time and space context, Shiu added that the space context should extend to the cultural setting. So far research efforts on creativity are predominantly American and to a lesser extent Western European. As a result, alternative conceptions of creativity nurtured and practised in some other parts of the world may be relatively neglected. Lastly, Shiu is fasci- Article history: nated by the great potential for creativity researchers from Received 14 November 2014 different disciplines to conduct cross-disciplinary cooperation Received in revised form 18 December 2014 and research, but he also warned that creativity research, Accepted 19 December 2014 which is “ owned” by many academic disciplines, may suffer ISSN: 2354-0036 from further fragmentation. Effective cross-disciplinary dia- DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.02.14 logue is needed to combat this danger.

I have the honour to be invited by Dr Maciej Karwowski, co-editor of the journal of Crea- tivity: Theories — Research — Applications to write a commentary on the above manuscript authored by Professor Vlad Petre Glăveanu. I am a fellow creativity researcher, but have to firstly declare that my academic background is related, but clearly different from that of the author, who has developed his expertise in the psychology field in general, and the psychology of creativity in particular. My broad academic background is in management and marketing, within which I have specialized in innovation before discovering creativity research a few years ago. Professor Glăveanu’s manuscript covers many im-

262 A Commentary on a Manuscript Entitled The Psychology of Creativity: A Critical Reading / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 portant issues in the study of the psychology of creativity. I don’t feel comfortable in re- viewing and commenting on every important issue raised by Professor Glăveanu in his manuscript. I will therefore only review and comment on some, in areas where I have knowledge of the issues concerned. I totally agree with Professor Glăveanu, that in spite of an ever increasing amount of research on creativity, a corresponding theoretical breakthrough in creativity research is not apparent. The background literature in creativity studies still often refers to famous creativity researchers and the not-so-recent theories they proposed. One of the major cul- prits, as noted in Professor Glăveanu’s manuscript, is that the quantitative approach is overwhelmingly dominant in creativity studies. Indeed, the Creativity Research Journal only considers papers using the quantitative rather than the qualitative approach. Howev- er, to explore a new theory and then to test it, the researcher should not refrain from using a variety of research techniques. More often than not, theoretical development requires the use of both quantitative and qualitative approaches, capitalising on the ad- vantages of each and offsetting the disadvantages (Shiu, et al. 2009a) in order to build a valid theory. Another major culprit contributing to a less than satisfactory state of theoretical development in the creativity field is the lack of consensus in the definition of creativity. Dawson & Andriopoulou (2014) reflect that the number of definitions of creativity is probably the same as the number of academic authors in the creativity field. One old Chi- nese saying is worth recalling here: before doing anything about something, one needs to give that something a proper definition. Different definitions of creativity lead to different conceptualisations of the nature and scope of creativity as seen by different creativity researchers – this is certainly not a healthy condition in the study of creativity. As a researcher in both innovation and creativity, I feel I may have a certain level of knowledge to allow me to compare the academic developments between innovation and creativity. Innovation and creativity are very closely linked to each other. Innovation is the de facto application of creativity (Shiu, 2009b). In spite of their close linkage, the two have their own paths of academic development. Comparing the two I feel that the path of academic development for the innovation field is healthier than that for the field of creativity. It is true that there is still no universal definition of innovation, that is followed by all innovation researchers; there are still debates over how to categorize innovation; there are different numbers of stages in the innovation process suggested by different scholars. However the differences in opinion regarding the definition and other issues in the innovation field may not be as big as those in the creativity field. For example, I would be very surprised to find a definition of innovation that is significantly different from that

263 Eric Shiu / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 proposed by the OECD (1991), which is “ an iterative process initiated by the perception of a new market and/or new service opportunity for a technology-based invention which leads to development, production, and marketing striving for the commercial success of the invention.” The beauty of this definition, as noted by Garcia & Calantone (2002), is that it captures the essence of innovation from an overall perspective and addresses two key characteristics of innovation. First, it notes that innovation is not all about the technological development of an invention, but should also consist of the introduction of that invention to end-users through adoption and diffusion. Second, its emphasis on iteration implies that innovation includes both the first introduction of a new innovation and the re-introduction of the same innovation in an improved form. I also doubt that any innovation researcher would challenge the existence and meanings of the two key cate- gories of innovation, i.e. radical innovation and incremental innovation, even though there have been only sporadic studies on the categorization of innovation, such as really new products as noted in Schmidt & Calantone (1998) and re-innovation as proposed by Cheng & Shiu (2008). There are, among others, the five-step innovation process as developed by Crawford & di Benedetto (2011) and the thirteen-activity innovation process as proposed by Cooper & Kleinschmidt (1986). All these versions of the innovation process comprise a different numbers of steps and use different words to name essentially the same step. Yet in spite of these different versions of the steps of the innovation process, none would argue against the notion that the innovation process must include idea generation/concept development, product development and product launch. Along the path of academic development for innovation, there are different voices on issues such as definition, categorization and process, but the nature of these differences is not too fundamental and is not too chaotic. Probably the same cannot be said of the creativity field, which, in my opinion, may be more chaotic in its academic development. This more chaotic nature is detrimental to the continual theoretical development of the creativity field. The over-emphasis on the quantitative approach in the creativity field as opposed to a more balanced use of qualitative and quantitative approaches in the innovation field also contributes to the difference in the state of health of the academic development of the two fields. Professor Glăveanu rightly argued that creativity should be studied in its time and space context, as one cannot detach creativity from its context and should not (wrongly) assume that there is no interaction between them, which is in tandem with what Placone (1989) drew attention to in relation to the contextual dynamics of change in the creativity process. As Professor Glăveanu (2014) states: there are very few who would disagree

264 A Commentary on a Manuscript Entitled The Psychology of Creativity: A Critical Reading / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 with this premise (that creativity can indeed be educated), which implies that the context a person is put into can have an effect on his/her creativity. Indeed not only is context influential with regard to an individual’s creativity, but it also provides criteria for judging to what extent a person is creative. Putting today’s person, with a certain level of creativity, back 200 years, would almost certainly result in his/her creativity level being judged very differently. By the same token, putting a person from one spatial context into another, would most likely mean that his/her creativity level would be judged differently by his/ her contemporaries in their respective spaces. We need to judge a person’s creativity in the context the person is put into. A few years ago, I watched a TV programme introducing a child prodigy in India who was widely praised by people in his village as an extremely creative and talented child. He applied what he knew, together with common sense and logic, to derive new ways of diagnosing and curing diseases. In spite of his creativity and talent, some of his thoughts were still immature and might well have been incorrect. If we were to judge this child on the basis of what he thought and did, he almost certainly would not have received the same level of praise in say the USA where the “ context” for nourishing creativity development is better (by the standards of the USA or more broadly by the standards of the West) than that back in an Indian village, which was the context for this child’s abilities. In keeping with this line of thinking, both previous and current research efforts on creativity are predominantly American and to a lesser extent those of Western European. These research efforts tend to promote, albeit mostly inadvertently, the orthodoxy of the American-Western European notion of creativity processes, and in so doing, alternative conceptions nurtured and practised in some other parts of the world, may be relatively neglected. As Shiu (2009b) has argued, the resulting problem is two-fold. First, given the potentially vast differences between cultures, models of creativity developed and successfully followed in western culture may not be applicable to a similar extent in another culture. Second, by not giving the creativity behaviours expressed in other cultures the attention they deserve, we as creativity researchers, as well as organizations trying to tap the talents of creativity, are losing the opportunity to make potentially very rewarding use of these alternative conceptions of creativity, not to mention the possibly even more rewarding route that could integrate knowledge in the field of creativity across different cultures in a novel way, thus promoting “ out-of-the-cultural- box” creative ideas that could make even greater impacts and contributions. In the field of innovation, there have been real life cases of cross-cultural learning, such as the example of a leading ice cream company learning from a locally popular taste in Buenos Aires and applying it successfully in new product development, a famous

265 Eric Shiu / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 sports shoe company learning a new design initiated by a world class footballer from Bra- zil, and an American jeans company learning a new style of jeans that originated in Japan (Crawford & di Benedetto, 2011). These are cases of cross-cultural studies in innovation that originate from creative thinking. We need more than case studies. We need to learn the “ ways” that have to be there in the first place, that are common in a particular culture and nurture creative thinking. These “ ways” can be very different from the models of creativity we, as creativity researchers in the West, have learned. These “ ways” cannot be called theories, because they might not have been scientifically proven, but they have been in the culture for hundreds or even thousands of years. Although there have been a number of studies on comparing creativity between cultures (Cheng, 1999; Niu & Stern- berg 2002; Morris & Leung 2010), they are far and few between and are mostly on making comparisons between West and East. However, we have many other cultures, apart from the Chinese culture or East Asian culture, whose inhabitants may have their unique “ ways” of creative thinking, but unfortunately these have not been studied properly. Fur- thermore most, if not all previous creativity studies making comparisons between cultures have been approached in a broad sense (e.g. intuition versus logic by Wonder & Blake, 1992) thus not allowing us to study the unique creativity process (the “ way” of creative thinking) of a particular culture in adequate detail. We need to open our eyes and minds to try to learn these ways in detail. In order to learn these in an “ under-the-skin” manner, we have to be flexible in our approach, as the quantitative approach alone is not enough. To relate what I have discussed and suggested previously to what Professor Glăveanu said, we need to take into account the spatial context when conducting creativity research, and this space can be geographical or cultural. My final point is probably the only point in which I may not totally agree with Professor Glăveanu. I need to stress that what I have discussed and suggested in all the previous paragraphs results from trying to see the creativity field as a whole, and not just from the perspective of the field of the psychology of creativity. Psychology, in my understanding, briefly speaking, is fundamentally about the study of the human mind, and therefore it may not be particularly “ off track” for psychology researchers to just focus on the human mind and study the creativity within it and care very little about the corresponding context. Creativity may be the subject of research and teaching in many disciplines, such as psychology, education, sociology, management, engineering and even perhaps philosophy. The fact that creativity draws interest and input from different disciplines is fascinat- ing, because there is great potential for creativity researchers from different disciplines to conduct cross-disciplinary cooperation and research. However, the same fact may also

266 A Commentary on a Manuscript Entitled The Psychology of Creativity: A Critical Reading / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 lead to creativity research efforts that are piecemeal and fed by knowledge from only one discipline, especially if there is no cross-disciplinary dialogue, for example, as in studying the brain mechanisms of creativity without considering the context, or studying the context for creativity without adequate attention being paid to the human brain. It is therefore of paramount importance to have cross-disciplinary dialogue, cooperation and research on creativity, by drawing upon the experience of researchers who specialize in the psychology of creativity, the sociology of creativity, the management of creativity, the education of creativity and the philosophy of creativity, among others.

REFERENCES

Cheng, S.K. (1999). East-West difference in views on creativity: is Howard Gardner correct? Yes, and no. Journal of Creative Behavior, 33, 2, 112-125. Cheng, C. & Shiu, E. (2008). Re-innovation: the construct, measurement, and validation. Technovation, 28, 10, 658-666. Cooper, R.G. & Kleinschmidt, E.J. (1986). An investigation into the new product process: steps, deficiencies, and impact. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 3, 2, 71-85. Crawford, C.M. & di Benedetto, A. (2011). New Products Management. 10th edition, Bos- ton: McGraw-Hill. Dawson, P. & Andriopoulous, C. (2014). Managing Change, Creativity and Innovation. Sage. Garcia, R. & Calantone, R. (2002). A critical look at technological innovation typology and innovativeness terminology. A literature review. Journal of Product Innovation Manage- ment, 19, 110-132. Glăveanu, V.P. (2014). The psychology of creativity: a critical reading, Creativity: Theories — Research — Applications, 1, 1, 10-32, DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.01.02. Morris, M.W. & Leung, K. (2010). Creativity east and west: perspectives and parallels. Management and Organization Review, 6, 3, 313-327. Niu, W., & Sternberg, R. (2002). Comtemporary studies on the concept of creativity: the East and the West. Journal of Creative Behavior, 36, 4, 269-288. OECD (1991). The nature of innovation and the evolution of the productive system, technology and productivity – the challenge for economic policy. Paris: OECD, pp.303-314. Placone, R. (1989). Debunking the creativity myths. Bank Systems and Technology, 26, 11, 60-62. Schmidt, J.B. & Calantone, R.J. (1998). Are really new product development projects harder to shut down? Journal of Product Innovation Management, 15, 2, 111-123.

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Shiu, E., Hair, J., Bush, R. & Ortinau, D. (2009a). Marketing Research. New York: McGraw-Hill Higher Education. Shiu, E. (2009b). Importance of cross-cultural creativity research. In: B. Von Stamm, & A. Trifilova, (Eds.), The Future of Innovation. Surrey — Burlington: Gower. Wonder, J. & Blake, J. (1992). Creativity East and West: intuition vs. Logic. Journal of Creative Behavior, 26, 3, 172-185.

Corresponding author at: Eric Shiu Birmingham Business School, University House, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston Birmingham, B15 2TT, United Kingdom. E-mail: [email protected]

268

Vol. 1, Issue 2, 2014

Theories – Research – Applications Theory and Context / Theory in Context: Towards an Expanded View of the Creativity Field*

Vlad Petre Glăveanu Aalborg University, Denmark E-mail address: [email protected]

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: It is debatable whether the psychology of creativity is a field in crisis or not. There are clear signs of increased fragmenta- Creativity theory tion and a scarcity of integrative efforts, but is this necessari- Context ly bad? Do we need more comprehensive theories of creativ- Systemic thinking ity and a return to old epistemological questions? This de- Transdisciplinarity pends on how one understands theory. Against a view Institutional context of theoretical work as aiming towards generality, universality, uniformity, completeness, and singularity, I advocate for a dynamic perspective in which theory is plural, multifaceted, and contextual. Far from ‘waiting for the Messiah’, theoretical work in the psychology of creativity can be integrative without having the ambition to explain or, even more, predict, creative expression across all people, at all times, and in all domains. To avoid such ambition, the psychology of creativity requires a theory of context that doesn’t arbitrarily separate person and environment or simply postulate the existence of ‘levels’ of context without questioning the relations between them. In order to understand these levels and their inter-relations we need however to consider insights from a variety of disciplines outside psychology, in a truly transdisciplinary manner. Consideration needs to be given as well to connected scholarship focusing on imagination, innova- Article history: tion, and improvisation. Last but not least, an expanded the- Received 24 December 2014 ory of context cannot ignore the institutional context of doing Received in revised form 27 December 2014 Accepted 28 December 2014 research on creativity. Creativity scholars are facing considerable constraints when it comes to advancing theory be- ISSN: 2354-0036 yond disciplinary limits, but this makes such efforts all the DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.02.15 more worthwhile.

It is a great privilege to have such a large number of colleagues offer comments on my ‘critical reading’ of the field published in the previous issue of this journal (Glăveanu, 2014a). Their thoughtful remarks and suggestions have certainly enriched my thinking and made me reflect further on my own ideas as well as their (intended or unintended)

* Reply to Comments Part 1

269 Theory and Context / Theory in Context: … / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 consequences. I found myself in agreement with most of the views expressed and found also particularly useful those views that differ radically from my own. More debate is precisely what I advocated for in the lead article and this fruitful exchange of ideas is a great illustration of such an exercise; therefore, I am very happy to see the call of the target article answered and, once more, would like to thank the editors for making this exchange possible. Considering the large number of comments received, I will focus in this short reply on only half of them, mainly those that explicitly referred to the role of theory in the psychology of creativity. This is an essential topic for me and, although I am not able to discuss it at length here, I take this opportunity to add some, hopefully useful, clarifications. The starting point for my reply is the deliberately controversial claim that the psychology of creativity is a field in crisis. For me the signs of this crisis are represented by a) increased fragmentation into more and more specialised fields, b) a lack of sustained dialogue between them and a scarcity of integrative efforts, and c) losing sight of key theoretical questions related to epistemology, methodology, and disciplinary practices. While these observations themselves were not essentially contradicted by any of the commentators, the conclusion that they signal a crisis or that this crisis has serious negative consequences was received differently. While some agreed with my assessment enthusiasti- cally (Montuori, 2014), others ‘stopped short’ of claiming there is a crisis (Cropley, 2014) or thought that, according to the criteria mentioned, many areas of psychology if not the whole discipline can be said to be experiencing a crisis (Chruszczewski, 2014; Csikszent- mihalyi & Lebuda, 2014). Interestingly, for others there is a crisis but precisely for the opposite reasons: too many general models and not enough ‘fragmentation’ (Baer, 2014). But the most common alternative view was that, in fact, the crisis might not be a problem but an opportunity, a natural state of affairs in the development of a relatively young field (Beghetto, 2014; Cropley, 2014; Csikszentmihalyi & Lebuda, 2014). At the other extreme, the crisis itself became the very sign of progress and something that should be celebrat- ed rather than lamented (Silvia, 2014). It is not the acceptance or rejection of the idea of crisis that concerns me. In fact, as I anticipated, “ several of what I consider limitations might be taken as signs of progress by others” (Glăveanu, 2014a, p. 27). What interests me here are the different inter- pretations behind considering the current state of affairs harmful or productive. And, when focusing on this issue, a rather salient dichotomy seems to emerge between the ‘One Theory’ and the ‘messiness’ the empirical world or, in the inspired words of Chruszczewski (2014), between waiting for the Messiah and having progress gradually arise out of a bubbling, ‘primordial broth’.

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CONTEXTUALISING THEORY

As a cultural psychologist I have always been concerned with the construction of theory and this concern clearly transpires through my critique of mainstream research within the psychology of creativity. The fact that I am a great admirer of integrative theoretical pro- posals is obvious from the lead article and most of my other work in the area of creativity. It is not my aim, however, to impose my own preference on others but reflect on its strengths and limitations. Therefore, in the commentaries received, I paid particular attention to criticism since it gave me the chance to better understand, define and refine my own position. First, let me re-state some of my claims: “ Scholars seem to have abandoned the ‘big’ questions in favour of increasingly specialised inquiries leading them to develop subfields of a subfield (adding small bricks to an existing edifice) rather than contributing to our overall understanding of creativity (consider the edifice itself)” (Glăveanu, 2014a, p. 12). “ (…) the trouble is that researchers (…) are often not aware of their meta-theoretical choices and their important consequences. In this sense, besides the questions actually formulated in various studies, most of the assumptions underpinning the research remain unfortunately unquestioned” (Glăveanu, 2014a, p. 14) “ (…) we need to acknowledge the importance of ‘grand theories’ for organising and guiding our research (…) findings and middle-level models cannot float around, unsup- ported, they need to be ‘located’ somewhere within a conception of what creativity is in relation to what being a person is, or what it means to live within a society and culture. (…) it is a matter of knowing these theories and making the effort to understand and work with or against them” (Glăveanu, 2014a, p. 22-23). It is to be noted that, despite my own preference for high-level theorising, the statements above do not invite colleagues to elaborate more and more grandiose theories of creativity. What they call for is awareness of the bigger picture. In other words, a critical reflection on theoretical and epistemological issues and being sensitive to the broader theoretical basis we build on and contribute to with our empirical work. I was therefore surprised to find, in some of the commentaries, a certain depiction of what focusing on theory is or can be that doesn’t correspond to what I am advocating for. More than this, some of these comments suggest an image of theory characterised by universalism, generality, uniformity, singularity, completeness, and exclusivity. Ultimately, a view of theory that is absolute and a-contextual. My own, essentially pragmatist approach to theory, is very far from, if not the exact opposite of this; as such, I take this chance to add a few clarifica-

271 Theory and Context / Theory in Context: … / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 tions regarding the kinds of theoretical work I had in mind when writing the lead article. 1. Theory should not be universal but contextual. The suspicion that meta-theoretical narratives want to explain everything and end up explaining nothing is well warranted. However, this is not the kind of theory I envision for the field of creativity and the sociocultural frameworks I have tried to build in the past testify to this. Cultural psychology itself, which is my own theoretical orientation, emerged as a reaction to universalistic claims within general psychology (focused primarily on physiological processes) and, later, cross -cultural psychology (with its standardised view of culture; for details see Shweder, 1990; Cole, 1996; Valsiner, 2007). In this sense, my own position is closer to that of Baer than his comment might reflect (see Baer, 2014). I too share the same belief that any theory of creativity, independent of its level of theorising, must start from context. Domains are one of the key ways in which context is integrated into our thinking about creativity, although not the only one. A clear example that a theory can be ‘general’ (in terms of level) and yet contextual (in scope) is precisely the Amusement Park Model (Baer & Kaufman, 2005)! The apparent disagreement originates in the fact that Baer and I use the term ‘fragmentation’ in different ways: he points to domain-specificity while I refer to the fact that subfields don’t communicate well with each other. 2. Theory is not singular but plural. Related to the above is the (mis)conception that the best theory is all-encompassing and, therefore, singular. Having different, even opposing theories, for different facets of creativity is bad according to this logic. Such a view however is not only unrealistic but harmful and I full-heartedly join Silvia (2014) in celebrating pluralism, in both theory and research, over singularity. I am not sure where the idea that having people interested in creativity “ in so many different fields of scholarship” is lamented (Silvia, 2014, p.235), but in any case I would like to dispel this critique. Theoreti- cal pluralism is undoubtedly “ a sign of intellectual dynamism” (p. 235). Now, Silvia and I do seem to disagree, however, on how useful it is for these efforts to develop and continue to exist largely separately, with only surface-level dialogue between different communities. 3. Theorising takes place at many levels. Chruszczewski (2014) metaphorically referred to waiting for the Messiah in creativity studies whenever we hope for the ‘big’ theory to emerge. For him, and not only, a special place needs to be reserved for “ spontaneous, parallel and bottom-up reorganizations” (Chruszczewski, 2014, p. 243), in other words, for middle-range theorising (Karwowski, 2014). I completely agree with this! When I argued for going back to the ‘big’ questions I did not mean they require ‘big’ theories to answer them. In line with Montuori (2014), my plea is to question the epistemologi-

272 Vlad Petre Glăveanu / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 cal foundation and practical applications of theory — ‘big’, ‘middle’ or ‘small’. Silvia’s example that “ we should use a sociocultural theory to understand how creative domains evolve, but use cognitive theories to understand how knowledge constrains idea production” (Silvia, 2014, p. 235) fails, from this perspective, to properly reflect on differences in epistemology… 4. Theory doesn’t need to be predictive. Chruszczewski (2014, p. 243) notes that, “ the day when we reach a good theory of creativity par excellence, will be the day on which we learn what specific conditions are required to create a philosophical treatise, lead a political group to victory or write a drama. In my opinion such a day will never come” . I would add to this that we shouldn’t also look forward to such a day. A ‘good’ theory par excellence is not, in my view, one that explains creativity away, one that postulates and predicts all outcomes at all times. Theory can describe and organise (frameworks) as well as explain and even locally predict (models) and so its value should not be judged in terms of prediction alone. 5. Theory is not optional. Studies that aim to develop theory in the psychology of creativity are relatively rare, especially as regards high-level theorising. And this is perhaps a natural state of affairs as Simonton (2014) writes — what would we do if everyone started creating new theories and new vocabularies that go with them? We are, I would say, safe from that. It is much more common for research to contribute to a certain line of theory, test a model on a new population, add a factor to an existing list, etc. There is no a-theoretical research simply because, from the very choice of our method or sample to how we interpret findings, we necessarily contribute to a certain line of scholarship, to a certain paradigmatic view of creativity. My argument has been that we need, first and foremost, to be aware of this. For this reason it is all the more surprising to read Silvia’s (2014) call for more ‘method-driven research’. When I mentioned this in the lead article, I referred to the way in which well-established methods can be used uncritically, simply because they are just ‘there’, available and legitimate. Silvia (2014), on the other hand, argues for trying new methods and, through this, potentially extending or complexifying our understanding of creativity. This might very well be an interesting exercise. But trying ‘new methods on for size’ without taking into account their theoretical basis can only be, I argue, less fruitful than expected. My reading of his suggestions highlights, in fact, precisely this: new methods are exciting precisely because they introduce us to new theoretical or conceptual landscapes. There is no purely method-driven research simply because one cannot separate theory from method; neither of them is optional. In summary, the (re)turn to theory I advocate for is not one towards a singular, general,

273 Theory and Context / Theory in Context: … / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 universal and final theoretical construction. It is not a call for uniformity or for a situation in which a small number of gatekeepers would control academic output based on the tenets of one grand theory (Cropley, 2014; Silvia, 2014). In the lead article I even postulated the fact that some of the most interesting work (including theoretically) comes from the ‘periphery’ rather than the ‘centre’. What I didn’t make explicit there, and I take this opportunity to clarify, is that I understand theory-building as a dynamic, iterative process (see for example Valsiner’s, 2014, methodological cycle).Theory is not only the ‘endpoint’ on the ‘arduous path of cumulative science’ (Benedek & Jauk , 2014) and very often we are not even close to reaching an integrative framework (see the case of creative cognition; Reiter-Palmon, 2014). Theories are not in fact ‘points’, final and static entities, but the mark of ‘transitions’; they are not meant to make reality uniform and flatten its asperi- ties, on the contrary, they help us observe it through ever-changing lenses. This is why the key for me doesn’t reside exclusively in constructing theory (bucket building for Beghetto, 2014) but relating theories and conceptions to each other, putting them in dialogue (see also Kaufman, 2014). I personally do not subscribe to the view of doing science put forward by Benedek and Jauk (2014, p. 213-219), despite it probably being the most common in psychology and beyond. For them, the study of a highly complex phenomenon like creativity necessarily starts with simplification, reduction to simple, tractable problems. This leads to the accumulation of dependable knowledge, replicable effects, and integrating existing evidence into available models; progressing, in time, from simple to increasingly complex models. The two authors argue for recognising the value of this process and the fact that it cannot be side-stepped by immediately jumping to new, grand theories. I do not disagree with this last remark. But the mainly inductive process outlined above ignores the role of theoretical assumptions underlying even the most simple (if not precisely the most simple!) segmentations that allow empirical research. As I have argued above, research doesn’t end with theory: it starts from it and is guided by it throughout. The analytical approach Benedek and Jauk mention belongs to a certain, largely positivist, legacy of doing research which is one option among many. Historically, holistic thinking dominated psychology (see Diriwächter & Valsiner, 2008) and I advocate for starting from wholes, as complex as they might be, and proceeding analytically to study them in a non-reductive manner (not reducing wholes to their parts; for example reducing creativity to the creative person, the creative person to cognitive processes, and cognitive processes to divergent thinking). Of course, deciding what the whole is, in the case of creativity, and what the parts are, is itself a crucial theoretical question (for a discussion of this issue, see

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Glăveanu, 2015b). And this theoretical question brings us back to the central notion of context and its implications for theory and research.

TOWARDS AN EXPANDING THEORY OF CONTEXT

The psychology of creativity needs a theory of context, something that has concerned me for a number of years. This concern stems from the holistic approach adopted by cultural psychology in dealing with the study of phenomena in context. Moving away from ‘flat’, uni-dimensional models that privilege the intra-psychological alone (e.g., cognitive opera- tions, personality traits, etc.) we should strive towards 3-D models that incorporate social- ity, materiality, and temporality into our thinking about creativity (Glăveanu, 2014c,d). The problem is that these aspects, particularly the social and material, are assigned by many to context rather than the phenomenon of interest itself and context is usually given a secondary role. Context surrounds instead of being that which ‘makes things grow’ (Cole, 1996). Context is external rather than an integral part of what we are studying. This theoretical perspective makes it legitimate to separate phenomenon from context, even while admitting that context ‘shapes’ the phenomenon. Take the example of person and social environment in the psychology of creativity. Very few researchers would claim the latter is not important but, since it is part of the context, it can be set aside in order to zoom in on the person and his/her bio-psychological makeup. This is not possible within the paradigm of cultural psychology which considers mind and context as co-constitutive and inter -dependent (Shweder, 1990). I have repeatedly claimed above that there is no, nor should there ever be, one grand theory of creativity. The integrative theoretical efforts I argued for are not meant to take us to this, but rather to conceptual and methodological exchanges and to frameworks that are able to articulate multiple levels or (compare and contrast) multiple domains. In other words, lead us to systemic theories. Systemic models are not absent in the psychology of creativity (see Csikszentmihalyi & Lebuda, 2014) but truly systemic thinking is rare. Commonly, systems are represented as additive structures that start from the biological (the brain), move to the psychological (intelligence, personality, motivation, etc.), and add to them several social layers (inter-personal, group and intergroup), up to the most far- reaching levels of society and culture. This is considered a sufficient theoretical move to bring in ‘the big picture’ and continue doing research at one level while only postulating its relation to the others (my accusation towards the neuropsychology of creativity). But what is the nature of these relations? Simply arguing that each ‘layer’ of the system is qualitatively different doesn’t answer the big question of how one can relate or integrate findings.

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This is further complicated by the fact that the different ‘levels’ or ‘layers’ of a systemic model are studied from different epistemological positions and integration is never achieved by simply putting things together, akin to a shopping list. Different disciplines might very well hold different pieces of the creativity ‘puzzle’ and, as such, context becomes much broader than what psychology envisions. In moving towards systemic thinking we need to take into account findings and assumptions from a variety of fields (see also the proposal of creatology; Magyari-Beck, 1999). Does this mean we have, from now on, to know and do everything if we are to succeed in becoming “ big-picture polymaths” (Silvia, 2014, p. 235)? Certainly not. My critique of fragmentation is not one of the academic division of labour (although I am indeed critical of sharp disciplinary bounda- ries). This is not a call for psychologists to become, in turn, sociologists, anthropologists, linguists, neurobiologists, and so on. The alternative mentioned by Silvia, that of eliminat- ing “ some of the occupations and focus everyone’s effort on the most promising path” (Silvia, 2014, p. 236), what he humorously compares to Mao’s Great Leap For- ward, can only be equally disastrous. What Silvia doesn’t take into account however as a potential answer is transdisciplinarity. Montuori (2014, also Montuori, 2008, 2013) has made important contributions in this regard, particularly in relation to creativity, creative inquiry, and complexity theory. His reference to the thinking of Bateson, Morin and Barron is highly relevant for any efforts aimed at expanding the context of psychological approaches to creativity. Intra- disciplinary research rarely questions its own assumptions because it is not faced with any form of radical ‘otherness’, for as diverse as any one discipline might be (and the psychology of creativity is a complex field, informed by cognitive, personality, social, and developmental scholarship, among others). Inter-disciplinary collaborations represent a step forward but they often leave things at the level of acknowledging another perspective and, in many cases, do not really challenge the established consensus (for example, today’s dialogue between cognitive and neuroscience approaches to creativity). In contrast, transdisciplinary work “ involves an awareness and questioning of multiple sets of paradigmatic assumptions, including one’s own, and requires the integration of the inquirer into the inquiry” (Montuori, 2014, p. 250). Transdisciplinarity doesn’t ask us to know everything about everything and it also doesn’t result in uniformity; it fundamentally involves meta-paradigmatic exchanges and the contextualisation of (disciplinary) research efforts. Moreover, it fundamentally relates knowledge construction to action in the world, something that resonates deeply with pragmatist accounts of science (James, 1907) to which I thoroughly subscribe. This appeal to look beyond psychology in order to under-

276 Vlad Petre Glăveanu / CREATIVITY 1(2) 2014 stand creativity in a broader context resonates with other commentators, notably Kauf- man (2015; also Reiter-Palmon, Beghetto & Kaufman, 2014), who argues for the need to become ‘multilingual’. Different commentaries to the lead article also bring in various theoretical and disciplinary perspectives, from engineering (Cropley, 2014) to marketing and management (Shiu, 2014). An expanded theory of context in the psychology of creativity not only builds on systemic and transdisciplinary thinking but necessarily has to engage with related notions such as imagination and innovation. Beghetto (2014) offers an insightful sketch of an integrative imagination, creativity, and innovation (ICI) model, drawing on the notion of mediation. His focus rightfully is not on these concepts themselves but the “ reciprocal, bi- directional, mediated, and moderated relationships” (Beghetto, 2014, p. 209) between them. His framework is integrative while at the same time being flexible, not prescriptive, proof of the dynamic nature of theory building I mentioned before. His proposed alterna- tion between zooming in and out as well as the coordination between ‘bucket building’ and ‘bucket filling’ are useful for redefining the relation between general and particular / local in creativity theory. What I would add to the list is the concept of improvisation, thus suggesting a tetradic rather than triadic framework (much as triangular depictions are pre- ferred in models of mediation). This tetrad is not accidental. It actually resonates, without a perfect one-to-one matching, with several other typologies based on discipline (education and creativity, business and innovation, the arts/sciences and imagination, everyday life and improvisation), on creativity ‘units’ (person/imagination, process/ improvisation, product/creativity, press/innovation), on creativity level (mini-c and imagination, little c and improvisation, Pro C and creativity, Big C and innovation), and stages of creative work (from imagination to creative ideas, then an improvisational process of making and finally implementing the outcomes as innovations). Of course none of the above captures everything imagination, creativity, improvisation and innovation can be or have been studied as. This is why cross-fertilisation between these different literatures is vital for each. Each one of them can highlight certain facets of the creative process and, most of all, can help us connect them. For example, imagination brings the symbolic to the fore and the processes of distancing that make as-if thinking possible; improvisation highlights the temporal in the unfolding exchanges between person and environment; finally, innovation focuses on the social sphere and the institutionalisation of creativity. Each of these facets appears thus, in turn, as central figure or context, depending on the questions we ask.

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THEORY IN (INSTITUTIONAL) CONTEXT

This reflection brings me to the last aspect of context I would like to mention. It is not only the case, as I have argued above, that we need a theory of context in the psychology of creativity (by which I don’t mean one singular theory; see the first section), but that, in building it, we are constrained by the academic context of our own activity. Theoretical work might be appreciated by some but it is also regarded with scepticism and even suspicion; some of the commentaries in this issue illustrate this attitude. In today’s landscape of doing Kuhnian, ‘normal science’ (Benedek & Jauk, 2014), theorising is something to be kept for last and empirical work becomes a priority. This is inscribed also in the implicit hierarchy of many journals, not only in creativity, but more broadly in psychology. Re- search reports are called for more than theory papers and, among the former, quantitative research is much more common than qualitative research. Moreover, there is little space, at least in specialised journals, for publishing transdisciplinary work. All of these institutional constraints need to be taken into account when discussing what is / might be a crisis in our field. Many commentators made reference to similar restrictions and their larger, socio-political basis. Montuori (2014) said that academia today is not a place for nomadism or recovering old scholarship (the more or less explicit rule of citing from the last five years…). Plucker (2014) referred to the implicit requirement of using certain methodologies, like hierarchical linear modelling in education. Simonton (2014) complained about the general ‘publish or perish’ policy that favours quantity over quality. All of these make it less likely to formulate, express and pursue novel or ‘revolutionary’ theoretical ideas (Chruszczewski, 2014). In this context one has to wonder if the set of general ‘guidelines’ I proposed at the end of the lead article can actually work or would make it difficult, if not impossible, to achieve academic recognition in the area of creativity research. These guidelines themselves have been received differently. Cropley (2014) analysed their utility, point by point; Simonton (2014) used them as a checklist for self-reflection. For Plucker (2014, p. 230), however, they were “ the least provocative part of the paper” while Csikszentmihalyi and Lebuda (2014, p. 194) saw them as “ bland and bureaucratic” . This might well be the case. Future readers are advised that this list, as I mentioned in the lead paper, is neither exhaustive nor prescriptive. In retrospect, I should have added perhaps a final piece of advice, in the spirit of Orwell’s (2006) politics for the English language: ‘break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous’.

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REFERENCES

Baer, J. (2014). The crisis in creativity research stems from too little fragmentation, not too much. Creativity: Theories – Research – Applications, 1, 2 200-205, DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.02.04. Baer, J. & Kaufman, J.C. (2005). Bridging generality and specificity: The Amusement Park Theoretical (APT) Model of Creativity. Roeper Review, 27, 158-163. Beghetto, R.A. (2014). Is the sky falling or expanding? A promising turning point in the psychology of creativity. Creativity: Theories – Research – Applications, 1, 2, 206-212 DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.02.05. Benedek, M.,& Jauk, E. (2014). Creativity – Lost in simplification? Creativity: Theories – Research – Applications, 1, 2, 213-219, DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.02.06. Chruszczewski, M.H. (2014). Boredom, Messianism and Primordial broth: Is it worth waiting for the Messiah? Creativity: Theories – Research – Applications, 1, 2, 240-245, DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.02.11. Cole, M. (1996). Cultural psychology: A once and future discipline. Cambridge: Belknap Press. Cropley, D.H. (2014). Commentary on The Psychology of Creativity: A Critical Reading by Vlad P. Glăveanu. Creativity: Theories – Research – Applications, 1, 2, 223-227, DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.02.08. Csikszentmihalyi, M.,& Lebuda, I. (2014). Is the psychology of creativity in terminal crisis? Comments on Glăveanu’s article “ The Psychology of Creativity: A Critical Read- ing” .Creativity: Theories – Research – Applications, 1, 2, 195-199, DOI: 10.15290/ ctra.2014.01.02.03. Diriwächter, R., & Valsiner, J. (Eds.) (2008). Striving for the whole: Creating theoretical syntheses. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Glăveanu, V.P. (2014a). The psychology of creativity: A critical reading. Creativity: Theo- ries – Research – Applications, 1, 1, 10-33, DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.01.02. Glăveanu, V.P. (2014b). On units of analysis and creativity theory: Towards a “ molecular” perspective. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, early view. Glăveanu, V.P. (2014c). Theorising context in psychology: The case of creativity. Theory & Psychology, early view. Glăveanu, V.P. (2014d). Distributed creativity: Thinking outside the box of the creative individual. Cham: Springer. James, W. (1907). Pragmatism, a new name for some old ways of thinking, Popular Lec- tures on Philosophy, New York, NY: Longmans, Green, and Company.

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Karwowski, M. (2014). The creativity crisis (is not) as plain as the nose on your face: A few introductory comments. Creativity: Theories – Research – Applications, 1, 2, 186-189, DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.02.01 Kaufman, J.C. (2014). Joining the conversation: A commentary on Glăveanu’s Critical Reading. Creativity: Theories – Research – Applications, 1, 2, 220-222, DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.02.07 Magyari-Beck, I. (1999). Creatology. In M. Runco & S. Pritzker (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Creativity, vol 1 (pp. 433-441). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Montuori, A. (2008a). Foreword. In B. Nicolescu (Ed.), Transdisciplinarity. Theory and practice (pp. ix-xvii). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Montuori, A. (2013). Complexity and transdisciplinarity: Reflections on theory and practice. World Futures: The Journal of Global Education, 69, 4-6, 200-230. Mountori, A. (2014). Transdisciplinary reflections on Glăveanu’s “ crisis” of the psychology of creativity. Creativity: Theories – Research – Applications, 1, 2, 246-255, DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.02.12. Orwell, G. (2006). Politics and the English language. Peterborough: Broadview Press. Plucker, J.A. (2014). A critical response to “ The psychology of creativity: A critical reading” . Creativity: Theories – Research – Applications, 1, 2, 228-232, DOI: 10.15290/ ctra.2014.01.02.09. Reiter-Palmon, R. (2014). Can we really have an integrative theory of creativity? The case of creative cognition. Creativity: Theories – Research – Applications, 1, 2, 256-260, DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.02.13. Reiter-Palmon, R., Beghetto, R.A., & Kaufman, J.C. (2014). Looking at creativity through a Business-Psychology-Education (BPE) lens: The challenge and benefits of listening to each other. In E. Shiu (Ed.), Creativity research: An interdisciplinary and multidisci- plinary research handbook (pp. 9-30). New York, NY: Routledge. Shiu, E. (2014). A commentary on the manuscript entitled “ The psychology of creativity: A critical reading” . Creativity: Theories – Research – Applications, 1, 2, 261-267, DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.02.14 Shweder, R. (1990). Cultural psychology – What is it? In J. Stigler, R. Shweder & G. Herdt (Eds.), Cultural psychology: Essays on comparative human development (pp. 1-43). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Silvia, J.P. (2014). Why big theories are fruitless, fragmentation is ideal, defining creativity is overrated, and method-driven research is urgent: Some thoughts on the flourishing state of creativity science. Creativity: Theories – Research – Applications, 1, 2, 233-239, DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.02.10 Simonton, D.K. (2014). A 45-year perspective on creativity research: Comments on Glăveanu’s critique. Creativity: Theories – Research – Applications, 1, 2, 190-194, DOI: 10.15290/ctra.2014.01.02.02 Valsiner, J. (2007). Culture in minds and societies. New Delhi: Sage. Valsiner, J. (2014). Needed for cultural psychology: Methodology in a new key. Culture & Psychology, 20, 1, 3-30.

Corresponding author at: Vlad Petre Glăveanu, Department of Psychology and Com- munication, Aalborg University, Kroghstræde St. 3 , 9220 Aalborg, Denmark. E-mail: [email protected]

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THE AUTHORS

John Baer Rider University Memorial Hall 102, Lawrenceville, NJ 08648-3099, USA E-mail: [email protected]

Ronald A. Beghetto Department of Educational Psychology Neag School of Education, University of Connecticut 249 Glenbrook Road Unit 3064 Storrs, CT 06269–3064 E-mail: [email protected]

Mathias Benedek Department of Psychology University of Graz, Maiffredygasse 12b, A-8010 Graz E-mail: [email protected]

Michael H. Chruszczewski Faculty of Psychology University of Warsaw 5/7 Stawki St., 00-183 Warsaw, Poland E-mail: [email protected]

David H. Cropley Defence and Systems Institute University of South Australia Building W, Mawson Lakes Campus, Mawson Lakes, SA 5158, Australia E-mail: [email protected]

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Department of Behavioral Sciences Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA, USA E-mail: [email protected]

Vlad Petre Glăveanu Department of Psychology and Communication Aalborg University, Kroghstræde St. 3, 9220 Aalborg, Denmark E-mail: [email protected]

Emanuel Jauk Department of Psychology University of Graz, Maiffredygasse 12b, A-8010 Graz E-mail: [email protected]

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Maciej Karwowski Department of Educational Sciences Academy of Special Education 40 Szczesliwicka St., 02353 Warsaw, Poland E-mail: [email protected]

James C. Kaufman University of Connecticut Neag School of Education 2131 Hillside Road, Storrs, CT 06269-3007 E-mail: [email protected]

Izabela Lebuda Department of Educational Sciences Academy of Special Education 40 Szczesliwicka St., 02353 Warsaw, Poland E-mail: [email protected]

Alfonso Montuori California Institute of Integral Studies 1453 Mission St. San Francisco, CA 94103 USA E-mail: [email protected]

Jonathan A. Plucker Neag School of Education University of Connecticut, 2131 Hillside Road U-3007, Storrs, CT 06269-3007 E-mail: [email protected]

Roni Reiter-Palmon Department of Psychology University of Nebraska at Omaha 6001 Dodge Street, Omaha, NE 38182-0274, USA E-mail: [email protected]

Eric Shiu Birmingham Business School University House, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston Birmingham, B15 2TT, United Kingdom. E-mail: [email protected]

Paul J. Silvia Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, P. O. Box 26170, Greensboro, NC 27402, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

Dean Keith Simonton Department of Psychology University of California, Davis, Davis CA 95616 USA E-mail: [email protected]

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REVIEWERS — CTRA 2014, VOL. 1, ISSUE 1&2

Marzenna Magda-Adamowicz (University of Zielona Gora, Poland) Charlotte Chun (University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA) Michal Chruszczewski (University of Warsaw, Poland) Marta Galewska-Kustra (Academy of Special Education, Poland) Vlad Glăveanu (Aalborg University, Denmark) Jacek Gralewski (Academy of Special Education, Poland) Maciej Karwowski (Academy of Special Education, Poland) Andrzej Kisielewski (University of Bialystok, Poland) Katarzyna Krason (University of Silesia, Poland) Marta Kochanek (Pedagogical University ZNP in Warsaw, Poland) Ewa Kozlowska (Jan Dlugosz University in Czestochowa, Poland) Izabela Lebuda (Academy of Special Education, Poland) Wieslawa Limont (Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland) Kinga Lopot-Dzierwa (Pedagogical University of Cracow, Poland) Monika Modrzejewska-Swigulska (University of Lodz, Poland) Jean Pretz (Elizabethown College, USA) Barbara Przyborowska (Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland) Keith Sawyer (University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, USA) Joanna Szen-Ziemianska (Academy of Special Education, Poland) Dorota Turska (Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, Poland) Željko Rački (University of Osijek, Croatia) Elzbieta Rudowicz (Pomerianin Medical University, Poland) Katarzyna Wojtysiak-Wawrzyniak (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poland)

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Theories – Research – Applications NOTES FOR CONTRIBUTORS

Manuscripts All manuscripts should be sent to the Editorial Assistant BEATA KUNAT, email: creativi- [email protected] The text of the paper, with double line spacing, should be submitted in electronic form as a WORD file (in the form of an e-mail attachment). Information about the author, his/her degree, affiliation, contact telephone number, e-mail address, and cor- respondence address should all be included on a separate page. The author is expected to prepare the text in accordance with the requirements of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.). The paper should not exceed 8000 words. Abstract If the paper is reporting research, the abstract should be structured. Non-research papers do not require structured abstracts but appropriate structuring usually helps reader com- prehension and is recommended. The headings selected for a structured abstract are often beter when they are the same as the headings used in the paper itself. A typical set of headings might be: context, objectives, design, setting, subjects, interventions, main out- come measures, findings, discussion, conclusions. You may choose not to use all these headings or you may decide that your abstract is better served with different headings. Abstract length is limited to 250 words. Assign up to six key words (or phrases) for index- ing. Data and Statistical Analyses Authors are expected to have available their raw data throughout the editorial review process and for at least 5 years after the date of publication. Where relevant, the specific computer program used should be identified. Tables and Captions to Illustrations Tables must be typed out on separate sheets and not included as part of the text. The captions to illustrations should be gathered together and also typed out on a separate sheet. Tables and Figures should be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals. The approximate position of tables and figures should be indicated in the text. Captions should include keys to any symbols used. Figures Please supply one set of artwork in finished form, suitable for reproduction. Figures will not normally be redrawn by the publisher.

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