Creativity

Definition and nature of creativity

• “a cognitive activity that results in a new or novel way of viewing a

problem or situation.”
• the process of producing something that is both original and worthwhile
• Nature
• Creativity includes convergent thinking, as well as divergent thinking
• Creativity is associated with many regions within the left
hemisphere, as well as many regions within the right brain
• Creativity can occur when we use focused attention (conscious
attention) as well as defocused attention (altered states of
consciousness
Creative process
• Wallas (1926) described the creative process as having four
sequential stages
• Preparation
• Formulating the problem and making initial attempts
to solve it
• Incubation
• Leaving the problem while considering other things
• Illumination
• Achieving insight to the problem
• Verification
• Testing and/or carrying out the solution
Preparation • A common theme in biographies of
famous men and women is the notion that
even during their early childhood, ideas
were being developed, knowledge was
being acquired, and tentative thoughts in
a specified direction were being tried out. 
 Most of our life is devoted to recreation, watching television,
skin diving, traveling, or lying in the sun watching the clouds
drift by than in rock-hard thinking about a problem that needs a
creative solution. 

So creative acts are more likely to follow dormant periods simply

because those periods occupy more of our time

Incubation
hypotheses about the incubation phase

• the incubation period allows us to recover from the fatigue associated with
problem solving
• interruption of an arduous task may allow us to forget inappro¬ priate
approaches to a problem
• during this period we may actually work on the problem unconsciously
Illumination

INCUBATION DOES NOT ALWAYS LEAD TO
ILLUMINATION
WHEN IT DOES, HOWEVER, THE SENSATION IS
UNMISTAKABLE.
THE CREATIVE PERSON MAY FEEL A RUSH OF
EXCITEMENT AS ALL THE BITS AND PIECES OF IDEAS
FALL INTO PLACE. ALL OF THE PERTINENT IDEAS
COMPLEMENT EACH OTHER, AND IRRELEVANT
THOUGHTS ARE DISCARDED
Verification

• This is the mopping up stage of the creative process in which the

creative product is examined to verify its legitimacy
• This stage may be rather brief, as in the case of rechecking one’s
calculations or seeing whether an invention works; however, in some
cases verification may require a lifetime of study, testing, and retesting.
Creativity in Problem solving

Since creativity involves innovative thinking, generating novel ideas, or

making new connections between existing ideas to create something new

It is also influenced by functional fixedness and mental set, which also

hinder problem solving.

Another factor influencing problem solving is ‘definiteness’ of the problem

• Divergent thinking is most closely associated with ill-defined problems
• Convergent thinking with well-defined problems
Functional fixedness in creative problem
solving

An example of how fixation almost derailed a

Their problem was that they were fixated on the
promising project occurred when Sony
current medium of recorded music, taking as their
temporarily abandoned work on music CDs in the
starting point the LP record. Once they overcame
mid-1970s because the 18 hours of music that
that fixation and realized that CDs could be
could potentially fit on a CD the size of the 12-
smaller, they returned to the project and
inch diameter long-playing records in use at the
revolutionized the music industry
time was not considered commercially viable.
David Jansson and Steven Smith (1991) studied the effect of
fixation on creative design by presenting engineering design
students with design problems and telling them to generate as
many designs as possible in 45 minutes. One of the problems
was to design an inexpensive, spill-proof coffee cup.

It was specified that the design could not include a straw or

mouthpiece.

• Half the students were assigned to the “fixation group” and were presented with
a sample design with mouthpiece and straw
• Another group of students, the control group, was given the same task and
specification, but did not see a sample design.
Cognitive psychologist Ronald Finke developed a
technique called creative cognition to train people
to think creatively

People were more likely to come up with creative

uses for pre-inventive objects that they had created
themselves than for objects created by other people

Having participants combine objects rapidly and

without reference to uses lessens the chance that
fixations will inhibit creativity.