Can creativity be developed?

What I read

In this paper (which is the text prepared for a presentation to an arts association), Guilford provides a general overview of creativity in the context of psychology and philosophy.

First, he grounds what he sees as an ongoing problem in a specific example: that Russia was first to launch a satellite into space. This is indicative of a lack of ingenuity in the United States. He then describes what he sees as reasons for why this ingenuity, which previously existed in the country, has diminished. Technological innovations in the context of new products have made it unnecessary for people to solve problems or do things on their own, and service providers are available to take on challenges that people previously had to do on their own. He concludes that we have an over-dependence on others and on devices; automation will only make this more prominent.

This is a problem because creativity and problem solving has personal value; “by nature we like to make decisions and if we are normal we derive considerable satisfaction from the mastery of problems by productive thinking.” This is exacerbated by what Guilford sees as a pressure towards conformity, driven by an unfavorable viewpoint towards intellect and the arts (with society preferring things like sports or the military.)

Next, Guilford explains what he means by creativity. Creativity is something that underlies behavior, that is “imaginative and inventive.” This is related to people bringing things to life; he recognizes that there is argument about if a thing must “never have existed” or be novel, and writes that “So long as the person arrives at a product that has novel aspects so far as he is concerned, to this extent I should say he has created.” He indicates that everyone has these abilities, but it is hard to study them, but he has spent time investigating creativity through a method called factor analysis; he briefly explains how this method works.

Guilford describes that there are three types of intelligence. Concrete intelligence is about tangible forms of things. Semantic intelligence is about verbal meanings. And symbolic intelligence is related to the ability to work with language rules. Other forms of intelligence likely exist, as well. One is social intelligence, or being aware of other people.

There are different operations related to these types of intelligence. These include things like knowing information, and another is productive thinking. Productive thinking is about generating new information from existing information, as well as convergent and divergent thinking, which Guilford then describes in more detail, and in the context of the factor analysis described above. There are different abilities most tied to creative performance. These include quantity of output, fluency, flexibility of thinking (or freedom from rigidity), spontaneous flexibility, and adaptive flexibility. Adaptive flexibility is the “ease in changing direction of thinking.” Guilford provides different factor tests that try to identify different traits in a sample of people.

He offers several types of people, based on these traits. A “more fluent thinker is likely to be more impulsive, more self confident, and less inclined to be neurotic.” A flexible thinker is reflective; an original person is self confident and tolerates ambiguity.

Finally, Guilford discusses how creativity might be fostered in students. One method is “brain-storming sessions,” as defined and taught by Alex Osborn. Another, better approach would be “increased attention to creativity incidental to common subject matter.” Another would be to change attitudes in the classroom related to things like memorization or information acquisition, as compared to creativity.

Guilford also cautions against what he perceives as an “over-respect for the sacredness of methods,” where children are taught to follow precise instructions in art contexts; if they try things outside of the expected method, and are reprimanded, they will stop attempting creative activities.

Last, Guilford describes the broad presence of art and creativity in the general population. “Art should be regarded as an aspect of living in general. It should help to embellish and to enrich day-to-day activities.”

What I learned and what I think

One of my main takeaways from this article is the idea that what appears to be a rapid and overwhelming change in our world is actually a slow or entirely non-existent shift. In the 50s, at least according to Guilford, we embraced sports and military over art; we felt creativity was exclusive; we were worried about an over-reliance on gadgets and worried about losing abilities to do things for ourselves; and we feared automation. These are all familiar themes and worries, and the more I study history in the context of design, the more it becomes clear that we’ve done all of these things before (even though we feel that they are unique, or that they are “more” or “worse” or “faster” than before.) I don’t know the implications of this, except maybe that we all need to calm down about the hype of new technology.

In my ever-expanding search for precedent views on creativity, I’m looking for the words he uses to define creative activity or creative output. This is from 1958, and his views have solidified a little and it seems like the factors he previously described are no longer hypothetical and have actually been put into empirical practice.

A few standouts; divergent thinking is showing up in a more obvious way, but uniqueness is tempered (it seems like he’s frustrated by the discussion that is likely happening amongst his peers about just how novel something has to be to count as being new.) Creativity is still presented in the context of problem solving, and that’s a little unexpected because this was a speech to art instructors. He seems to have tailored his thoughts to the audience in other ways, but not here, so maybe he’s thinking about art as a problem to solve. That’s a theme from a lot of these more rigid, scientific approaches to creativity.

I’m not overly challenged or inspired to think deeply, and maybe I need to be done with Guilford for now, and maybe I need to be done with cognitive psychology for now, too.