Creativity

Most ancient cultures, including thinkers of Ancient Greece,[15] Ancient China, and Ancient India,[16] lacked the concept of creativity, seeing art as a form of discovery and not creation. The ancient Greeks had no terms corresponding to "to create" or "creator" except for the expression "poiein" ("to make"), which only applied to poiesis (poetry) and to the poietes (poet, or "maker") who made it. Plato did not believe in art as a form of creation. Asked in The Republic,[17] "Will we say, of a painter, that he makes something?", he answers, "Certainly not, he merely imitates."[15]

It is commonly argued that the notion of "creativity" originated in Western culture through Christianity, as a matter of divine inspiration.[1] According to the historian Daniel J. Boorstin, "the early Western conception of creativity was the Biblical story of creation given in the Genesis."[18] However, this is not creativity in the modern sense, which did not arise until the Renaissance. In the Judaeo-Christian tradition, creativity was the sole province of God; humans were not considered to have the ability to create something new except as an expression of God's work.[19] A concept similar to that of Christianity existed in Greek culture, for instance, Muses were seen as mediating inspiration from the Gods.[20] Romans and Greeks invoked the concept of an external creative "daemon" (Greek) or "genius" (Latin), linked to the sacred or the divine. However, none of these views are similar to the modern concept of creativity, and the individual was not seen as the cause of creation until the Renaissance.[21] It was during the Renaissance that creativity was first seen, not as a conduit for the divine, but from the abilities of "great men".[21]

The rejection of creativity in favor of discovery and the belief that individual creation was a conduit of the divine would dominate the West probably until the Renaissance and even later.[19] The development of the modern concept of creativity begins in the Renaissance, when creation began to be perceived as having originated from the abilities of the individual, and not God. This could be attributed to the leading intellectual movement of the time, aptly named humanism, which developed an intensely human-centric outlook on the world, valuing the intellect and achievement of the individual.[22] From this philosophy arose the Renaissance man (or polymath), an individual who embodies the principals of humanism in their ceaseless courtship with knowledge and creation.[23] One of the most well-known and immensely accomplished examples is Leonardo da Vinci.

However, this shift was gradual and would not become immediately apparent until the Enlightenment.[21] By the 18th century and the Age of Enlightenment, mention of creativity (notably in aesthetics), linked with the concept of imagination, became more frequent.[24] In the writing of Thomas Hobbes, imagination became a key element of human cognition;[1] William Duff was one of the first to identify imagination as a quality of genius, typifying the separation being made between talent (productive, but breaking no new ground) and genius.[20]

As a direct and independent topic of study, creativity effectively received no attention until the 19th century.[20] Runco and Albert argue that creativity as the subject of proper study began seriously to emerge in the late 19th century with the increased interest in individual differences inspired by the arrival of Darwinism. In particular, they refer to the work of Francis Galton, who through his eugenicist outlook took a keen interest in the heritability of intelligence, with creativity taken as an aspect of genius.[1]

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, leading mathematicians and scientists such as Hermann von Helmholtz (1896) and Henri Poincaré (1908) began to reflect on and publicly discuss their creative processes.

The insights of Poincaré and von Helmholtz were built on in early accounts of the creative process by pioneering theorists such as Graham Wallas[25] and Max Wertheimer. In his work Art of Thought, published in 1926, Wallas presented one of the first models of the creative process. In the Wallas stage model, creative insights and illuminations may be explained by a process consisting of 5 stages:

(i) preparation (preparatory work on a problem that focuses the individual's mind on the problem and explores the problem's dimensions),

(ii) incubation (where the problem is internalized into the unconscious mind and nothing appears externally to be happening),

(iii) intimation (the creative person gets a "feeling" that a solution is on its way),

(iv) illumination or insight (where the creative idea bursts forth from its preconscious processing into conscious awareness);

(v) verification (where the idea is consciously verified, elaborated, and then applied).

Wallas' model is often treated as four stages, with "intimation" seen as a sub-stage.

Wallas considered creativity to be a legacy of the evolutionary process, which allowed humans to quickly adapt to rapidly changing environments. Simonton[26] provides an updated perspective on this view in his book, Origins of genius: Darwinian perspectives on creativity.

In 1927, Alfred North Whitehead gave the Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh, later published as Process and Reality.[27] He is credited with having coined the term "creativity" to serve as the ultimate category of his metaphysical scheme: "Whitehead actually coined the term – our term, still the preferred currency of exchange among literature, science, and the arts. . . a term that quickly became so popular, so omnipresent, that its invention within living memory, and by Alfred North Whitehead of all people, quickly became occluded".[28]

Although psychometric studies of creativity had been conducted by The London School of Psychology as early as 1927 with the work of H. L. Hargreaves into the Faculty of Imagination,[29] the formal psychometric measurement of creativity, from the standpoint of orthodox psychological literature, is usually considered to have begun with J. P. Guilford's address to the American Psychological Association in 1950.[30] The address helped to popularize the study of creativity and to focus attention on scientific approaches to conceptualizing creativity. Statistical analyses led to the recognition of creativity (as measured) as a separate aspect of human cognition to IQ-type intelligence, into which it had previously been subsumed. Guilford's work suggested that above a threshold level of IQ, the relationship between creativity and classically measured intelligence broke down.[31]

Incubation is a temporary break from creative problem solving that can result in insight.[38] There has been some empirical research looking at whether, as the concept of "incubation" in Wallas' model implies, a period of interruption or rest from a problem may aid creative problem-solving. Ward[39] lists various hypotheses that have been advanced to explain why incubation may aid creative problem-solving, and notes how some empirical evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that incubation aids creative problem in that it enables "forgetting" of misleading clues. Absence of incubation may lead the problem solver to become fixated on inappropriate strategies of solving the problem.[40] This work disputes the earlier hypothesis that creative solutions to problems arise mysteriously from the unconscious mind while the conscious mind is occupied on other tasks.[41] This earlier hypothesis is discussed in Csikszentmihalyi's five phase model of the creative process which describes incubation as a time that your unconscious takes over. This allows for unique connections to be made without our consciousness trying to make logical order out of the problem.[42]

J. P. Guilford[43] drew a distinction between convergent and divergent production (commonly renamed convergent and divergent thinking). Convergent thinking involves aiming for a single, correct solution to a problem, whereas divergent thinking involves creative generation of multiple answers to a set problem. Divergent thinking is sometimes used as a synonym for creativity in psychology literature. Other researchers have occasionally used the terms flexible thinking or fluid intelligence, which are roughly similar to (but not synonymous with) creativity.[44]

In 1992, Finke et al. proposed the "Geneplore" model, in which creativity takes place in two phases: a generative phase, where an individual constructs mental representations called preinventive structures, and an exploratory phase where those structures are used to come up with creative ideas. Some evidence shows that when people use their imagination to develop new ideas, those ideas are heavily structured in predictable ways by the properties of existing categories and concepts.[45] Weisberg[46] argued, by contrast, that creativity only involves ordinary cognitive processes yielding extraordinary results.

Helie and Sun[47] more recently proposed a unified framework for understanding creativity in problem solving, namely the Explicit–Implicit Interaction (EII) theory of creativity. This new theory constitutes an attempt at providing a more unified explanation of relevant phenomena (in part by reinterpreting/integrating various fragmentary existing theories of incubation and insight).

The EII theory relies mainly on five basic principles, namely:

1. The co-existence of and the difference between explicit and implicit knowledge;
2. The simultaneous involvement of implicit and explicit processes in most tasks;
3. The redundant representation of explicit and implicit knowledge;
4. The integration of the results of explicit and implicit processing;
5. The iterative (and possibly bidirectional) processing.

A computational implementation of the theory was developed based on the CLARION cognitive architecture and used to simulate relevant human data. This work represents an initial step in the development of process-based theories of creativity encompassing incubation, insight, and various other related phenomena.

In The Act of Creation, Arthur Koestler introduced the concept of bisociation — that creativity arises as a result of the intersection of two quite different frames of reference.[48] This idea was later developed into conceptual blending. In the 1990s, various approaches in cognitive science that dealt with metaphor, analogy, and structure mapping have been converging, and a new integrative approach to the study of creativity in science, art and humor has emerged under the label conceptual blending.

Honing theory, developed principally by psychologist Liane Gabora, posits that creativity arises due to the self-organizing, self-mending nature of a worldview. The creative process is a way in which the individual hones (and re-hones) an integrated worldview. Honing theory places emphasis not only on the externally visible creative outcome but also the internal cognitive restructuring and repair of the worldview brought about by the creative process. When faced with a creatively demanding task, there is an interaction between the conception of the task and the worldview. The conception of the task changes through interaction with the worldview, and the worldview changes through interaction with the task. This interaction is reiterated until the task is complete, at which point not only is the task conceived of differently, but the worldview is subtly or drastically transformed as it follows the natural tendency of a worldview to attempt to resolve dissonance and seek internal consistency amongst its components, whether they be ideas, attitudes, or bits of knowledge.

A central feature of honing theory is the notion of a potentiality state.[49] Honing theory posits that creative thought proceeds not by searching through and randomly ‘mutating’ predefined possibilities, but by drawing upon associations that exist due to overlap in the distributed neural cell assemblies that participate in the encoding of experiences in memory. Midway through the creative process one may have made associations between the current task and previous experiences, but not yet disambiguated which aspects of those previous experiences are relevant to the current task. Thus the creative idea may feel ‘half-baked’. It is at that point that it can be said to be in a potentiality state, because how it will actualize depends on the different internally or externally generated contexts it interacts with.

Honing theory is held to explain certain phenomena not dealt with by other theories of creativity, for example, how different works by the same creator are observed in studies to exhibit a recognizable style or 'voice' even though in different creative outlets. This is not predicted by theories of creativity that emphasize chance processes or the accumulation of expertise, but it is predicted by honing theory, according to which personal style reflects the creator's uniquely structured worldview. Another example is in the environmental stimulus for creativity. Creativity is commonly considered to be fostered by a supportive, nurturing, trustworthy environment conducive to self-actualization. However, research shows that creativity is also associated with childhood adversity, which would stimulate honing.

In everyday thought, people often spontaneously imagine alternatives to reality when they think "if only...".[50] Their counterfactual thinking is viewed as an example of everyday creative processes.[51] It has been proposed that the creation of counterfactual alternatives to reality depends on similar cognitive processes to rational thought.[52]

There was a creativity quotient developed similar to the intelligence quotient (IQ). It makes use of the results of divergent thinking tests (see below) by processing them further. It gives more weight to ideas that are radically different from other ideas in the response.[53]

J. P. Guilford's group,[43] which pioneered the modern psychometric study of creativity, constructed several tests to measure creativity in 1967:

• Plot Titles, where participants are given the plot of a story and asked to write original titles.
• Quick Responses is a word-association test scored for uncommonness.
• Figure Concepts, where participants were given simple drawings of objects and individuals and asked to find qualities or features that are common by two or more drawings; these were scored for uncommonness.
• Unusual Uses is finding unusual uses for common everyday objects such as bricks.
• Remote Associations, where participants are asked to find a word between two given words (e.g. Hand _____ Call)
• Remote Consequences, where participants are asked to generate a list of consequences of unexpected events (e.g. loss of gravity)

Originally, Guilford was trying to create a model for intellect as a whole, but in doing so also created a model for creativity. Guilford made an important assumption for creative research: creativity isn't one abstract concept.  The idea that creativity is a category rather than one single concept opened up the ability for other researchers to look at creativity with a whole new perspective.[54][55]

Additionally, Guilford hypothesized one of the first models for the components of creativity.  He explained that creativity was a result of having:

1. Sensitivity to problems, or the ability to recognize problems;
2. Fluency, which encompasses

   a. Ideational fluency, or the ability rapidly to produce a variety of ideas that fulfill stated requirements;

   b. Associational fluency, or the ability to generate a list of words, each of which is associated with a given word;                    

   c. Expressional fluency, or the ability to organize words into larger units, such as phrases, sentences, and paragraphs;

3. Flexibility, which encompasses                      

   a. Spontaneous flexibility, or the ability to demonstrate flexibility;                          

   b. Adaptive flexibility, or the ability to produce responses that are novel and high in quality.

This represents the base model by which several researchers would take and alter to produce their new theories of creativity years later.[54] Building on Guilford's work, Torrance[56] developed the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking in 1966.[57] They involved simple tests of divergent thinking and other problem-solving skills, which were scored on:

• Fluency – The total number of interpretable, meaningful, and relevant ideas generated in response to the stimulus.
• Originality – The statistical rarity of the responses among the test subjects.
• Elaboration – The amount of detail in the responses.

Such tests, sometimes called Divergent Thinking (DT) tests have been both supported[58] and criticized.[59]

Considerable progress has been made in automated scoring of divergent thinking tests using semantic approach. When compared to human raters, NLP techniques were shown to be reliable and valid in scoring the originality.[60][61] The reported computer programs were able to achieve a correlation of 0.60 and 0.72 respectively to human graders.

Semantic networks were also used to devise originality scores that yielded significant correlations with socio-personal measures.[62] Most recently, an NSF-funded[63] team of researchers led by James C. Kaufman and Mark A. Runco[64] combined expertise in creativity research, natural language processing, computational linguistics, and statistical data analysis to devise a scalable system for computerized automated testing (SparcIt Creativity Index Testing system). This system enabled automated scoring of DT tests that is reliable, objective, and scalable, thus addressing most of the issues of DT tests that had been found and reported.[59] The resultant computer system was able to achieve a correlation of 0.73 to human graders.[65]

Some researchers have taken a social-personality approach to the measurement of creativity. In these studies, personality traits such as independence of judgement, self-confidence, attraction to complexity, aesthetic orientation, and risk-taking are used as measures of the creativity of individuals.[30] A meta-analysis by Gregory Feist showed that creative people tend to be "more open to new experiences, less conventional and less conscientious, more self-confident, self-accepting, driven, ambitious, dominant, hostile, and impulsive." Openness, conscientiousness, self-acceptance, hostility, and impulsivity had the strongest effects of the traits listed.[66] Within the framework of the Big Five model of personality, some consistent traits have emerged.[67] Openness to experience has been shown to be consistently related to a whole host of different assessments of creativity.[68] Among the other Big Five traits, research has demonstrated subtle differences between different domains of creativity. Compared to non-artists, artists tend to have higher levels of openness to experience and lower levels of conscientiousness, while scientists are more open to experience, conscientious, and higher in the confidence-dominance facets of extraversion compared to non-scientists.[66]

An alternative is using biographical methods. These methods use quantitative characteristics such as the number of publications, patents, or performances of a work. While this method was originally developed for highly creative personalities, today it is also available as self-report questionnaires supplemented with frequent, less outstanding creative behaviors such as writing a short story or creating your own recipes. For example, the Creative Achievement Questionnaire, a self-report test that measures creative achievement across 10 domains, was described in 2005 and shown to be reliable and valid when compared to other measures of creativity and to independent evaluation of creative output.[69] Besides the English original, it was also used in a Chinese,[70] French,[71] and German-speaking[72] version. It is the self-report questionnaire most frequently used in research.[70]

A number of researchers include creativity, either explicitly or implicitly, as a key component of intelligence.

Examples of theories that include creativity as a subset of intelligence

• Sternberg's Theory of Successful intelligence[79][80][81] (see Triarchic theory of intelligence) includes creativity as a main component, and comprises 3 sub-theories: Componential (Analytic), Contextual (Practical), and Experiential (Creative). Experiential sub-theory – the ability to use pre-existing knowledge and skills to solve new and novel problems – is directly related to creativity.
• The Cattell–Horn–Carroll theory includes creativity as a subset of intelligence. Specifically, it is associated with the broad group factor of long-term storage and retrieval (Glr). Glr narrow abilities relating to creativity include:[82] ideational fluency, associational fluency, and originality/creativity. Silvia et al.[83] conducted a study to look at the relationship between divergent thinking and verbal fluency tests, and reported that both fluency and originality in divergent thinking were significantly affected by the broad level Glr factor. Martindale[84] extended the CHC-theory in the sense that it was proposed that those individuals who are creative are also selective in their processing speed Martindale argues that in the creative process, larger amounts of information are processed more slowly in the early stages, and as the individual begins to understand the problem, the processing speed is increased.
• The Dual Process Theory of Intelligence[85] posits a two-factor/type model of intelligence. Type 1 is a conscious process, and concerns goal directed thoughts, which are explained by g. Type 2 is an unconscious process, and concerns spontaneous cognition, which encompasses daydreaming and implicit learning ability. Kaufman argues that creativity occurs as a result of Type 1 and Type 2 processes working together in combination. The use of each type in the creative process can be used to varying degrees.

In this relationship model, intelligence is a key component in the development of creativity.

Theories of creativity that include intelligence as a subset of creativity

• Sternberg & Lubart's Investment Theory.[86][87] Using the metaphor of a stock market, they demonstrate that creative thinkers are like good investors – they buy low and sell high (in their ideas). Like under/low-valued stock, creative individuals generate unique ideas that are initially rejected by other people. The creative individual has to persevere, and convince the others of the ideas value. After convincing the others, and thus increasing the ideas value, the creative individual ‘sells high’ by leaving the idea with the other people, and moves onto generating another idea. According to this theory, six distinct, but related elements contribute to successful creativity: intelligence, knowledge, thinking styles, personality, motivation, and environment. Intelligence is just one of the six factors that can either solely, or in conjunction with the other five factors, generate creative thoughts.
• Amabile's Componential Model of Creativity.[88][89] In this model, there are 3 within-individual components needed for creativity – domain-relevant skills, creativity-relevant processes, and task motivation – and 1 component external to the individual: their surrounding social environment. Creativity requires a confluence of all components. High creativity will result when an individual is: intrinsically motivated, possesses both a high level of domain-relevant skills and has high skills in creative thinking, and is working in a highly creative environment.
• Amusement Park Theoretical Model.[90] In this 4-step theory, both domain-specific and generalist views are integrated into a model of creativity. The researchers make use of the metaphor of the amusement park to demonstrate that within each of these creative levels, intelligence plays a key role:
  • To get into the amusement park, there are initial requirements (e.g., time/transport to go to the park). Initial requirements (like intelligence) are necessary, but not sufficient for creativity. They are more like prerequisites for creativity, and if an individual does not possess the basic level of the initial requirement (intelligence), then they will not be able to generate creative thoughts/behaviour.
  • Secondly are the subcomponents – general thematic areas – that increase in specificity. Like choosing which type of amusement park to visit (e.g. a zoo or a water park), these areas relate to the areas in which someone could be creative (e.g. poetry).
  • Thirdly, there are specific domains. After choosing the type of park to visit e.g. waterpark, you then have to choose which specific park to go to. Within the poetry domain, there are many different types (e.g. free verse, riddles, sonnet, etc.) that have to be selected from.
  • Lastly, there are micro-domains. These are the specific tasks that reside within each domain e.g. individual lines in a free verse poem / individual rides at the waterpark.

This possible relationship concerns creativity and intelligence as distinct, but intersecting constructs.

Theories that include Creativity and Intelligence as Overlapping Yet Distinct Constructs

• Renzulli's Three-Ring Conception of Giftedness.[91] In this conceptualisation, giftedness occurs as a result from the overlap of above average intellectual ability, creativity, and task commitment. Under this view, creativity and intelligence are distinct constructs, but they do overlap under the correct conditions.
• PASS theory of intelligence. In this theory, the planning component – relating to the ability to solve problems, make decisions and take action – strongly overlaps with the concept of creativity.[92]
• Threshold Theory (TT). A number of previous research findings have suggested that a threshold exists in the relationship between creativity and intelligence – both constructs are moderately positively correlated up to an IQ of ~120. Above this threshold of an IQ of 120, if there is a relationship at all, it is small and weak.[73][74][93] TT posits that a moderate level of intelligence is necessary for creativity.

In support of the TT, Barron[74][94] reported finding a non-significant correlation between creativity and intelligence in a gifted sample; and a significant correlation in a non-gifted sample. Yamamoto[95] in a sample of secondary school children, reported a significant correlation between creativity and intelligence of r = .3, and reported no significant correlation when the sample consisted of gifted children. Fuchs-Beauchamp et al.[96] in a sample of preschoolers found that creativity and intelligence correlated from r = .19 to r = .49 in the group of children who had an IQ below the threshold; and in the group above the threshold, the correlations were r = <.12. Cho et al.[97] reported a correlation of .40 between creativity and intelligence in the average IQ group of a sample of adolescents and adults; and a correlation of close to r = .0 for the high IQ group. Jauk et al.[98] found support for the TT, but only for measures of creative potential; not creative performance.

Much modern day research reports findings against TT. Wai et al.[99] in a study using data from the longitudinal Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth – a cohort of elite students from early adolescence into adulthood – found that differences in SAT scores at age 13 were predictive of creative real-life outcomes 20 years later. Kim's[100] meta-analysis of 21 studies did not find any supporting evidence for TT, and instead negligible correlations were reported between intelligence, creativity, and divergent thinking both below and above IQ's of 120. Preckel et al.,[101] investigating fluid intelligence and creativity, reported small correlations of r = .3 to r = .4 across all levels of cognitive ability.

Under this view, researchers posit that there are no differences in the mechanisms underlying creativity in those used in normal problem solving; and in normal problem solving, there is no need for creativity. Thus, creativity and Intelligence (problem solving) are the same thing. Perkins[102] referred to this as the ‘nothing-special’ view.

Weisberg & Alba[103] examined problem solving by having participants complete the 9-dot problem (see Thinking outside the box#Nine dots puzzle) – where the participants are asked to connect all 9 dots in the 3 rows of 3 dots using 4 straight lines or less, without lifting their pen or tracing the same line twice. The problem can only be solved if the lines go outside the boundaries of the square of dots. Results demonstrated that even when participants were given this insight, they still found it difficult to solve the problem, thus showing that to successfully complete the task it is not just insight (or creativity) that is required.

In this view, creativity and intelligence are completely different, unrelated constructs.

Getzels and Jackson[73] administered 5 creativity measures to a group of 449 children from grades 6-12, and compared these test findings to results from previously administered (by the school) IQ tests. They found that the correlation between the creativity measures and IQ was r = .26. The high creativity group scored in the top 20% of the overall creativity measures, but were not included in the top 20% of IQ scorers. The high intelligence group scored the opposite: they scored in the top 20% for IQ, but were outside the top 20% scorers for creativity, thus showing that creativity and intelligence are distinct and unrelated.

However, this work has been heavily criticised. Wallach and Kogan[75] highlighted that the creativity measures were not only weakly related to one another (to the extent that they were no more related to one another than they were with IQ), but they seemed to also draw upon non-creative skills. McNemar[104] noted that there were major measurement issues, in that the IQ scores were a mixture from 3 different IQ tests.

Wallach and Kogan[75] administered 5 measures of creativity, each of which resulted in a score for originality and fluency; and 10 measures of general intelligence to 151 5th grade children. These tests were untimed, and given in a game-like manner (aiming to facilitate creativity). Inter-correlations between creativity tests were on average r = .41. Inter-correlations between intelligence measures were on average r = .51 with each other. Creativity tests and intelligence measures correlated r = .09.

Vandervert[108] described how the brain's frontal lobes and the cognitive functions of the cerebellum collaborate to produce creativity and innovation. Vandervert's explanation rests on considerable evidence that all processes of working memory (responsible for processing all thought[109]) are adaptively modeled for increased efficiency by the cerebellum.[110] The cerebellum (consisting of 100 billion neurons, which is more than the entirety of the rest of the brain[111]) is also widely known to adaptively model all bodily movement for efficiency. The cerebellum's adaptive models of working memory processing are then fed back to especially frontal lobe working memory control processes[112] where creative and innovative thoughts arise.[113] (Apparently, creative insight or the "aha" experience is then triggered in the temporal lobe.[114])

According to Vandervert, the details of creative adaptation begin in "forward" cerebellar models which are anticipatory/exploratory controls for movement and thought. These cerebellar processing and control architectures have been termed Hierarchical Modular Selection and Identification for Control (HMOSAIC).[115] New, hierarchically arranged levels of the cerebellar control architecture (HMOSAIC) develop as mental mulling in working memory is extended over time. These new levels of the control architecture are fed forward to the frontal lobes. Since the cerebellum adaptively models all movement and all levels of thought and emotion,[116] Vandervert's approach helps explain creativity and innovation in sports, art, music, the design of video games, technology, mathematics, the child prodigy, and thought in general.

Essentially, Vandervert has argued that when a person is confronted with a challenging new situation, visual-spatial working memory and speech-related working memory are decomposed and re-composed (fractionated) by the cerebellum and then blended in the cerebral cortex in an attempt to deal with the new situation. With repeated attempts to deal with challenging situations, the cerebro-cerebellar blending process continues to optimize the efficiency of how working memory deals with the situation or problem.[117] Most recently, he has argued that this is the same process (only involving visual-spatial working memory and pre-language vocalization) that led to the evolution of language in humans.[118] Vandervert and Vandervert-Weathers have pointed out that this blending process, because it continuously optimizes efficiencies, constantly improves prototyping attempts toward the invention or innovation of new ideas, music, art, or technology.[119] Prototyping, they argue, not only produces new products, it trains the cerebro-cerebellar pathways involved to become more efficient at prototyping itself. Further, Vandervert and Vandervert-Weathers believe that this repetitive "mental prototyping" or mental rehearsal involving the cerebellum and the cerebral cortex explains the success of the self-driven, individualized patterning of repetitions initiated by the teaching methods of the Khan Academy. The model proposed by Vandervert has, however, received incisive critique from several authors.[120][121]

Creativity involves the forming of associative elements into new combinations that are useful or meet some requirement. Sleep aids this process.[122] REM rather than NREM sleep appears to be responsible.[123][124] This has been suggested to be due to changes in cholinergic and noradrenergic neuromodulation that occurs during REM sleep.[123] During this period of sleep, high levels of acetylcholine in the hippocampus suppress feedback from the hippocampus to the neocortex, and lower levels of acetylcholine and norepinephrine in the neocortex encourage the spread of associational activity within neocortical areas without control from the hippocampus.[125] This is in contrast to waking consciousness, where higher levels of norepinephrine and acetylcholine inhibit recurrent connections in the neocortex. It is proposed that REM sleep adds creativity by allowing "neocortical structures to reorganize associative hierarchies, in which information from the hippocampus would be reinterpreted in relation to previous semantic representations or nodes."[123]

According to Alice Isen, positive affect has three primary effects on cognitive activity:

1. Positive affect makes additional cognitive material available for processing, increasing the number of cognitive elements available for association;
2. Positive affect leads to defocused attention and a more complex cognitive context, increasing the breadth of those elements that are treated as relevant to the problem;
3. Positive affect increases cognitive flexibility, increasing the probability that diverse cognitive elements will in fact become associated. Together, these processes lead positive affect to have a positive influence on creativity.

Barbara Fredrickson in her broaden-and-build model suggests that positive emotions such as joy and love broaden a person's available repertoire of cognitions and actions, thus enhancing creativity.

According to these researchers, positive emotions increase the number of cognitive elements available for association (attention scope) and the number of elements that are relevant to the problem (cognitive scope).

Various meta-analyses, such as Baas et al. (2008) of 66 studies about creativity and affect support the link between creativity and positive affect.[127][128] Research has shown that practicing creative leisure activities is interrelated with the emotional creativity.[129]

Malevolent creativity is often a key contributor to crime and in its most destructive form can even manifest as terrorism. As creativity requires deviating from the conventional, there is a permanent tension between being creative and producing products that go too far and in some cases to the point of breaking the law. Aggression is a key predictor of malevolent creativity, and studies have also shown that increased levels of aggression also correlates to a higher likelihood of committing crime.[160]

Although everyone shows some levels of malevolent creativity under certain conditions, those that have a higher propensity towards it have increased tendencies to deceive and manipulate others to their own gain. While malevolent creativity appears to dramatically increase when an individual is placed under unfair conditions, personality, particularly aggressiveness, is also a key predictor in anticipating levels of malevolent thinking. Researchers Harris and Reiter-Palmon investigated the role of aggression in levels of malevolent creativity, in particular levels of implicit aggression and the tendency to employ aggressive actions in response to problem solving. The personality traits of physical aggression, conscientiousness, emotional intelligence and implicit aggression all seem to be related with malevolent creativity.[158] Harris and Reiter-Palmon's research showed that when subjects were presented with a problem that triggered malevolent creativity, participants high in implicit aggression and low in premeditation expressed the largest number of malevolently-themed solutions. When presented with the more benign problem that triggered prosocial motives of helping others and cooperating, those high in implicit aggression, even if they were high in impulsiveness, were far less destructive in their imagined solutions. They concluded premeditation, more than implicit aggression controlled an individual's expression of malevolent creativity.[161]

The current measure for malevolent creativity is the 13-item test Malevolent Creativity Behaviour Scale (MCBS) [159]

Diversity between team members’ backgrounds and knowledge can increase team creativity by expanding the total collection of unique information that is available to the team and introducing different perspectives that can integrate in novel ways. However, under some conditions, diversity can also decrease team creativity by making it more difficult for team members to communicate about ideas and causing interpersonal conflicts between those with different perspectives.[179] Thus, the potential advantages of diversity must be supported by appropriate team processes and organizational cultures in order to enhance creativity.[174][175][176][177][180][181]

Team communication norms, such as respecting others’ expertise, paying attention to others’ ideas, expecting information sharing, tolerating disagreements, negotiating, remaining open to others’ ideas, learning from others, and building on each other's ideas, increase team creativity by facilitating the social processes involved with brainstorming and problem solving. Through these processes, team members are able to access their collective pool of knowledge, reach shared understandings, identify new ways of understanding problems or tasks, and make new connections between ideas. Engaging in these social processes also promotes positive team affect, which facilitates collective creativity.[174][176][177][180]

Supportive and motivational environments that create psychological safety by encouraging risk taking and tolerating mistakes increase team creativity as well.[174][175][176][177] Organizations in which help-seeking, help giving, and collaboration are rewarded promote innovation by providing opportunities and contexts in which team processes that lead to collective creativity can occur.[182] Additionally, leadership styles that downplay status hierarchies or power differences within an organization and empower people to speak up about their ideas or opinions also help to create cultures that are conducive to creativity.[174][175][176][177]

There is a long-standing debate on how material constraints (e.g., lack of money, materials, or equipment) affect creativity. In psychological and managerial research, two competing views in this regard prevail. In one view, many scholars propose a negative effect of material constraints on innovation and claim that material constraints starve creativity.[183] The proponents of this view argue that adequate material resources are needed to engage in creative activities like experimenting with new solutions and idea exploration.[183] In an opposing view, scholars assert that people tend to stick to established routines or solutions as long as they are not forced to deviate from them by constraints.[184][185][186] In this sense, Neren posits that scarcity is an important driver of creativity.[187] Consistently, Gibbert and Scranton demonstrated how material constraints facilitated the development of jet engines in World War II.[188]

To reconcile these competing views, contingency models were proposed.[189][190][191] The rationale behind these models is that certain contingency factors (e.g., creativity climate or creativity relevant skills) influence the relationship between constraints and creativity.[189] These contingency factors reflect the need for higher levels of motivation and skills when working on creative tasks under constraints.[189] Depending on these contingency factors, there is either a positive or negative relationship between constraints and creativity.[189][190]

Experiments suggest the need for closure of task participants, whether as a reflection of personality or induced (through time pressure), negatively impacts creativity.[196] Accordingly, it has been suggested that reading fiction, which can reduce the cognitive need for closure, may help to encourage creativity.[197]

In the Scottish education system, creativity is identified as a core skillset for learning, life and work and is defined as “a process which generates ideas that have value to the individual. It involves looking at familiar things with a fresh eye, examining problems with an open mind, making connections, learning from mistakes and using imagination to explore new possibilities.” The need to develop a shared language and understanding of creativity and its role across every aspect of learning, teaching and continuous improvement was identified as a necessary aim and a set of four skills is used to allow educators to discuss and develop creativity skills across all subjects and sectors of education – curiosity, open—mindedness, imagination and problem solving. Distinctions are made between creative learning (when learners are using their creativity skills), creative teaching (when educators are using their creativity skills) and creative change (when creativity skills are applied to planning and improvement). Scotland's national Creative Learning Plan supports the development of creativity skills in all learners and of educators’ expertise in developing creativity skills. A range of resources have been created to support and assess this including a national review of creativity across learning by Her Majesty's Inspectorate for Education.