creativity and problem solving ability are considered to be part of

• Bipolar Disorder
• Therapy Center
• When To See a Therapist
• Types of Therapy
• Best Online Therapy
• Best Couples Therapy
• Best Family Therapy
• Managing Stress
• Sleep and Dreaming
• Understanding Emotions
• Self-Improvement
• Healthy Relationships
• Student Resources
• Personality Types
• Guided Meditations
• Verywell Mind Insights
• 2023 Verywell Mind 25
• Mental Health in the Classroom
• Editorial Process
• Meet Our Review Board
• Crisis Support

Understanding the Psychology of Creativity

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Michael H / DigitalVision / Getty Images

What Is Creativity?

When does creativity happen, types of creativity, what does it take to be creative, creativity and the big five, how to increase creativity, frequently asked questions.

What is creativity? Creativity involves the ability to develop new ideas or utilize objects or information in novel ways. It can involve large-scale ideas that have the potential to change the world, such as inventing tools that impact how people live, or smaller acts of creation such as figuring out a new way to accomplish a task in your daily life.

This article explores what creativity is and when it is most likely to happen. It also covers some of the steps that you can take to improve your own creativity.

Studying creativity can be a tricky process. Not only is creativity a complex topic in and of itself, but there is also no clear consensus on how exactly to define creativity. Many of the most common definitions suggest that creativity is the tendency to solve problems or create new things in novel ways.

Two of the primary components of creativity include:

• Originality: The idea should be something new that is not simply an extension of something else that already exists.
• Functionality: The idea needs to actually work or possess some degree of usefulness.

In his book Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention , psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi suggested that creativity can often be seen in a few different situations.  

• People who seem stimulating, interesting, and have a variety of unusual thoughts.
• People who perceive the world with a fresh perspective, have insightful ideas and make important personal discoveries. These individuals make creative discoveries that are generally known only to them.
• People who make great creative achievements that become known to the entire world. Inventors and artists such as Thomas Edison and Pablo Picasso would fall into this category.

Experts also tend to distinguish between different types of creativity. The “four c” model of creativity suggests that there are four different types:

• “Mini-c” creativity involves personally meaningful ideas and insights that are known only to the self.
• “ Little-c” creativity involves mostly everyday thinking and problem-solving. This type of creativity helps people solve everyday problems they face and adapt to changing environments.
• “Pro-C” creativity takes place among professionals who are skilled and creative in their respective fields. These individuals are creative in their vocation or profession but do not achieve eminence for their works.
• “Big-C” creativity involves creating works and ideas that are considered great in a particular field. This type of creativity leads to eminence and acclaim and often leads to world-changing creations such as medical innovations, technological advances, and artistic achievements.

Csikszentmihalyi suggests that creative people tend to possess are ​a variety of traits that contribute to their innovative thinking. Some of these key traits include:

• Energy: Creative people tend to possess a great deal of both physical and mental energy. However, they also tend to spend a great deal of time quietly thinking and reflecting.
• Intelligence: Psychologists have long believed that intelligence plays a critical role in creativity. In Terman’s famous longitudinal study of gifted children, researchers found that while high IQ was necessary for great creativity, not all people with high IQs are creative. Csikszentmihalyi believes that creative people must be smart, but they must be capable of looking at things in fresh, even naïve, ways.
• Discipline: Creative people do not just sit around waiting for inspiration to strike. They ​are playful, yet they are also disciplined in the pursuit of their work and passions.

Certain personality traits are also connected to creativity. According to the big five theory of personality , human personality is made up of five broad dimensions:

• Conscientiousness
• Extroversion
• Agreeableness
• Neuroticism

Each dimension represents a continuum, so for each trait, people can be either high, low, or somewhere between the two. 

Openness to experience is a big five trait that is correlated with creativity. People who are high on this trait are more open to new experiences and ideas. They tend to seek novelty and enjoy trying new things, meeting new people, and considering different perspectives. 

However, other personality traits and characteristics can also play a role in creativity. For example, intrinsic motivation , curiosity, and persistence can all determine how much people tend to pursue new ideas and look for novel solutions.

While some people seem to come by creativity naturally, there are things that you can do to increase your own creativity .

Some strategies that can be helpful for improving creativity include: 

• Being open to new ideas : Openness to experience is the personality trait that is most closely correlated with creativity. Focus on being willing to try new things and explore new ideas.
• Be persistent : Creativity is not just about sitting around waiting for inspiration to strike. Creative people spend time working to produce new things. Their efforts don't always work out, but continued practice builds skills that contribute to creativity.
• Make time for creativity : In addition to being persistent, you also need to devote time specifically toward creative efforts. This might mean setting aside a little time each day or each week specifically to brainstorm, practice, learn, or create.

Csikszentmihalyi has noted that creativity requires both a fresh perspective combined with discipline. As Thomas Edison famously suggested, genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

A Word From Verywell

Creativity is a complex subject and researchers are still working to understand exactly what factors contribute to the ability to think creatively. While some people seem to come by creativity naturally, there are also things you can do to build and strengthen this ability.

The late Maya Angelou also suggested that thinking creativity helps foster even greater creativity, "The important thing is to use it. You can’t use up creativity. The more you use it, the more you have," she suggested.

Creativity does not reside in one single area of the brain; many areas are actually involved. The frontal cortex of the brain is responsible for many of the functions that play a part in creativity.

However, other parts of the brain impact creativity as well, including the hippocampus (which is important to memory) and the basal ganglia (which is essential in the memory of how to perform tasks). The white matter of the brain, which keeps the various parts of the brain connected, is also essential for creative thinking.

Research suggests that people can train their brains to be more creative. Engaging in cognitively stimulating tasks, going on a walk, finding sources of inspiration, and meditating are a few strategies that may help boost creative thinking abilities. 

The "big five" are the broad categories of traits that make up personality. The five dimensions are openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Each trait involves a range between two extremes, and people can be either at each end or somewhere in the middle.

American Psychological Association. The science of creativity .

Csikszentmihalyi M. Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention .   New York: HarperCollins; 2013.

Kaufman J, Beghetto R. Beyond big and little: The four C model of creativity .  Review of General Psychology . 2009;13(1):1-12. doi:10.1037/a0013688

Kaufman SB, Quilty LC, Grazioplene RG, et al. Openness to experience and intellect differentially predict creative achievement in the arts and sciences .  J Pers . 2016;84(2):248-258. doi:10.1111/jopy.12156

Elliot J.  Conversations With Maya Angelou . Jackson, Miss.: University Press of Mississippi; 1998.

Cavdarbasha D, Kurczek J. Connecting the dots: your brain and creativity . Front Young Minds . 2017;5:19. doi:10.3389/frym.2017.00019

Sun J, Chen Q, Zhang Q, Li Y, Li H, Wei D, Yang W, Qiu J.  Training your brain to be more creative: brain functional and structural changes induced by divergent thinking training .  Hum Brain Mapp . 2016;37(10):3375-87. doi:10.1002/hbm.23246

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

• Business Essentials
• Leadership & Management
• Credential of Leadership, Impact, and Management in Business (CLIMB)
• Entrepreneurship & Innovation
• *New* Digital Transformation
• Finance & Accounting
• Business in Society
• For Organizations
• Support Portal
• Media Coverage
• Founding Donors
• Leadership Team

• Harvard Business School →
• HBS Online →
• Business Insights →

Business Insights

Harvard Business School Online's Business Insights Blog provides the career insights you need to achieve your goals and gain confidence in your business skills.

• Career Development
• Communication
• Decision-Making
• Earning Your MBA
• Negotiation
• News & Events
• Productivity
• Staff Spotlight
• Student Profiles
• Work-Life Balance
• Alternative Investments
• Business Analytics
• Business Strategy
• Business and Climate Change
• Design Thinking and Innovation
• Digital Marketing Strategy
• Disruptive Strategy
• Economics for Managers
• Entrepreneurship Essentials
• Financial Accounting
• Global Business
• Launching Tech Ventures
• Leadership Principles
• Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability
• Leading with Finance
• Management Essentials
• Negotiation Mastery
• Organizational Leadership
• Power and Influence for Positive Impact
• Strategy Execution
• Sustainable Business Strategy
• Sustainable Investing
• Winning with Digital Platforms

What Is Creative Problem-Solving & Why Is It Important?

• 01 Feb 2022

One of the biggest hindrances to innovation is complacency—it can be more comfortable to do what you know than venture into the unknown. Business leaders can overcome this barrier by mobilizing creative team members and providing space to innovate.

There are several tools you can use to encourage creativity in the workplace. Creative problem-solving is one of them, which facilitates the development of innovative solutions to difficult problems.

Here’s an overview of creative problem-solving and why it’s important in business.

Access your free e-book today.

What Is Creative Problem-Solving?

Research is necessary when solving a problem. But there are situations where a problem’s specific cause is difficult to pinpoint. This can occur when there’s not enough time to narrow down the problem’s source or there are differing opinions about its root cause.

In such cases, you can use creative problem-solving , which allows you to explore potential solutions regardless of whether a problem has been defined.

Creative problem-solving is less structured than other innovation processes and encourages exploring open-ended solutions. It also focuses on developing new perspectives and fostering creativity in the workplace . Its benefits include:

• Finding creative solutions to complex problems : User research can insufficiently illustrate a situation’s complexity. While other innovation processes rely on this information, creative problem-solving can yield solutions without it.
• Adapting to change : Business is constantly changing, and business leaders need to adapt. Creative problem-solving helps overcome unforeseen challenges and find solutions to unconventional problems.
• Fueling innovation and growth : In addition to solutions, creative problem-solving can spark innovative ideas that drive company growth. These ideas can lead to new product lines, services, or a modified operations structure that improves efficiency.

Creative problem-solving is traditionally based on the following key principles :

1. Balance Divergent and Convergent Thinking

Creative problem-solving uses two primary tools to find solutions: divergence and convergence. Divergence generates ideas in response to a problem, while convergence narrows them down to a shortlist. It balances these two practices and turns ideas into concrete solutions.

2. Reframe Problems as Questions

By framing problems as questions, you shift from focusing on obstacles to solutions. This provides the freedom to brainstorm potential ideas.

3. Defer Judgment of Ideas

When brainstorming, it can be natural to reject or accept ideas right away. Yet, immediate judgments interfere with the idea generation process. Even ideas that seem implausible can turn into outstanding innovations upon further exploration and development.

4. Focus on "Yes, And" Instead of "No, But"

Using negative words like "no" discourages creative thinking. Instead, use positive language to build and maintain an environment that fosters the development of creative and innovative ideas.

Creative Problem-Solving and Design Thinking

Whereas creative problem-solving facilitates developing innovative ideas through a less structured workflow, design thinking takes a far more organized approach.

Design thinking is a human-centered, solutions-based process that fosters the ideation and development of solutions. In the online course Design Thinking and Innovation , Harvard Business School Dean Srikant Datar leverages a four-phase framework to explain design thinking.

The four stages are:

• Clarify: The clarification stage allows you to empathize with the user and identify problems. Observations and insights are informed by thorough research. Findings are then reframed as problem statements or questions.
• Ideate: Ideation is the process of coming up with innovative ideas. The divergence of ideas involved with creative problem-solving is a major focus.
• Develop: In the development stage, ideas evolve into experiments and tests. Ideas converge and are explored through prototyping and open critique.
• Implement: Implementation involves continuing to test and experiment to refine the solution and encourage its adoption.

Creative problem-solving primarily operates in the ideate phase of design thinking but can be applied to others. This is because design thinking is an iterative process that moves between the stages as ideas are generated and pursued. This is normal and encouraged, as innovation requires exploring multiple ideas.

Creative Problem-Solving Tools

While there are many useful tools in the creative problem-solving process, here are three you should know:

Creating a Problem Story

One way to innovate is by creating a story about a problem to understand how it affects users and what solutions best fit their needs. Here are the steps you need to take to use this tool properly.

1. Identify a UDP

Create a problem story to identify the undesired phenomena (UDP). For example, consider a company that produces printers that overheat. In this case, the UDP is "our printers overheat."

2. Move Forward in Time

To move forward in time, ask: “Why is this a problem?” For example, minor damage could be one result of the machines overheating. In more extreme cases, printers may catch fire. Don't be afraid to create multiple problem stories if you think of more than one UDP.

3. Move Backward in Time

To move backward in time, ask: “What caused this UDP?” If you can't identify the root problem, think about what typically causes the UDP to occur. For the overheating printers, overuse could be a cause.

Following the three-step framework above helps illustrate a clear problem story:

• The printer is overused.
• The printer overheats.
• The printer breaks down.

You can extend the problem story in either direction if you think of additional cause-and-effect relationships.

4. Break the Chains

By this point, you’ll have multiple UDP storylines. Take two that are similar and focus on breaking the chains connecting them. This can be accomplished through inversion or neutralization.

• Inversion: Inversion changes the relationship between two UDPs so the cause is the same but the effect is the opposite. For example, if the UDP is "the more X happens, the more likely Y is to happen," inversion changes the equation to "the more X happens, the less likely Y is to happen." Using the printer example, inversion would consider: "What if the more a printer is used, the less likely it’s going to overheat?" Innovation requires an open mind. Just because a solution initially seems unlikely doesn't mean it can't be pursued further or spark additional ideas.
• Neutralization: Neutralization completely eliminates the cause-and-effect relationship between X and Y. This changes the above equation to "the more or less X happens has no effect on Y." In the case of the printers, neutralization would rephrase the relationship to "the more or less a printer is used has no effect on whether it overheats."

Even if creating a problem story doesn't provide a solution, it can offer useful context to users’ problems and additional ideas to be explored. Given that divergence is one of the fundamental practices of creative problem-solving, it’s a good idea to incorporate it into each tool you use.

Brainstorming

Brainstorming is a tool that can be highly effective when guided by the iterative qualities of the design thinking process. It involves openly discussing and debating ideas and topics in a group setting. This facilitates idea generation and exploration as different team members consider the same concept from multiple perspectives.

Hosting brainstorming sessions can result in problems, such as groupthink or social loafing. To combat this, leverage a three-step brainstorming method involving divergence and convergence :

• Have each group member come up with as many ideas as possible and write them down to ensure the brainstorming session is productive.
• Continue the divergence of ideas by collectively sharing and exploring each idea as a group. The goal is to create a setting where new ideas are inspired by open discussion.
• Begin the convergence of ideas by narrowing them down to a few explorable options. There’s no "right number of ideas." Don't be afraid to consider exploring all of them, as long as you have the resources to do so.

Alternate Worlds

The alternate worlds tool is an empathetic approach to creative problem-solving. It encourages you to consider how someone in another world would approach your situation.

For example, if you’re concerned that the printers you produce overheat and catch fire, consider how a different industry would approach the problem. How would an automotive expert solve it? How would a firefighter?

Be creative as you consider and research alternate worlds. The purpose is not to nail down a solution right away but to continue the ideation process through diverging and exploring ideas.

Continue Developing Your Skills

Whether you’re an entrepreneur, marketer, or business leader, learning the ropes of design thinking can be an effective way to build your skills and foster creativity and innovation in any setting.

If you're ready to develop your design thinking and creative problem-solving skills, explore Design Thinking and Innovation , one of our online entrepreneurship and innovation courses. If you aren't sure which course is the right fit, download our free course flowchart to determine which best aligns with your goals.

About the Author

Creative Problem Solving Explained

Creative problem solving is based on the belief that everyone is creative and can enhance their creative abilities with discipline.

Creative problem solving is a deliberate approach to solving complex problems. While creativity is an innate part of creative problem solving, the process uses a variety of steps and strategies designed to bring to the table solutions that are actionable and effective.

It’s a proven approach to use innovative ideas and views of a problem to develop viable options that can be brought to bear on the challenge. It can also redefine the problem, coming at it from a new perspective that results in an effective solution.

It also has powerful applications for addressing your greatest workflow challenges. Using creative problem solving lets you identify, refine, iterate, and select the best options to improve workflows using new technologies like automation.

Fundamentals of Creative Problem Solving

Many people hear “creative problem solving” and think it’s about brainstorming answers. However, creative problem solving is about much more. Creative answers to problems do not just appear magically but are the result of deliberate processes.

To work well, creative problem solving is rooted in two assumptions:

• Everyone is creative in some manner
• You can learn and enhance someone’s creative abilities

Those are powerful assumptions. They help to dispel the idea that there are “creative types” and “noncreative types.” All participants can be empowered to engage in the process by supporting and reinforcing the innate presence of creativity.

Alex Osborn helped define and formalize the idea of creative problem solving. He believed that two types of thinking are critical to creative problem solving.

Convergent Thinking focuses on the norms of problem solving and focuses on finding a singular solution that's well defined. Divergent Thinking is the opposite, with multiple options being considered after fostering creativity as part of the problem solving process.

Both play a role and have value in problem solving. Typically, both are used as part of the process.

For example, divergent thinking can create multiple ideas for possible solutions. Convergent thinking can whittle those down to a few or one idea to implement.

Principles of Creative Problem Solving

Here is a closer look at some key tenets of creative problem solving.

Reframe the Problem as a Question

Begin by restating the problem as a question or series of open-ended questions. The problem becomes more approachable with multiple possibilities available, and participants can be invited into the process.

By contrast, problems presented as declarative statements are often met by silence. These statements often lead to a limited response or no response at all.

There's a shift when asked as a question rather than a statement. The challenge is not an obstacle but rather an opportunity to solve. It opens the door to brainstorming and ideation.

Suspend Judgment

All too often, ideas that are generated in problem solving spaces are quickly dismissed. This instantaneous judgment has short- and long-term impacts.

First, it immediately dismisses the presented idea and the presenter. What’s more, the dismissal can have a chilling effect on others, stymieing the idea generation process.

There’s a time when judging presented ideas – when convergent thinking is at play. In the beginning, immediate judgment should be suspended.

Even the most implausible ideas presented at the beginning of the process may play a role later as long as they are still considered viable. If poisoned early in the process, they will unlikely be given any value later.

‘Yes, And’ Instead of ‘No, But’

The word “no” can have a similarly stifling effect on the creative problem solving work. "But," whether preceded by "yes” or "no," can close the conversation. It acts to negate everything that has come before.

You can create and maintain a more positive, encouraging tone using "yes, and" language instead of "no, but" language.

More positive language helps build on previously generated ideas. It creates an additive approach to the process instead of a dismissive one.

One Approach to Creative Problem Solving

Having a clearly defined approach to solving problems helps participants understand the scope and scale of the work. While multiple approaches can be used, here is one way to frame the engagement.

1. Clarify the Problem

The most critical step to creative problem solving is identifying and articulating the problem or goal. While it may appear to be easy to do so, often, what people think the problem is is not the true problem.

The critical step is to break down the problem, analyze it and understand the core issue.

One approach is to use the "five whys." Start by asking yourself, "Why is this a problem?" Once you have the answer, ask, "Why else?" four more times.

This iterative process can often refine and revise to unearth the true issue that needs to be addressed. You can ask other questions to further refine, such as:

• Why is this problem important to us?
• What is stopping us from solving this problem?
• Where will we be differently 6-12 months after solving the problem?

2. Define Evaluation Criteria

The creative problem solving process is likely to generate many potential ideas. It’s important to establish the process by which the ideas will be evaluated and, if selected, deployed.

These processes may have important factors, such as budget, staffing and time. The process needs to address what you seek to accomplish, avoid and act on. The process should be articulated to the participants in the problem solving and those affected by the outcomes.

3. Research the Problem

You want a clear understanding of the problem, which may require lots or a little research. Understand the common problem, how others may deal with it, and potential solutions.

4. Develop Creative Challenges

Once the problem is articulated and researched, it’s time to frame them. “Creative challenges” are simple and brief, question-based concepts. For example, "How can we …" or “What would it mean if …" These challenges will form the basis of your problem solving. They should be broadly focused and not include any evaluation criteria.

5. Create Ideas

Idea generation is what most people envision when they think of brainstorming or solving problems.

Start by taking just one of the creative challenges. Give yourself or the team some time to build at least 50 ideas. That may seem like a lot, but it can spark conversation and construction.

The ideas may or may not solve the presented challenge. By capturing them on paper or a computer (many programs support idea generation), you can have them readily available to organize, expand on, evaluate, and flesh out.

Be sure to use the following rules in this stage:

• Write down every idea
• Ensure no one critiques presented ideas
• Don’t stop until you’ve reached 50
• Present the full list of ideas and then ask if anyone has anything else to add
• If you have time, sleep on the ideas and return the next day. Try to add 25 more.

6. Sort and Assess Ideas

Take a break and reconvene to look at the ideas using the evaluation criteria. Combine ideas, then use the evaluation criteria to whittle down the list.

Some ideas may be implementable immediately. Others may need further analysis to prioritize.

7. Create a Plan

When you have your shortlist, create an action plan that outlines the steps necessary to implement the ideas. By breaking down the ideas into actionable steps, you’ll be better able to put them into play and see the results.

Problem Solving Your Workflows

When it comes to coming up with creative answers to your workflow problems, we have a variety of resources for you listed below. In addition, we're always interested in providing objective, experienced ideas through our Customer Success and Services teams.

• Reframe Your Business Processes
• Process Redesign Tips
• What is Business Process Re-Engineering?
• Process Improvement Examples
• https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/what-is-creative-problem-solving
• https://www.mindtools.com/a2j08rt/creative-problem-solving
• https://www.creativeeducationfoundation.org/what-is-cps/
• https://innovationmanagement.se/2010/06/02/the-basics-of-creative-problem-solving-cps/
• https://asana.com/resources/convergent-vs-divergent

Tags creativity   problem solving   process improvement  

Categories Business Ideas   Workflow Ideas   Project Management  

Marketing the world's best workflow automation software and drinking way too much coffee. Connect with me on LinkedIn at  https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelraia/

Subscribe to Receive the Latest Workflow Automation Tips

Subscribe →

Business Ideas

Customer corner, department focus, employee spotlight, flowchart friday, industry focus, productivity points, productivity tips, project management, using integrify, workflow ideas.

• school Campus Bookshelves
• menu_book Bookshelves
• perm_media Learning Objects
• login Login
• how_to_reg Request Instructor Account
• hub Instructor Commons
• Download Page (PDF)
• Download Full Book (PDF)
• Periodic Table
• Physics Constants
• Scientific Calculator
• Reference & Cite
• Tools expand_more
• Readability

selected template will load here

This action is not available.

7.5: What Are Intelligence and Creativity?

• Last updated
• Save as PDF
• Page ID 628

Learning Objectives

• Define intelligence
• Explain the triarchic theory of intelligence
• Identify the difference between intelligence theories
• Explain emotional intelligence

A four-and-a-half-year-old boy sits at the kitchen table with his father, who is reading a new story aloud to him. He turns the page to continue reading, but before he can begin, the boy says, “Wait, Daddy!” He points to the words on the new page and reads aloud, “Go, Pig! Go!” The father stops and looks at his son. “Can you read that?” he asks. “Yes, Daddy!” And he points to the words and reads again, “Go, Pig! Go!”

This father was not actively teaching his son to read, even though the child constantly asked questions about letters, words, and symbols that they saw everywhere: in the car, in the store, on the television. The dad wondered about what else his son might understand and decided to try an experiment. Grabbing a sheet of blank paper, he wrote several simple words in a list: mom, dad, dog, bird, bed, truck, car, tree. He put the list down in front of the boy and asked him to read the words. “Mom, dad, dog, bird, bed, truck, car, tree,” he read, slowing down to carefully pronounce bird and truck. Then, “Did I do it, Daddy?” “You sure did! That is very good.” The father gave his little boy a warm hug and continued reading the story about the pig, all the while wondering if his son’s abilities were an indication of exceptional intelligence or simply a normal pattern of linguistic development. Like the father in this example, psychologists have wondered what constitutes intelligence and how it can be measured.

Classifying Intelligence

What exactly is intelligence? The way that researchers have defined the concept of intelligence has been modified many times since the birth of psychology. British psychologist Charles Spearman believed intelligence consisted of one general factor, called \(g\) , which could be measured and compared among individuals. Spearman focused on the commonalities among various intellectual abilities and demphasized what made each unique. Long before modern psychology developed, however, ancient philosophers, such as Aristotle, held a similar view (Cianciolo & Sternberg, 2004).

Others psychologists believe that instead of a single factor, intelligence is a collection of distinct abilities. In the 1940s, Raymond Cattell proposed a theory of intelligence that divided general intelligence into two components: crystallized intelligence and fluid intelligence (Cattell, 1963). Crystallized intelligence is characterized as acquired knowledge and the ability to retrieve it. When you learn, remember, and recall information, you are using crystallized intelligence. You use crystallized intelligence all the time in your coursework by demonstrating that you have mastered the information covered in the course. Fluid intelligence encompasses the ability to see complex relationships and solve problems. Navigating your way home after being detoured onto an unfamiliar route because of road construction would draw upon your fluid intelligence. Fluid intelligence helps you tackle complex, abstract challenges in your daily life, whereas crystallized intelligence helps you overcome concrete, straightforward problems (Cattell, 1963).

Other theorists and psychologists believe that intelligence should be defined in more practical terms. For example, what types of behaviors help you get ahead in life? Which skills promote success? Think about this for a moment. Being able to recite all \(44\) presidents of the United States in order is an excellent party trick, but will knowing this make you a better person?

Robert Sternberg developed another theory of intelligence, which he titled the triarchic theory of intelligence because it sees intelligence as comprised of three parts (Sternberg, 1988): practical, creative, and analytical intelligence.

Practical intelligence , as proposed by Sternberg, is sometimes compared to “street smarts.” Being practical means you find solutions that work in your everyday life by applying knowledge based on your experiences. This type of intelligence appears to be separate from traditional understanding of IQ; individuals who score high in practical intelligence may or may not have comparable scores in creative and analytical intelligence (Sternberg, 1988).

This story about the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings illustrates both high and low practical intelligences. During the incident, one student left her class to go get a soda in an adjacent building. She planned to return to class, but when she returned to her building after getting her soda, she saw that the door she used to leave was now chained shut from the inside. Instead of thinking about why there was a chain around the door handles, she went to her class’s window and crawled back into the room. She thus potentially exposed herself to the gunman. Thankfully, she was not shot. On the other hand, a pair of students was walking on campus when they heard gunshots nearby. One friend said, “Let’s go check it out and see what is going on.” The other student said, “No way, we need to run away from the gunshots.” They did just that. As a result, both avoided harm. The student who crawled through the window demonstrated some creative intelligence but did not use common sense. She would have low practical intelligence. The student who encouraged his friend to run away from the sound of gunshots would have much higher practical intelligence.

Analytical intelligence is closely aligned with academic problem solving and computations. Sternberg says that analytical intelligence is demonstrated by an ability to analyze, evaluate, judge, compare, and contrast. When reading a classic novel for literature class, for example, it is usually necessary to compare the motives of the main characters of the book or analyze the historical context of the story. In a science course such as anatomy, you must study the processes by which the body uses various minerals in different human systems. In developing an understanding of this topic, you are using analytical intelligence. When solving a challenging math problem, you would apply analytical intelligence to analyze different aspects of the problem and then solve it section by section.

Creative intelligence is marked by inventing or imagining a solution to a problem or situation. Creativity in this realm can include finding a novel solution to an unexpected problem or producing a beautiful work of art or a well-developed short story. Imagine for a moment that you are camping in the woods with some friends and realize that you’ve forgotten your camp coffee pot. The person in your group who figures out a way to successfully brew coffee for everyone would be credited as having higher creative intelligence.

Multiple Intelligences Theory was developed by Howard Gardner, a Harvard psychologist and former student of Erik Erikson. Gardner’s theory, which has been refined for more than \(30\) years, is a more recent development among theories of intelligence. In Gardner’s theory, each person possesses at least eight intelligences. Among these eight intelligences, a person typically excels in some and falters in others (Gardner, 1983). The Table below describes each type of intelligence.

Gardner’s theory is relatively new and needs additional research to better establish empirical support. At the same time, his ideas challenge the traditional idea of intelligence to include a wider variety of abilities, although it has been suggested that Gardner simply relabeled what other theorists called “cognitive styles” as “intelligences” (Morgan, 1996). Furthermore, developing traditional measures of Gardner’s intelligences is extremely difficult (Furnham, 2009; Gardner & Moran, 2006; Klein, 1997).

Gardner’s inter- and intrapersonal intelligences are often combined into a single type: emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence encompasses the ability to understand the emotions of yourself and others, show empathy, understand social relationships and cues, and regulate your own emotions and respond in culturally appropriate ways (Parker, Saklofske, & Stough, 2009). People with high emotional intelligence typically have well-developed social skills. Some researchers, including Daniel Goleman, the author of Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More than IQ , argue that emotional intelligence is a better predictor of success than traditional intelligence (Goleman, 1995). However, emotional intelligence has been widely debated, with researchers pointing out inconsistencies in how it is defined and described, as well as questioning results of studies on a subject that is difficulty to measure and study emperically (Locke, 2005; Mayer, Salovey, & Caruso, 2004)

Intelligence can also have different meanings and values in different cultures. If you live on a small island, where most people get their food by fishing from boats, it would be important to know how to fish and how to repair a boat. If you were an exceptional angler, your peers would probably consider you intelligent. If you were also skilled at repairing boats, your intelligence might be known across the whole island. Think about your own family’s culture. What values are important for Latino families? Italian families? In Irish families, hospitality and telling an entertaining story are marks of the culture. If you are a skilled storyteller, other members of Irish culture are likely to consider you intelligent.

Some cultures place a high value on working together as a collective. In these cultures, the importance of the group supersedes the importance of individual achievement. When you visit such a culture, how well you relate to the values of that culture exemplifies your cultural intelligence , sometimes referred to as cultural competence.

Creativity is the ability to generate, create, or discover new ideas, solutions, and possibilities. Very creative people often have intense knowledge about something, work on it for years, look at novel solutions, seek out the advice and help of other experts, and take risks. Although creativity is often associated with the arts, it is actually a vital form of intelligence that drives people in many disciplines to discover something new. Creativity can be found in every area of life, from the way you decorate your residence to a new way of understanding how a cell works.

Creativity is often assessed as a function of one’s ability to engage in divergent thinking . Divergent thinking can be described as thinking “outside the box;” it allows an individual to arrive at unique, multiple solutions to a given problem. In contrast, convergent thinking describes the ability to provide a correct or well-established answer or solution to a problem (Cropley, 2006; Gilford, 1967).

EVERYDAY CONNECTION: Creativity

Dr. Tom Steitz, the Sterling Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at Yale University, has spent his career looking at the structure and specific aspects of RNA molecules and how their interactions cold help produce antibiotics and ward off diseases. As a result of his lifetime of work, he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2009. He wrote, “Looking back over the development and progress of my career in science, I am reminded how vitally important good mentorship is in the early stages of one's career development and constant face-to-face conversations, debate and discussions with colleagues at all stages of research. Outstanding discoveries, insights and developments do not happen in a vacuum” (Steitz, 2010, para. 39). Based on Steitz’s comment, it becomes clear that someone’s creativity, although an individual strength, benefits from interactions with others. Think of a time when your creativity was sparked by a conversation with a friend or classmate. How did that person influence you and what problem did you solve using creativity?

Intelligence is a complex characteristic of cognition. Many theories have been developed to explain what intelligence is and how it works. Sternberg generated his triarchic theory of intelligence, whereas Gardner posits that intelligence is comprised of many factors. Still others focus on the importance of emotional intelligence. Finally, creativity seems to be a facet of intelligence, but it is extremely difficult to measure objectively.

Contributors and Attributions

Rose M. Spielman with many significant contributors. The OpenStax name, OpenStax logo, OpenStax book covers, OpenStax CNX name, and OpenStax CNX logo are not subject to the creative commons license and may not be reproduced without the prior and express written consent of Rice University. For questions regarding this license, please contact  [email protected] .Textbook content produced by OpenStax College is licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0  license. Download for free at http://cnx.org/contents/[email protected] .

• Appointments

• Resume Reviews

• Undergraduates
• PhDs & Postdocs
• Faculty & Staff
• Prospective Students
• Online Students
• Career Champions
• I’m Exploring
• Architecture & Design
• Education & Academia
• Engineering
• Fashion, Retail & Consumer Products
• Fellowships & Gap Year
• Fine Arts, Performing Arts, & Music
• Government, Law & Public Policy
• Healthcare & Public Health
• International Relations & NGOs
• Life & Physical Sciences
• Marketing, Advertising & Public Relations
• Media, Journalism & Entertainment
• Non-Profits
• Pre-Health, Pre-Law and Pre-Grad
• Real Estate, Accounting, & Insurance
• Social Work & Human Services
• Sports & Hospitality
• Startups, Entrepreneurship & Freelancing
• Sustainability, Energy & Conservation
• Technology, Data & Analytics
• DACA and Undocumented Students
• First Generation and Low Income Students
• International Students
• LGBTQ+ Students
• Transfer Students
• Students of Color
• Students with Disabilities
• Explore Careers & Industries
• Make Connections & Network
• Search for a Job or Internship
• Write a Resume/CV
• Write a Cover Letter
• Engage with Employers
• Research Salaries & Negotiate Offers
• Find Funding
• Develop Professional and Leadership Skills
• Apply to Graduate School
• Apply to Health Professions School
• Apply to Law School
• Self-Assessment
• Experiences
• Post-Graduate
• Jobs & Internships
• Career Fairs
• For Employers
• Meet the Team
• Peer Career Advisors
• Social Media
• Career Services Policies
• Walk-Ins & Pop-Ins
• Strategic Plan 2022-2025

What Is Creative Thinking? Definition and Examples

• Share This: Share What Is Creative Thinking? Definition and Examples on Facebook Share What Is Creative Thinking? Definition and Examples on LinkedIn Share What Is Creative Thinking? Definition and Examples on X

What Is Creative Thinking? Definition and Examples was originally published on Forage .

Creative thinking is the ability to come up with unique, original solutions. Also known as creative problem-solving, creative thinking is a valuable and marketable soft skill in a wide variety of careers. In this guide, you’ll learn: 

Creative Thinking Definition

Creative thinking examples, how to include creative thinking skills in a job application, 4 ways to improve creative thinking, why is creative thinking important.

Creative thinking is all about developing innovative solutions to problems. Creative thinkers brainstorm not only a large number of ideas but also a variety and range of them. 

Once they’ve brainstormed their ideas, creative thinkers will experiment with them. They look at ideas from multiple perspectives and examine how their solutions fit into the scope of what they’re working on. Creative thinkers aren’t afraid to take risks and try new ideas. In fact, this ability to develop, test, and implement original solutions makes them a valuable asset to just about any workplace. At work, creative thinking may look like:

• Holding an interactive brainstorm to gather initial thoughts on a project
• Evaluating a current process and offering suggestions on how to improve it
• Researching other ways to market a product and leading experiments on new marketing channels
• Developing an innovative way to reach out to prospective clients
• Identifying a unique opportunity to promote the company brand and developing a strategy to do so  

Creative thinking includes the process of innovative problem-solving — from analyzing the facts to brainstorming to working with others. Examples of these skills include analytical skills, innovation, and collaboration.

Analytical Skills

Analytical skills are problem-solving skills that help you sort through facts, data, and information to develop rational solutions. These skills aid you in the first part of the creative thinking process as you brainstorm and start to generate ideas. 

Analytical skills include:

• Data analysis
• Forecasting
• Interpreting
• Communication

Innovation is the ability to come up with something new; however, you don’t need to develop the first flying car to be an innovative thinker. “Something new” at work might mean a method you haven’t tried before or experimenting with an unfamiliar process. Innovators in the workplace aren’t afraid to step away from tradition and explore something original, even if it might fail. 

Innovation skills include:

• Risk-taking
• Brainstorming
• Critical thinking

Showcase new skills

Build the confidence and practical skills that employers are looking for with Forage virtual work experiences.

Sign up for free

Collaboration

Creative thinking doesn’t have to happen alone; you might have your most creative ideas when bouncing your work off others. Collaboration skills ensure you consider multiple perspectives and ways of thinking when you develop and refine ideas.

Collaboration skills include:

• Written and verbal communication
• Active listening
• Inclusivity

While creative thinking is a skill employers might look for, you don’t necessarily need to write “creative thinking” on your resume to show you have this skill.

“Think of your best mental strengths,” Laura Fontenot, resume writing expert, ACRW, and CPRW, recommends. “Are you a great problem solver? Do you understand how to phrase things differently? Can you learn a new skill quickly? Those questions can help you find great words for the resume. Consider adding things like problem-solving, intuition, collaboration, fast learner, organized, or communication.”

>>MORE: Need help crafting the perfect resume? Check out Forage’s Resume Writing Masterclass .

You can show these skills outside of your resume in creative ways — including your LinkedIn profile.

“Early professionals can make creative thinking a part of their professional brand by explicitly adding creative thinking or creative problem solving to their list of skills on their resumes and LinkedIn profiles — this will help with ATS optimizations,” Alejandra Garcia, manager, alumni college and career success at Code2College and Forage content development partner, advises. “They can also consider adding projects or an online portfolio website link to their resume and LinkedIn where they can showcase projects they’ve worked on that demonstrate their problem-solving skills.”

In the interview , make sure you can describe your workflow and process for these projects. Elaborate how you brainstormed ideas, what range of ideas you had, how you tested and experimented, and how you decided on a final solution.

1. Put Yourself in a Box

Creative thinking is about “thinking outside the box,” but putting limitations on your problem-solving can help you think more freely and innovatively. For example, if someone tells you to make dinner, you may struggle to come up with a meal you don’t always cook. Yet if they ask you to make a hot dinner with three specific ingredients and two spices, you’ll more likely come up with something original. 

Putting yourself inside a box, whether that’s by telling yourself you need to include three charts in your presentation or giving yourself a strict word count for an article, can help expand your thinking.

2. Switch up Your Routine

Routine can be a great productivity booster, but it also can get in the way of your creativity. So, switch up your routine for one project, day, or even an hour. This can be something as small as where you’re physically sitting when you do your work or something as big as your process for approaching projects. Challenging yourself to do something different will help you find creative ways to adapt to your new environment.

3. Challenge What’s Currently Working

Think about how you might expand or improve upon a current process. What would you do if you had more resources, whether that’s time, money, or another expert? What would you do if you had fewer resources? If this project was taking place at a different time of year? If the target audience was different? Imagining these different potential scenarios will force you to problem-solve and adjust for various (very possible!) circumstances. 

4. Find Inspiration

Creative thinking doesn’t happen in a bubble. It’s vital to ask for others’ opinions, ideas, and feedback. Creative thinkers consider multiple perspectives and are curious about how others think. Ask your colleague about their work processes, whether it’s how they research for a client deliverable or how they approach meeting an external buyer. 

A soft skill like creative thinking will always be valuable to employers, whether you’re looking for a marketing job or trying to land a career in finance . Employers need employees who can develop and experiment with new ideas to help them solve complex problems.

“Many employers seek candidates that are analytical and outside-the-box thinkers which are iterations of creative thinking skills,” Garcia says. “Thus, creative thinking, creative problem solving, innovative thinking, and analytical skills are all valuable in the current workplace — these skills are especially important in our ever-changing workplaces with new emerging technologies.”

Fontenot agrees. “The ability to navigate new challenges quickly can benefit any workplace!” she says. “The current world of work is fast-paced, technically driven, and constantly changing. Being intuitive, creative, driven, and a problem solver are key.”

Are you looking to level up your professional skills? Check out Two Sigma’s Professional Skills Development Virtual Experience Program to learn more non-technical skills for the workplace.

Image credit: Canva

The post What Is Creative Thinking? Definition and Examples appeared first on Forage .

Cultivating creative problem solvers: the PBL style

• Published: 28 April 2015
• Volume 16 , pages 237–246, ( 2015 )

Cite this article

• Woei Hung 1  

1036 Accesses

7 Citations

2 Altmetric

Explore all metrics

After decades of research, we now know that creativity is a multidimensional construct that involves variables from the domains of personality, environment, and cognition. A construct with such level of complexity, as we know from past research, cannot be effectively learned through traditional lecture-based instruction. Rather, the formation of this type of ability is a cultivation process. Problem-based learning (PBL) is an instructional method that holds promise for cultivating students’ creativity. The characteristics of PBL provide well-aligned instructional affordance for not only fostering students’ development of necessary ability, knowledge, and skills for creativity to occur, but also providing a learning environment that supports the cultivation process. In this paper, an analysis of the characteristics of creativity as well as a description of the main features of PBL will be discussed. Furthermore, the details of the alignment between PBL’s affordance and the characteristics of creativity will also be provided.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price includes VAT (Russian Federation)

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Rent this article via DeepDyve

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Creativity and Problem-Based Learning (PBL): A Neglected Relation

The role of problem-based learning in developing creative expertise

Shelagh A. Gallagher

People, Passions, Problems: The Role of Creative Exemplars in Teaching for Creativity

Albanese, M. A., & Mitchell, S. (1993). Problem-based learning: A review of literature on its outcomes and implementation issues. Academic Medicine, 68 , 52–81.

Article   Google Scholar  

Barron, F., & Harrington, D. M. (1981). Creativity, intelligence, and personality. Annual Review of Psychology, 32 , 439–476.

Barrows, H. S. (1986). A taxonomy of problem-based learning methods. Medical Education, 20 , 481–486.

Barrows, H. S. (1996). Problem-based learning in medicine and beyond: A brief overview. In L. Wilkerson & W. H. Gijselaers (Eds.), Bring problem-based learning to higher education: Theory and practice (pp. 3–12). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Google Scholar  

Barrows, H. S., & Kelson, A. (1993). Problem-based learning in secondary education and the problem-based learning institute (monograph) . Springfield, IL: Southern Illinois University School of Medicine.

Barrows, H. S., & Myers, A. C. (1993). Problem - based learning in secondary schools [unpublished monograph]. Springfield, IL: Problem-based learning Institute, Lanphier High School, and Southern Illinois University Medical School.

Barrows, H. S., & Tamblyn, R. M. (1980). Problem-based learning: An approach to medical education . New York, NY: Springer.

Berkson, L. (1993). Problem-based learning: Have the expectations been met? Academic Medicine, 68 , S79–S88.

Boden, M. A. (1994). What is creativity. In M. A. Boden (Ed.), Dimensions of creativity (pp. 75–117). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Cattell, R. B. (1971). Abilities: Their structure, growth, and action . Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.

Colliver, J. A. (2000). Effectiveness of problem-based learning curricula: Research and theory. Academic Medicine, 75 (3), 259–266.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1988). Society, culture, and person: A systems view of creativity. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), The nature of creativity (pp. 325–339). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1999). Implications of a systems perspective for the study of creativity. In R. Sternberg (Ed.), Handbook of creativity (pp. 313–335). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2006). A systems perspective on creativity. In J. Henry (Ed.), Creative management and development (pp. 3–17). London: Sage.

Chapter   Google Scholar  

Derry, S. J. (1989). Strategy and expertise in solving word problems. In C. B. McCormick, G. Miller, & M. Pressley (Eds.), Cognitive strategy research: From basic research to educational applications . New York, NY: Springer-Verlag.

Dochy, F., Sefers, M., den Bossche, Van, & Gijbels, D. (2003). Effects of problem-based learning: A meta-analysis. Learning and Instruction, 13 , 533–568.

Dolmans, D. H. J. M., & Snellen-Balendong, H. (1997). Seven principles of effective case design for a problem-based curriculum. Medical Teacher, 19 (3), 185–189.

Dolmans, D. H. J. M., Wolfhagen, I. H. A. P., van der Vleuten, C. P. M., & Wijnen, W. H. F. W. (2001). Solving problems with group work in problem-based learning: Hold on to the philosophy. Medical Education, 35 , 884–889.

Duch, B. (2001). Writing problems for deeper understanding. In B. Duch, S. E. Groh, & D. E. Allen (Eds.), The power of problem-based learning: A practical “how to” for teaching undergraduate courses in any discipline (pp. 47–53). Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing.

Flesher, J. W. (1993). An exploration of technical troubleshooting expertise in design, manufacturing, and repair contexts. Journal of Industrial Teaching Education, 31 (1), 34–56.

Gardner, H. (1993). The creators of the modern era . New York, NY: Basic Books.

Gardner, H. (1994). The creators’ patterns. In M. A. Boden (Ed.), Dimensions of creativity (pp. 143–158). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Geary, D. C. (2002). Principles of evolutionary educational psychology. Learning and Individual Differences, 12 , 317–345.

Geary, D. C. (2005). The origin of mind: Evolution of brain, cognition, and general intelligence . Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Book   Google Scholar  

Gijbels, D., Dochy, F., Van den Bossche, P., & Segers, M. (2005). Effects of problem-based learning: A meta-analysis from the angle of assessment. Review of Educational Research, 75 , 27–61. doi: 10.3102/00346543075001027 .

Guilford, J. P. (1950). Creativity. American Psychologist , 5 (9), 444–454.

Hartling, L., Spooner, C., Tjosvold, L., & Oswald, A. (2010). Problem-based learning in pre-clinical medical education: 22 years of outcome research. Medical Teacher, 32 , 28–35.

Hennessey, B. A., & Amabile, T. M. (2010). Creativity. Annual Review of Psychology, 61 , 569–598.

Hmelo, C. E. (1998). Problem-based learning: Effects on the early acquisition of cognitive skill in medicine. The Journal of the Learning Science, 7 (2), 173–208.

Hmelo-Silver, C. E. (2004). Problem-based learning: What and how do students learn? Educational Psychology Review, 16 (3), 235–266.

Hmelo-Silver, C. E., Duncan, R. G., & Chinn, C. A. (2007). Scaffolding and achievement in problem-based and inquiry learning: A response to Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark (2006). Educational Psychologist, 42 (2), 99–107.

Hung, W. (2011). Theory to reality: A few issues in implementing problem-based learning. Educational Technology Research and Development, 59 (4), 529–552.

Hung, W. (2014). Knowledge Acquisition, Application, and Transfer in PBL by Design. In part of Symposium Proposal: Arming Achilles’ heel: Instructional strategies and approaches for promoting knowledge acquisition in PBL , organized by W. Hung & S. M. M. Loyens. Paper presented at AERA 2014 annual meeting, Philadelphia, PA, April 3–7.

Hung, W. (2015). Problem-based learning: Conception, practice, and Future Chapter to appear. In Y. H. Cho, I. S. Caleon, & M. Kapur (Eds.), Authentic problem solving and learning in the 21st century: Perspectives from Singapore and beyond . New York, NY: Springer.

Hung, W., Jonassen, D. H., & Liu, R. (2008). Problem-based learning. In M. Spector, D. Merrill, J. van Merrienböer, & M. Driscoll (Eds.), Handbook of research on educational communications and technology (pp. 485–506). New York, NY: Erlbaum.

Hung, W., & Loyens, S. M. M. (2012). Global development of problem-based learning: Adoption, adaptation, and advancement. Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-based Learning, 6 (1), 4–9.

Jonassen, D. H. (1997). Instructional design models for well-structured and ill-structured problem-solving learning outcomes. Educational Technology Research and Development, 45 (1), 65–94.

Kalaian, H. A., Mullan, P. B., & Kasim, R. M. (1999). What can studies of problem-based learning tell us? Synthesizing and modeling PBL effects on national board of medical examination performance: Hierarchical linear modeling meta-analytic approach. Advances in Health Sciences Education, 4 , 209–221.

Kaufman, D. M. (2000). Problem-based learning: Time to step back? Medical Education, 34 , 510–511.

Kaufman, J. C., & Baer, J. (2002). Could Steven Spielberg manage the Yankees?: Creative thinking in different domains. The Korean Journal of Thinking & Problem Solving, 12 (2), 5–14.

Koh, G. C.-H., Khoo, H. E., Wong, M. L., & Koh, D. (2008). The effects of problem-based learning during medical school on physician competency: A systematic review. Canadian Medical Association Journal, 178 (1), 34–41.

Larkin, J. H., & Reif, F. (1976). Analysis and teaching of a general skill for studying scientific text. Journal of Educational Psychology, 68 , 431–440.

Mayer, R. E. (1999). Fifty years of creativity research. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), Handbook of creativity (pp. 449–460). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Mednick, S. A. (1962). The associative basis of the creative process. Psychological Review, 69 , 220–232.

Millar, G. W., & Torrance, E. P. (2002). Are low career expectations shortchanging girls? Understanding Our Gifted , 14 (3), 22–26.

Neville, A. J. (2009). Problem-based learning and medical education 4th years on. Medical Principles and Practice, 18 , 1–9.

Newell, A., & Simon, H. A. (1972). Human problem solving . Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Norman, G. R., & Schmidt, H. G. (1992). The psychological basis of problem-based learning: A review of the evidence. Academic Medicine, 67 , 557–565.

Prawat, R. (1989). Promoting access to knowledge, strategies, and disposition in students: A research synthesis. Review of Educational Research, 59 (1), 1–41.

Savery, R. J. (2006). Overview of problem-based learning: Definitions and distinctions. Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-based Learning, 1 (1), 9–20.

Sawyer, K. (2003). Emergence in creativity and development. In K. Sawyer (Ed.), creativity and development (pp. 12–60). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sawyer, K. (2012). Explaining creativity: The science on human innovation (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Schmidt, H. G. (1983). Problem-based learning: Rationale and description. Medical Education, 17 , 11–16.

Schmidt, H. G., Loyens, S. M. M., van Gog, T., & Paas, F. (2007). Problem-based learning is compatible with human cognitive architecture: Commentary on Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark (2006). Educational Psychologist, 42 (2), 91–97.

Schmidt, H. G., Norman, G. R., & Boshuizen, H. P. A. (1990). A cognitive perspective on medical expertise: Theory and implications. Academic Medicine, 65 , 611–621.

Sternberg, R. J., & Lubart, T. I. (1991). Creating creative minds. Phi Delta Kappan, 8 (72), 608–614.

Sternberg, R. J., & Lubart, T. I. (1999). The concept of creativity: Prospects and Paradigms. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), Handbook of creativity (pp. 3–15). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Strobel, J., & van Barneveld, A. (2009). When is PBL more effective? A meta-synthesis of meta-analyses comparing PBL to conventional classrooms. Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-based Learning , 3 (1), 44–58.

Sweller, J., Clark, R. E., & Kirschner, P. A. (2011). Teaching general problem solving does not lead to mathematical skills or knowledge. Newsletter of the European Mathematical Society, March , 41–42.

Vernon, P. E. (1989). The nature-nurture problem in creativity. In J. A. Glover, R. R. Ronning, & C. R. Reynolds (Eds.), Handbook of creativity (pp. 93–110). New York: Plenum Press.

Vernon, D. T. A., & Blake, R. L. (1993). Does problem-based learning work: A meta-analysis of evaluative research. Academic Medicine, 68 , 550–563.

Walker, A., & Leary, H. (2009). A problem based learning meta analysis: Difference across problem types, implementation types, disciplines, and assessment. Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-based Learning, 3 (1), 12–43.

Ysenck, H. J. (1994). The measurement of creativity. In M. A. Boden (Ed.), Dimensions of creativity (pp. 199–242). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Instructional Design and Technology, Department of Teaching and Learning, University of North Dakota, Education Building Room 278, 231 Centennial Drive STOP 7189, Grand Forks, ND, 58202-7189, USA

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Woei Hung .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Hung, W. Cultivating creative problem solvers: the PBL style. Asia Pacific Educ. Rev. 16 , 237–246 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12564-015-9368-7

Download citation

Published : 28 April 2015

Issue Date : June 2015

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s12564-015-9368-7

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Problem-based learning
• Problem Solving
• Cultivation process
• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List

A Minimal Theory of Creative Ability

Despite decades of extensive research on creativity, the field still combats psychometric problems when measuring individual differences in creative ability and people’s potential to achieve real-world outcomes that are both original and useful. We think these seemingly technical issues have a conceptual origin. We therefore propose a minimal theory of creative ability (MTCA) to create a consistent conceptual theory to guide investigations of individual differences in creative ability. Building on robust theories and findings in creativity and individual differences research, our theory argues that creative ability, at a minimum, must include two facets: intelligence and expertise. So, the MTCA simply claims that whenever we do something creative, we use most of our cognitive abilities combined with relevant expertise to be creative. MTCA has important implications for creativity theory, measurement, and practice. However, the MTCA isn’t necessarily true; it is a minimal theory. We discuss and reject several objections to the MTCA.

1. Introduction

The creative act—from a toddler’s first building-block tower to Picasso’s Guernica—is a fascinating achievement of the human cognitive system. Creative ability is generally summarized into a short standard definition: the ability to produce original and useful products ( Runco and Jaeger 2012 ), a definition that applies to all domains of creativity, from humor to the culinary arts and science to inventions. Creativity is an imperative skill the human race needs to solve global challenges such as climate change or privacy in a digital world. Organizations—from cancer research institutes to the fashion industry—are all looking for people with strong creative abilities ( Ananiadou and Claro 2009 ; Casner-Lotto and Barrington 2006 ; IBM 2010 ). Creativity is therefore one of the most important 21st century skills educators want to instill upon their students ( Henriksen et al. 2016 ). In order to select creative people or track creativity development good psychometric tests that reliably distinguish varying levels of creative ability (between people or over time) are a necessity. Unfortunately, existing instruments purporting to measure creativity often suffer from conceptual and psychometric shortcomings and do not meet the high requirements needed for personnel selection or measuring change (e.g., Baer 1994a ; Barbot 2019 ; Montag et al. 2012 ; Said-Metwaly et al. 2017 ).

In our view, these seemingly technical issues have a conceptual origin. Creativity research lacks a clear formal model to understand and measure creative ability ( Glăveanu 2012 ). In this paper, we propose a minimal theory of creative ability (MTCA), with creative ability being defined as people’s potential to achieve real-world outcomes that are both original and useful. MTCA describes which facets a theory of creative ability, at a minimum, must include. MTCA builds on earlier proposals for a modest conceptualization of creative ability (e.g., Baer 2012 ; Ericsson 1999 ; Runco 2009 ; Silvia 2015 ; Simonton 2003b ). We reformulate these prior ideas into a more precise and concise form. We propose that, while many different variables are associated with creativity, only intelligence and expertise are essential for explaining and predicting individual differences in real-world creativity. The MTCA has important implications. It offers a parsimonious account for classic phenomena and findings in creativity research. It also provides clear guidelines for measuring creative ability and predicting creative achievements. The MTCA is in essence a minimal theory, and we discuss and dismiss possible variables and phenomena that could falsify it.

2. Positioning the MTCA

The MTCA is a theory based in differential psychology, the field Cronbach ( 1957 ) describes as the psychology of individual differences. The aim of differential psychology is to determine the nature, magnitude, causes, and consequences of psychological differences between individuals in the general population. So, with the MTCA we address how and why people differ in real-world creativity, where the major challenge is measuring creative ability. Please note that we focus on creative ability, not the creative process (for different accounts of the creative process see e.g., Gabora 2017 ; Hélie and Sun 2010 ; Kozbelt et al. 2010 ; Nijstad and Stroebe 2006 ; Schmidhuber 2010 ; for a thorough analysis of the study of individual differences versus processes see Cronbach 1957 ). So, the MTCA does not answer questions, such as, “How does the creative act take place?” and “What happens in the brain during creative problem solving?”. Instead, we focus on questions such as “What are the components of creative ability?”; “How can creative ability be measured?”; “Are individual differences in creative ability stable over time?”; and “Can creative ability be trained?”. We show that the MTCA provides clear answers to each of these questions about creative ability.

Because the MTCA is concerned with individual differences in creative ability, it is positioned in the Person perspective of creativity. The Person perspective represents one of the four general approaches to creativity research and focuses on which characteristics make a person creative ( Rhodes 1961 ). With MTCA, we argue that intelligence and expertise are the essential person characteristics that distinguish between people scoring high or low on creative ability. The MTCA is also concerned with the Product perspective of creativity, focusing on the extent to which ideas, acts, and output are judged, often by relevant experts and stakeholders, to be creative ( Amabile 1982 ; Montag et al. 2012 ; Simonton 2003c ). Real-world creative products or outcomes are the most important criteria that the MTCA strives to predict. These creative outcomes may range from personal and everyday creative outcomes to eminent creative contributions ( Boden 2004 ). For instance, they may refer to a sudden insight in how to solve a Sudoku (mini-c creativity); a new vegetable dish that your toddler enjoys eating (little-c creativity); a newly developed creativity test (Pro-c creativity); or a renowned paradigm-changing scientific theory (Big-C creativity). As such the MTCA addresses creative ability and potential at all levels, from mini-c to Big-C ( Kaufman and Beghetto 2009 ).

The Process perspective, concerned with the cognitive processes that take place when someone is being creative, is not central to the MTCA. The MTCA only addresses research positioned in the Process perspective inasmuch as it says something about creative abilities. For example, we argue that many cognitive processes are involved in being creative and therefore cognitive ability is related to creative ability (e.g., Kozbelt et al. 2010 ; Simonton 2003b ; Mumford and McIntosh 2017 ). Similarly, we only address the Press perspective, which investigates the circumstances or states that influence the expression of creative ability, to the extent that it informs us about creative abilities. For instance, environmental stressors, such as noise and cognitive load, make it harder for people to be creative because they hinder the execution of cognitive abilities ( Byron et al. 2010 ; De Dreu et al. 2012 ). So, the MTCA does not deny that creative processes exist (it actually assumes their existence), nor that there are important situational constraints and triggers that influence how creativity emerges. However, the MTCA simply is not a theory about the creative process or environment, but about individual differences in creative ability (cf. Cronbach 1957 ; see e.g., Eysenck 1995 , for a model in which both individuals and environmental factors interact to express creative achievements).

The MTCA is based on two key assumptions. The first assumption is that in order to be creative we use a wide variety of cognitive functions: functions that are generally assessed in intelligence tests. The second assumption is that creativity relies on the novel combination of existing knowledge and skills, i.e., expertise. Combined, these assumptions lay the groundwork for the MTCA, where intelligence and expertise are essential to understanding why people differ in creative ability. Below, we explore these assumptions further and conclude with a quasi formula for a minimal theory of creative ability.

Creative ability requires many different cognitive abilities.

The MTCA is based on the common assumption that we use a wide variety of our cognitive abilities to be creative (and probably tap all our cognitive functions across different tasks and settings). Whatever the challenge is, we use many cognitive abilities, such as those assessed in intelligence tests. For instance, we may use our perceptual abilities, conduct convergent and divergent thinking, search our memory for analogies, make use of our knowledge base, focus our attention, acquire new knowledge, etc. (e.g., Amabile and Pratt 2016 ; Beaty et al. 2014 ; Benedek et al. 2014 ; Kuncel et al. 2004 ; Newell and Simon 1972 ; Nijstad and Stroebe 2006 ; Sternberg et al. 2019 ).

We consider this assumption rather uncontroversial because most theories of creativity are consistent—or at least not inconsistent—with the idea that many cognitive functions are needed to be creative. For example, process theories of creativity are consistent when they describe the creative process in terms of consecutive stages (e.g., problem identification, idea generation, idea evaluation; see e.g., Basadur et al. 1982 ; Mumford and McIntosh 2017 ; Perry-Smith and Mannucci 2017 ; Wallas 1926 ) or some sort of cycle (e.g., including repetition and recursion) where different executive functions play a role (for overview see Kaufman and Glaveanu 2019 ; Kozbelt et al. 2010 ). This also applies to Amabile ’s ( 1982 ) componential model and other componential theories that incorporate several creativity-relevant cognitive processes (e.g., breaking cognitive and perceptual sets, remembering accurately). We think typical cognitive process theories such as the Geneplore model ( Finke et al. 1992 ) or Hélie and Sun ’s ( 2010 ) Explicit–Implicit Interaction theory are also consistent with this assumption as they involve many cognitive functions. For instance, according to the Geneplore (generate–explore) model, people first retrieve existing elements from memory, form simple associations among these elements, and integrate, and transform them. The new ideas that result from these generative processes are then explored for their implications, checked against criteria and constraints and, if needed, refined ( Finke et al. 1992 ).

Furthermore, theories on creativity that stress the importance of one cognitive function, such as associative thinking ( Mednick 1962 ) or incubation ( Sio and Ormerod 2009 ; Wallas 1926 ), are not inconsistent with our assumption as long as they acknowledge that other cognitive processes play a role in creativity as well. Inconsistency arises when a theory assumes that only one specific function is essential. This occurs when creative ability is reduced to divergent thinking ability only, for instance, as some psychometric theories of creativity propose (see Kozbelt et al. 2010 ).

Creative ability requires expertise.

We further assume that people apply their cognitive functions to analyze, combine, and integrate existing knowledge and skills to be creative ( Simonton 2003b ). This is why being creative in any domain also requires expertise in the domain at hand. Thus, the MTCA is based on the assumption that creativity always requires expertise ( Baer 2011a , 2011b ; Kim 2011a , 2011b ; Plucker and Beghetto 2004 ). As with the “many cognitive abilities” assumption, we are certainly not the first, nor the only researchers to make this claim. A number of creativity theories recognize that creativity manifests in specific domains. For example, Baer and Kaufman ( 2005 ) use an amusement park metaphor to describe how domain specific creative abilities (e.g., writing sonnets) are related to broader and broader abilities (e.g., poetry writing, creative writing), where each level has its own requirements in terms of domain specific knowledge (e.g., word meanings) and skills (e.g., spelling, grammar, rhyming). Domain specificity also follows from Amabile ’s ( 1982 ) componential model, where people use domain relevant skills to be creative and their motivation to be creative may be very specific to tasks within particular domains. Another example stems from Darwinian creativity models that argue that creativity involves a process of random generation and selective retention and elaboration of ideas (e.g., Campbell 1960 ; Simonton 1999b ; but see Gabora 2017 for an alternative evolutionary model). According to these models, people’s brains produce (quasi)random variations of existing ideas that are part of a creator’s knowledge base, and the greater the knowledge base, the more potential new combinations that are truly creative are possible.

Other theories that discuss the domain specificity of creative output are, for example, Boden ’s ( 2004 ) H-creativity or Big-C creativity ( Kaufman and Beghetto 2009 ), which typically emerges by applying domain specific knowledge acquired over at least a decade. This is supported by archival evidence (e.g., Simonton 1991 ). For instance, Hayes ( 1989 ) discovered that for eminent composers at least 8 years of musical study were required before they wrote a masterwork, and the vast majority required at least 10 years. From the perspective of expertise development, practicing skills, engaging in activities, and enriching the knowledge base in a particular domain provide the necessary building blocks for creative work in that domain ( Beghetto and Kaufman 2007 ; Ericsson et al. 1993 ; Simonton 2008 ; Weisberg 1999 , 2018 ).

Although Big-C creative achievements in a particular field often require 10 years of expertise development in that field, there are notable exceptions. For instance, break-through inventions may open up new territory for accelerated discovery, sometimes resulting in entirely new domains. For instance, celestial objects and phenomena were suddenly observable with Galileo’s refinement of the telescope thereby explosively advancing the field of astronomy ( Simonton 2012 ); and because microscopic organisms and cells could suddenly be explored with Van Leeuwenhoek’s single-lensed microscope, an entirely new domain, microbiology, came into being ( Simonton 2012 ). However, even then, people build on their expertise (e.g., knowledge, scientific observation and reporting skills) to make discoveries and build and advance a domain.

3. A Quasi Formula for the MTCA

In sum, the MTCA assumes that being creative requires a variety of cognitive functions similar to those generally assessed in intelligence tests and expertise relevant to the domain at hand. Although there may be many factors that predict real-world creativity, we argue that only intelligence and expertise are essential for explaining individual differences in real-world creativity. The minimal theory of creative ability (MTCA) can be expressed by the following quasi formula:

Thus, for a highly intelligent person without any expertise (in, say, culinary arts), C would be zero (in the domain of culinary arts). Furthermore, a resourceful and inventive craftsman without any formal education, perhaps even unable to read, may come up with creative solutions for problems in his or her area of expertise. Yet, creativity always requires some level of intelligent processing. The MTCA simply claims that whenever we are confronted with a creative task, we use a wide variety of cognitive abilities (e.g., our memory, our ability to reason by analogy, our visual–spatial skills, our metacognitive capacities, etc.) in combination with relevant expertise (e.g., experience with carpentry techniques, paint textures, conducting scientific experiments, etc.) to be creative. That is still a lot, but that is all there is. We argue that there is no special creative talent or faculty, nor is there a specialized (brain) area for being creative (e.g., Dietrich and Kanso 2010 ).

Just as with other theories, we suggest that creative ability constitutes a multiplicative relation of multiple factors. For instance, Eysenck ( 1995 ) defined creativity as a product of personality, environmental variables and cognitive ability, including intelligence and knowledge, whereas Simonton ( 1999a ) and Jauk et al. ( 2013 ) used the multiplicative relation between multiple factors to explain skewed distributions in creative achievement. In the case of MTCA, the multiplicative relationship is limited to intelligence and expertise. The multiplication sign indicates that I and E both are necessary for creativity, but can also compensate for each other.

4. Phenomena Consistent with the MTCA

As a parsimonious framework of creative ability, the MTCA is consistent with a number of recurring phenomena in creativity research.

Creativity is related to intelligence.

Creativity research is fraught with evidence that intelligence is related to performance on commonly used tests of creative ability, such as divergent thinking, as well as to creative achievements ( De Dreu et al. 2012 ; Jauk et al. 2013 ; Silvia 2015 ; Sternberg et al. 2019 ; see Sternberg and O’Hara 2000 for an in depth discussion of the relationship between intelligence and creativity.). For instance, Silvia ( 2015 ) estimates the correlation between IQ and creative ability as measured with divergent thinking tests to be r ≈ 0.50. In addition, tests of intelligence and executive functioning are robust predictors of creative eminence and actual creative achievements ( Jauk et al. 2013 ; Karwowski et al. 2016 ; Silvia 2015 ; Simonton 2003a ). The idea that cognitive abilities are strongly related is not new. Different subtests of IQ tests show a positive manifold of intercorrelations and different composite scores (factor analytic or sum scores) correlate very strongly ( van der Maas et al. 2006 ). According to this perspective, cognitive abilities that in some creativity theories are considered special for creativity, such as divergent thinking, are simply part of a bigger construct: intelligence 1 . Although divergent thinking tests are not often part of IQ tests, we see no reason why valid divergent thinking tests with good test–retest reliability (e.g., with more items and automated scoring) shouldn’t be included. In fact, there have been attempts to make this happen ( Kaufman et al. 2011 ; Süb and Beauducel 2005 ). We note that specific creative achievements may require a different balance of cognitive functions ( Murphy 2017 ). Writing a poem requires more language abilities than solving a chess puzzle. However, because cognitive abilities are strongly correlated ( van der Maas et al. 2006 ), and we use a wide variety of cognitive abilities to analyze, combine, and integrate existing knowledge and skills during creative problem solving, it is hardly surprising that general intelligence tests robustly predict real-world creativity.

Creative achievement is domain specific.

Most creativity tests correlate weakly among each other, i.e., have low convergent validity. This could partly be due to the low test–retest reliability (i.e., stability) of standardized creativity tests and resulting error variance ( Barbot 2019 ; Cropley 2000 ). However, an even more important reason follows from the MTCA: creative achievements build on expertise, and because expertise is domain specific, creative achievements are also domain specific. Whatever the challenge, people simply have to work with the knowledge and skills that they have. An experienced sketch artist with good drawing skills may score higher on the figural subset of the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT Torrance 2008 ) than an experienced creative writer, who, in turn, is more likely to score higher on the verbal subset of the TTCT and the Remote Associates Test ( Mednick 1963 ). The MTCA thus also explains why many experts excel in their profession, but fail to find creative solutions for simple tasks in other domains ( Kaufman et al. 2010a ). More generally, the expertise component of MTCA clarifies the substandard construct validity of existing creative ability tests (cf. Baer 2012 ; Han 2003 ). A prime example of poor construct validity is that the figural and verbal components of the popular TTCT correlate < 0.10 ( Baer 2011a , 2011b ). Another example is that creativity scores from different domains (e.g., poetry and mathematics) tend not to correlate, or correlate only weakly ( Baer 1994a , 1994b ; Runco and Albert 1985 ; Simonton 2003b ).

Domain specificity may also explain the low predictive validity of domain general creativity tests, such as the Alternative Uses Task (AUT Guilford 1967 ). Performance on such creativity tests generally correlates weakly with objective indicators of overt creative behaviors ( Kim 2008 ; Zeng et al. 2011 ). For example, in a meta-analysis, Kim ( 2008 ) found a correlation of 0.22 between divergent thinking test scores and creative achievement. Note that for IQ, correlations with external criteria such as job success are reported to vary between 0.27 and 0.61 (for reviews see Schmidt and Hunter 1998 ; Sternberg et al. 2001 ) and predictive values of IQ as high as 0.81 are reported for educational achievement ( Deary et al. 2007 ).

Many experts have a few creative achievements; few experts have many.

The distribution of achievements is often highly skewed in the population. For example, Murray ( 2009 ) describes this for professional golfers. Numerous players have won one or two tournaments, only four have won >30 tournaments, and then only one player (Jack Nicklaus) has won 71 tournaments ( Murray 2009 ). This distribution is referred to as the Lotka curve, and also applies to creative achievements. This curve was first described by Lotka ( 1926 ) as a power law function where many authors produce a few publications, but only a few authors produce many publications (e.g., Simonton 2003c ). Lotka’s curve has been found to hold for achievements in numerous domains, including chess and music composition ( Murray 2009 ; Simonton 1999c ). Many models have been proposed to explain this phenomenon (for overviews see Den Hartigh et al. 2016 ; Simonton 1999a ). Generally, these models invoke some combination of factors, such as latent ability and number of produced outputs. In the MTCA creative ability is a combination of intelligence, which is generally assumed to be normally distributed in the general population, and expertise, which is either normally (in very selective samples) or exponentially distributed. Combining the normal distribution of intelligence and the skewed distribution of expertise results in a skewed distribution, which may explain why the distribution of creative achievements is also skewed ( Den Hartigh et al. 2016 ; Simonton 1999a ).

Creative achievements across a career follow an inverted U-curve.

Archival studies show how creative achievements unfold over the career of a creator, be it a scientist, composer, or painter (e.g., Ericsson 1999 ; Kozbelt 2008 ; Simonton 1997 ). What these studies tend to show is that the relationship between the number of creative achievements and career age follows an inverted U-shape, where the number of creative achievements of a creator steeply rises in the early decades of a career, then plateaus and slowly declines. The increase in creativity early in a career can be perfectly explained by expertise development, where the age curve for productivity appears to be a function of career age rather than chronological age (e.g., Khan and Minbashian 2019 ). Immersion in a domain over time leads to an increase in knowledge, activities, constraints, skills and procedures of a particular domain ( Kozbelt 2008 ). By enriching the knowledge base in a particular domain, the creator has the necessary building blocks for creative work in that domain ( Ericsson et al. 1993 ; Simonton 2008 ; Weisberg 1999 , 2018 ). However, assuming that creators continue to develop their expertise across their career, why do their creative achievements not show a similar linear increase? Apart from extraneous factors that are beyond the scope of MTCA (e.g., successful scientists get managerial positions that limit their time to express their creative ability), the plateauing of creativity can be explained by how the acquisition of expertise follows an S-shaped curve: after a period of steep increase the acquisition of expertise levels off ( Krampe and Charness 2018 ). That creativity ultimately declines may be caused by various extraneous factors such as poor health or changes in priorities or interest ( Kozbelt 2008 ), but can also be explained by the fact that cognitive abilities, in particular what is generally considered as fluid intelligence, tend to decline during adulthood ( Salthouse 2009 ). Simonton ( 1997 ) presented an endogenous explanation of these growth patterns. In future work an elaboration of the MTCA formula in such a dynamic model might be of interest.

Limited effects of creativity training.

Many forms of creativity training exist, most of which focus on the enhancement of a specific ability, such as divergent thinking or convergent thinking ( Scott et al. 2004 ). Many studies show that creativity training effects are generally limited to the abilities that are specifically targeted and hardly generalize to real-world creativity ( Baer 2012 ; J. M. Baer 1988 ; Scott et al. 2004 ). This lack of transfer makes perfect sense according to the MTCA. People rely, not on single, but on many cognitive abilities to turn domain specific expertise into real-world creative output. The same studies also show that creativity training effects tend to increase when creativity training is applied to exercises and examples within a relevant domain ( Scott et al. 2004 ). This small, but nevertheless robust strengthening effect, also makes perfect sense according to the MTCA. Real-world creative output builds on domain specific expertise and relevant examples and exercises during training may help people to successfully apply newly acquired skills in their field of expertise.

Absence of a specific neural basis of creativity.

Decades of research exploring the neural correlates of creativity fail to show a specific brain area involved in creativity ( Dietrich and Kanso 2010 ). If anything, this works shows diffuse prefrontal activation during the performance on creativity tasks ( Dietrich and Kanso 2010 ). In line with this finding, more recent neural models of creativity include a large prefrontal network that is implicated in controlled memory retrieval and central executive processes ( Beaty et al. 2016 , 2018 ). This is much in line with the MTCA, which predicts that performance on creative ability tests relies on many cognitive abilities that underlie intelligence in general.

5. Implications

The MTCA has four important implications for creativity research and practice. First, because it relies on intelligence and expertise, creative ability has both a domain general component (i.e., intelligence) and a domain specific component (i.e., expertise) (e.g., Barbot et al. 2016 ; Plucker and Beghetto 2004 ). Because creative abilities depend on domain specific expertise, creative achievements are by definition domain specific. Baer ( 2012 ) suggests that, for each domain, we need “mini theories” about creative ability that specify the specific skills, knowledge and cognitive abilities that are required. Indeed, researchers probably need to specify the domain specific knowledge and skills that are relevant for a particular domain. For example, visuospatial abilities are probably more important in visual arts and architecture, whereas verbal comprehension abilities may be more relevant for poetry. Potentially, these specific cognitive abilities may have greater predictive value for creative performance in those specific domains, rather than an entire intelligence test (cf. Benedek et al. 2014 ). However, given the positive manifold of cognitive abilities, it may not make much difference which domain general abilities exactly are assessed as they are all highly correlated.

Second, because expertise and intelligence are essential components of creative ability, assessing individual differences in real-world creative potential should at the very least be done with tests of domain expertise and an IQ test. Creativity is ranked by managers among the most important skills of the 21st century ( Ananiadou and Claro 2009 ; Casner-Lotto and Barrington 2006 ; IBM 2010 ), so if one wants to predict if a job candidate will be creative one should at the least test for expertise and intelligence. The good news, as explained below, is that assessing intelligence and expertise is rather straightforward; both have good psychometric properties, and can easily be implemented by an HR-team.

Third, training in domain general activities, such as divergent thinking, will not likely transfer to real-world creative achievements. Instead, creative achievements can only be enhanced by improving domain specific expertise (for recent discussions, see Ericsson and Harwell 2019 ; Macnamara et al. 2014 ). Whether intelligence can be trained or modified is another debate ( Jaeggi et al. 2008 ), but domain specific expertise can certainly be developed. It is one of the main tasks of our educational system.

Fourth, although the MTCA is primarily concerned with individual differences in creative ability, it has implications for the environmental factors that constrain or facilitate creative achievements. On the one hand, a conducive environment, for example at someone’s work, can facilitate creative achievements ( Amabile et al. 1996 ). On the other hand, situational factors that tax people’s cognitive abilities are expected to diminish people’s capacity for creativity. This is indeed what work on the effects of environmental stressors, such as noise and cognitive load, shows (e.g., Byron et al. 2010 ; De Dreu et al. 2012 ).

6. Objections and Limitations

There are several possible objections to, and limitations of, the MTCA. First, we accept the possibility that creativity is associated with other person characteristics such as positive affectivity, intrinsic motivation, or vulnerability to psychopathology (e.g., Amabile et al. 1996 ; Baas 2019 ; Baas et al. 2016 ; Hennessey 2019 ; Sternberg 2018 ). We do, however, propose that these characteristics are not essential factors for real-world creativity to emerge. For instance, someone may also achieve a creative feat while being generally grumpy, driven by dreams of glory and fame, and without psychopathological symptoms ( Baas 2019 ; Baas et al. 2016 ; Byron and Khazanchi 2012 ). In addition, the correlations between these person characteristics and creative tests and achievements tend to be quite low. For example, the correlations with creativity for depressive mood (r = −0.06; Baas et al. 2019 ) and positive affectivity (r = 0.08; Baas et al. 2008 ) are close to zero.

Of all personality characteristics openness to experience is perhaps the single best predictor of creativity. Decades of research show that the personality trait openness to experience is related to divergent thinking ( Gocłowska et al. 2019 ), distinguishes between scientists and artists that are low or high on creativity ( Feist 1999 , 2019 ), and predicts creative achievements across the lifespan beyond intelligence ( Feist and Barron 2003 ). Moreover, the reported correlation of openness to experience with creative achievements is sometimes higher than that of intelligence (e.g., Carson et al. 2005 ; Jauk et al. 2013 ). Indeed, openness to experience is included in some creativity models (e.g., Eysenck 1995 ; Lubart and Guignard 2004 ). So, shouldn’t openness to experience, then, be included in a minimal theory of creativity? Again, we believe that openness to experience may not be essential. First, people can achieve remarkable creative feats by rather closed-mindedly exploring a narrow domain ( Nijstad et al. 2010 ; Zabelina and Beeman 2013 ). Second, in many studies, including the one by Carson et al. ( 2005 ), university student samples were used. This greatly constricts the possible variance in intelligence of the sample without constraining variance in openness to experience, which, in turn, limits the effect sizes that can be obtained ( Hunter and Schmidt 2004 ). In fact, using a somewhat more representative sample, Jauk et al. ( 2013 ) obtained structural equation models in which openness to experience was indirectly related to creative achievements through engagement in creative activities. It was intelligence—crucial to turning creative activities into creative achievements—that was the main predictor of creative achievements ( Jauk et al. 2013 ). Third, further complicating things is that openness to experience is moderately related to intelligence and expertise. Openness to experience correlates with IQ scores ( Harris 2004 ; Chamorro-Premuzic and Furnham 2006 ) and in some models of personality structure, intelligence and openness to experience are facets of a common factor ( DeYoung 2006 ). In addition, with a preference for engaging in novel and varied experiences, people high in openness to experience are more likely to develop broad and rich expertise ( Silvia and Sanders 2010 ). Before we can accept openness to experience as a third, crucial factor of creative ability, high-powered studies with a representative sample of the normal population are needed that would show that openness to experience significantly adds to the prediction of creative performance above and beyond Intelligence (I) and Expertise (E) and their interaction (I x E, also see the Discussion below).

Second, one may argue that the MTCA relies too much on expertise and intelligence as “can” factors, but misses out on motivation as the “want” factor. According to this perspective people, with all their cognitive abilities and expertise, achieve nothing if they are unmotivated to put their abilities to practice ( Amabile 1983 ). First, we would like to remind the reader that the MTCA, based in differential psychology, is a theory to better understand individual differences in creative ability; i.e. “can” factors are key. We do not deny that motivational factors, such as persistence, interest, and passion, are important for the expression of creative ability in real-world creative outcomes (e.g., Amabile et al. 1996 ; Grohman et al. 2017 ; de Jesus et al. 2013 ). Furthermore, motivation is required to achieve expertise ( Ericsson et al. 1993 ). However, motivation is volatile and easily influenced by environmental factors (e.g., Amabile et al. 1996 ). As such, rather than being an essential component of creative ability, motivation may be better studied from the Press perspective, research that is critical for understanding how the expression of creative ability is facilitated or constrained by the situation.

Third, the MTCA heavily rests on two concepts, intelligence and expertise, that also are not without their problems. The concept of intelligence is surrounded by controversies. It is, for instance, unclear whether intelligence is a unitary construct ( Jensen 1998 ), a set of modules ( Gardner 2011 ), or a network of interacting cognitive functions ( van der Maas et al. 2006 , 2017 ). However, in all these theories intelligence is a broad construct that captures a wide variety of cognitive functions, and that is also how it is measured. Furthermore, expertise, which refers to the characteristics of highly skilled and knowledgeable people “who are consistently able to exhibit superior performance for representative tasks in a domain” ( Ericsson 2018, p. 14 ), is a research area with its share of debates (for instance, on the role of talent, Colvin 2011 ). Both concepts certainly require further clarification. However, there is one essential difference between these concepts and creativity: measuring general intelligence or specific expertise is much less problematic than the measurement of creative abilities, such as divergent thinking. Despite many limitations, IQ tests belong to the best tests produced by the field of psychology ( Gottfredson 1997 ). Subtests of IQ tests show a positive manifold of intercorrelations (e.g., high convergent validity). Different composite scores (factor analytic or sum scores) correlate very strongly. Retest reliabilities of IQ (sub-)test scores are high, and criterion validity (in terms of the prediction of scholastic success) is also high (e.g., Deary et al. 2007 ). As expertise is domain specific by definition, generally applicable expertise tests do not exist. Yet, domain specific expertise can often be tested with existing tests, such as college exams or exams used for certifications. In a famous area of expertise research, chess, van der Maas and Wagenmakers ( 2005 ) found that different measures of chess ability show the same positive manifold of correlations that intelligence subtests do. In addition, these measures were excellent predictors of chess performance (Elo ratings). Tests of domain expertise of good quality exist for numerous scholarly domains (e.g., GRE Subject tests; Powers 2004 ). While objective tests of creativity in artistic domains are problematic, constructing good tests of technical skills in these domains appears far less challenging (e.g., Chan and Zhao 2010 ; Law and Zentner 2012 ). Given the narrow set of skills to be assessed in a test of expertise, it is relatively easy to meet the high psychometric standards required for measuring individual differences.

Fourth, expertise and general intelligence are not entirely independent constructs. On the one hand, the definitions of crystallized intelligence and expertise overlap somewhat. On the other hand, we would expect an interaction between expertise and general intelligence because intelligence plays a role in developing expertise ( Deary et al. 2007 ). For example, a minimum level of general intelligence is clearly required to reach high levels of expertise in, say, music composition. However, this developmental dependency is only strong in the early stages of skill acquisition; in later stages the relationship between intelligence and level of expertise breaks down ( Krampe and Charness 2018 ). For example, chess performance (Elo ratings) can be predicted in part by a player’s intelligence, but chess experience remains the strongest predictor of attained skills ( Grabner et al. 2007 ). We note that for many studies that fail to show a significant correlation between intelligence and creative performance or between intelligence and expertise, the sample is restricted to experts ( Bayer and Folger 1966 ; Cole and Cole 1973 ). The restriction of range in a key variable is an important methodological limitation. This restriction of range can of course also occur in practice. Suppose one wants to hire a full professor. The variation in IQ and expertise of the sample of candidates might be very small, such that these measures are not informative. Luckily, in these very restricted cases, one can consider creative achievement directly. In less restricted samples, for college admission for instance, we expect added value for both IQ and expertise measures.

Fifth, the MTCA does not incorporate divergent thinking as a separate critical component of creative ability. We certainly consider divergent thinking as part of MTCA, but then as part of the many cognitive abilities that support creativity. Thus, as discussed under Phenomenon 1, it would fall under Intelligence. Divergent thinking tests are not often part of standard IQ tests ( Kaufman 2015 ). However, we do not see why a valid and reliable test of divergent thinking could not be included in intelligence assessment because, in our view, it falls within the positive manifold of cognitive abilities that IQ tests purport to measure (cf. Silvia 2015 ). Some study results suggest that incorporating divergent thinking may increase the predictive validity of intelligence tests ( Kim 2008 ; Plucker 1999 ).

Sixth, and finally, it could be argued that MTCA focuses too much on Pro-c and Big-C creativity (e.g., scientists developing a new creativity test, people that have received a Nobel prize) rather than one’s personal and everyday creative insights (mini-c and little-c creativity, e.g., a child who endearingly impersonates a firefighter with imaginary attributes; Boden 2004 ; Kaufman and Beghetto 2009 ). Indeed, the creative process hardly differs for different levels of creativity. However, rich and strong expertise within a particular domain may be more critical for Pro-c and Big-C creative achievements within that domain ( Kaufman and Beghetto 2009 ). However, one also needs some expertise for mini-c and little-c. For example, when impersonating a firefighter, you need to know which attributes belong to a firefighter and use creative problem solving to find original alternatives within your reach. So, with mini-c and little-c creativity intelligence may weigh in more than expertise, but, still, both I and E are required.

A possible limitation is that the MTCA ignores that creative achievements often, and increasingly, emerge in social networks ( Perry-Smith and Mannucci 2017 ). Creators may greatly benefit from the expertise of others that may provide the missing link of a puzzle that creators are working on ( Hargadon and Bechky 2006 ; Johnson 2010 ). As a consequence, person characteristics that facilitate help seeking and giving may be important for creativity to emerge in social settings. Still, the importance of expertise and intelligence is upheld. Once shared, the expertise of others becomes part of one’s own expertise. Although people may certainly borrow the expertise of others, people still need the cognitive abilities to process, assimilate, develop, and integrate the knowledge and perspectives that others offer ( Nijstad and Stroebe 2006 ).

Another limitation is that MTCA primarily focuses on the standard definition of creative achievement, which refers to recognized outcomes that are both novel and useful (e.g., Montag et al. 2012 ; Runco and Jaeger 2012 ). However, sometimes other creativity criteria are added, including surprise ( Simonton 2012 ) and aesthetic value and authenticity ( Kharkhurin 2014 ). How flexible is MTCA in dealing with such additions to the standard definition? Indeed, MTCA can also help to explain variance in creative outcomes when other dimensions or criteria are considered. For instance in Kharkhurin’s conception of creativity, aesthetic value is about the content and the techniques of an (artistic) work and an outcome is high on aesthetic value when it presents the fundamental truth of nature, strives to arrange expressive elements in a perfect order, expresses the essence of the phenomenal reality in an efficient manner, and is sufficiently complex. Using their expertise and cognitive abilities, people analyze and explore a particular phenomenon to better capture its essence and using their expertise people give content and context to an idea and apply skills and techniques. This is, for instance, what artists do when preparing a work of art and then using their skills (e.g., painting techniques) and knowledge (e.g., about material) to create an art work. Authenticity refers to creative work that expresses a creative person’s inner self ( Kharkhurin 2014 ). Obviously, people need self-knowledge (expertise) to make an authentic work. However, this aspect of creativity may not be assessed by independent stakeholders/experts and, as a personal judgment, would fall in the mini-c level of creativity.

7. Discussion

With the Minimal Theory of Creative Ability (MTCA) we contend that intelligence and expertise are the only necessary components of the ability to be creative, the ability to produce novel and useful ideas or products (e.g., Montag et al. 2012 ; Runco and Jaeger 2012 ). The MTCA builds on previous theories, models, and findings in creativity research and offers five important contributions. First, MTCA is carefully cast in an individual differences (as opposed to a process) approach (cf. Cronbach 1957 ), thereby advancing conceptual clarity. Second, MTCA is a formal theory that is both simple and falsifiable, paving a path for further rigorous creativity research. Third, we compiled a comprehensive list of six robust phenomena in creativity research that any theory of creative ability should account for—and MTCA does. Fourth, we discuss six possible objections to MTCA and refute these. Fifth, MTCA has an important implication for measuring creative ability because MTCA simply reduces creative ability to just two other measurable concepts. We claim that creative ability can best be measured with a combination of an intelligence test and tests of expertise, potentially solving the problems with measuring individual differences in creative ability and predicting real-world creative achievements.

We call the MTCA a minimal theory on purpose. It is not that we believe the MTCA is necessarily true. With a minimal theory, we propose a Popperian challenge: Can we falsify the MTCA? There is a vast amount of creativity research, which may well provide strong evidence against the MTCA. Rejections of MTCA could involve new research, but also reviews of existing research lines. In all cases we think methodological rigor is required. Creativity research will benefit from strict methodological research practices. This includes using instruments with known psychometric properties, sufficient study power, a representative sample of the normal population, and preregistration of studies ( de Groot 2014 ; Nosek et al. 2015 ), and using theory testing rather than discovery based research ( Oberauer and Lewandowsky 2019 ).

We see at least four ways in which the MTCA could be rejected. First, there is possibly more to creativity than the combination of intelligence and expertise. This requires a differential psychological study showing that some stable individual differences factor (e.g., a personality trait, divergent thinking ability, etc.) significantly adds to the prediction of creative performance above and beyond Intelligence (I) and Expertise (E) and their interaction (I × E). However, existing research faces many methodological problems (e.g., the poor test–retest reliability of divergent thinking tests, the restriction of range in intelligence in WEIRD study samples). Thus, showing that individual differences in real-world creativity require more than the combination of intelligence and expertise probably needs new empirical research that adheres to the strict methodological research practices outlined above.

Second, the MTCA could be rejected if we can somehow demonstrate that creativity is domain general. One way is to argue that individuals commonly display creativity in many diverse domains. However, the polymath or Renaissance man is uncommon ( Cassandro 1998 ; Kaufman et al. 2010b ; Ma and Uzzi 2018 ). Indeed, versatility, achieved by developing multiple areas of expertise, rather than solely focusing on one domain, may aid creative achievement ( Simonton 2000 ). Furthermore, creativity in very different domains is not ruled out by MTCA as long as one has expertise in each domain (see also Simonton 2003b ). A better way to falsify the MTCA by demonstrating that creative ability is domain general would be to develop a reliable and valid test of domain general creativity with predictive power comparable to IQ tests (so high predictive validity) and also good convergent and discriminant validity. Perhaps two recently published creativity test batteries, the Evaluation of Potential Creativity ( Lubart et al. 2011 ) and the Runco Creativity Assessment Battery ( Creativity Testing Services 2011 ), will meet these high psychometric standards. Similarly, major improvements in creativity assessments that rest on divergent thinking could be used to falsify the MTCA, where creativity could then be considered equal to divergent thinking, C = DT, rather than C = I × E.—although, as mentioned above, it is very possible that divergent thinking is just missing from standard IQ tests.

Third, if valid measures of creative ability within domains are available, several tests of the MTCA’s domain specificity assumption are possible. Assessing actual creative performance using panels of expert judges with the Consensual Assessment Technique ( Amabile 1982 ; Baer and McKool 2009 ; Myszkowski and Storme 2019 ) may be useful. By using expert ratings to assess creative achievements (C) we can test how much variance is explained by I, E and I × E and whether additional variables significantly help predict C. If we have expert ratings of C in different domains, we could also test whether the residuals of the regression of I, E and I × E on C correlate. This would suggest domain generality. Another research line might concern the threshold hypothesis, which says that the linear relationship between C and I disappears above some level of I (e.g., Barron 1963 ; Torrance 1962 ). The evidence on this effect, however, is mixed ( Jauk et al. 2013 ; Karwowski et al. 2016 ; Preckel et al. 2006 ). Again, we stress the importance of using a ‘good’ test of C, along with sufficient variance in intelligence. A low correlation between an IQ measure and some measure of C, with a low test–retest reliability, is not a rejection of the MTCA (e.g., Wallach and Kogan 1965 ), nor is a low correlation between IQ and C when there is restriction of range in IQ scores.

Fourth, if creativity improves for some reason without increasing expertise or intelligence then we could reject the MTCA. For example, in the MTCA domain general training of creativity is impossible (see Baer 2012 for a similar point). According to MTCA it is only possible to improve creative ability by improving general cognitive functions (such as working memory) or improving domain specific expertise. Thus, the MTCA could be rejected by demonstrating that domain general creativity training improves creativity without improving an aspect of intelligence ( Scott et al. 2004 ). Similarly, MTCA predicts that creativity improves with age due to increasing expertise. So, if we can prove that younger children are more creative than older children ( German and Defeyter 2000 ), adolescents are more creative than adults (e.g., Stevenson et al. 2014 ), or that creativity does not improve with age (prior to cognitive decline) (e.g., Simonton 1977 , 1997 ), then we could reject the MTCA. A related prediction is that creative ability improves, rather than declines, with increased expertise. So, if cultivating expertise consistently leads to less creative performance, such as “habitual” performance or entrenchment, then we would have arguments against the MTCA ( Dane 2010 ; Ford 1996 ; Weisberg 2018 ).

8. Conclusions

The MTCA states that creative ability within domains is essentially due to the combined effects of intelligence and expertise. To assess creative ability, one simply needs to measure intelligence and domain specific expertise to determine a person’s ability to be creative within a given field. If MTCA holds, then the construction of valid domain general creativity tests is doomed to fail.

Acknowledgments

We thank Maartje Raijmakers for her helpful comments on a previous ver-sion of this manuscript.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, H.v.d.M.; writing—original draft preparation, C.S., M.B., H.v.d.M.; writing—review and editing, C.S., M.B., H.v.d.M.; supervision, M.B., H.v.d.M.; project administration, C.S. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

This research was supported by the Jacobs Foundation Fellowship 2019-2021 awarded to Claire Stevenson (2018 1288 12).

Institutional Review Board Statement

Not applicable.

Informed Consent Statement

Conflicts of interest.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

1 Sometimes, divergent thinking performance is seen as an indicator of everyday creative achievement (little-c creativity; see e.g., Kaufman and Beghetto 2009 ). In our view, divergent thinking cannot be treated as the criterion variable. Instead, it should be seen as a cognitive ability that predicts real-world creative achievements ( Karwowski et al. 2016 ; Runco and Acar 2012 ). Going one step further, we see divergent thinking as one of the many cognitive abilities, such as memory search and retrieval or analogical reasoning, involved in creativity that fall under the umbrella of intelligence.

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

• Amabile Teresa M. Social Psychology of Creativity: A Consensual Assessment Technique. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1982; 43 :997–1013. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.43.5.997. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Amabile Teresa M. The Social Psychology of Creativity: A Componential Conceptualization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1983; 45 :357–76. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.45.2.357. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Amabile Teresa M., Conti Regina, Coon Heather, Lazenby Jeffrey, Herron Michael. Assessing the Work Environment for Creativity. Academy of Management Journal. 1996; 39 :1154–84. doi: 10.5465/256995. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Amabile Teresa M., Pratt Michael G. The Dynamic Componential Model of Creativity and Innovation in Organizations: Making Progress, Making Meaning. Research in Organizational Behavior. 2016; 36 :157–83. doi: 10.1016/j.riob.2016.10.001. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Ananiadou Katerina, Claro Magdalean. 21st Century Skills and Competences for New Millennium Learners in OECD Countries. OECD Education Working Papers, No. 41. OECD Publishing (NJ1) OECD Publishing; Paris: 2009. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Baas Matthijs. In the Mood for Creativity. In: Kaufman James C., Sternberg Robert J., editors. The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity. Cambridge University Press; Cambridge: 2019. pp. 257–72. [ Google Scholar ]
• Baas Matthijs, De Dreu Carsten K. W., Nijstad Bernard A. A Meta-Analysis of 25 Years of Mood-Creativity Research: Hedonic Tone, Activation, or Regulatory Focus? Psychological Bulletin. 2008; 134 :779–806. doi: 10.1037/a0012815. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Baas Matthijs, Nijstad Bernard A., Boot Nathalie C., De Dreu Carsten K. W. Mad genius revisited: Vulnerability to psychopathology, biobehavioral approach-avoidance, and creativity. Psychological Bulletin. 2016; 142 :668–692. doi: 10.1037/bul0000049. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Baas Matthijs, Nijstad Bernard A., Koen Jessie, Boot Nathalie C., De Dreu Carsten K. W. Vulnerability to Psychopathology and Creativity: The Role of Approach-Avoidance Motivation and Novelty Seeking. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. 2019; 14 :334. doi: 10.1037/aca0000223. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Baer John. Why You Shouldn’t Trust Creativity Tests. Educational Leadership. 1994a; 51 :80–83. [ Google Scholar ]
• Baer John. Why You Still Shouldn’t Trust Creativity Tests. Educational Leadership. 1994b; 52 :72–73. [ Google Scholar ]
• Baer John. Four (More) Arguments against the Torrance Tests. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. 2011a; 5 :316–17. doi: 10.1037/a0025211. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Baer John. How Divergent Thinking Tests Mislead Us: Are the Torrance Tests Still Relevant in the 21st Century? The Division 10 Debate. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. 2011b; 5 :309–13. doi: 10.1037/a0025210. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Baer John. Domain Specificity and the Limits of Creativity Theory. The Journal of Creative Behavior. 2012; 46 :16–29. doi: 10.1002/jocb.002. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Baer John, Kaufman James C. Bridging Generality and Specificity: The Amusement Park Theoretical (APT) Model of Creativity. Roeper Review. 2005; 27 :158–63. doi: 10.1080/02783190509554310. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Baer John M. Long-Term Effects of Creativity Training with Middle School Students. The Journal of Early Adolescence. 1988; 8 :183–93. doi: 10.1177/0272431688082006. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Baer John, McKool Sharon S. Handbook of Research on Assessment Technologies, Methods, and Applications in Higher Education. IGI Global; Hershey: 2009. Assessing Creativity Using the Consensual Assessment Technique; pp. 65–77. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Barbot Baptiste. Measuring Creativity Change and Development. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. 2019; 13 :203–10. doi: 10.1037/aca0000232. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Barbot Baptiste, Besançon Maud, Lubart Todd. The Generality-Specificity of Creativity: Exploring the Structure of Creative Potential with EPoC. Learning and Individual Differences. 2016; 52 :178–87. doi: 10.1016/j.lindif.2016.06.005. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Barron Frank. Creativity and Psychological Health. D. Van Nostrand; Oxford: 1963. [ Google Scholar ]
• Basadur Min, Graen George B., Green Stephen G. Training in Creative Problem Solving: Effects on Ideation and Problem Finding and Solving in an Industrial Research Organization. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance. 1982; 30 :41–70. doi: 10.1016/0030-5073(82)90233-1. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bayer Alan E., Folger John. Some Correlates of a Citation Measure of Productivity in Science. Sociology of Education. 1966; 39 :381–90. doi: 10.2307/2111920. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Beaty Roger E., Benedek Mathias, Silvia Paul J., Schacter Daniel L. Creative Cognition and Brain Network Dynamics. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 2016; 20 :87–95. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2015.10.004. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Beaty Roger E., Kenett Yoed N., Christensen Alexander P., Rosenberg Monica D., Benedek Mathias, Chen Qunlin, Fink Andreas, Qiu Jiang, Kwapil Thomas R. Robust Prediction of Individual Creative Ability from Brain Functional Connectivity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2018; 115 :1087–92. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1713532115. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Beaty Roger E., Silvia Paul J., Nusbaum Emily C., Jauk Emanuel, Benedek Mathias. The Roles of Associative and Executive Processes in Creative Cognition. Memory & Cognition. 2014; 42 :1186–97. doi: 10.3758/s13421-014-0428-8. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Beghetto Ronald A., Kaufman James C. The Genesis of Creative Greatness: Mini-c and the Expert Performance Approach. High Ability Studies. 2007; 18 :59–61. doi: 10.1080/13598130701350668. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Benedek Mathias, Jauk Emanuel, Sommer Markus, Arendasy Martin, Neubauer Aljoscha C. Intelligence, Creativity, and Cognitive Control: The Common and Differential Involvement of Executive Functions in Intelligence and Creativity. Intelligence. 2014; 46 :73–83. doi: 10.1016/j.intell.2014.05.007. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Boden Margaret A. The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms. Routledge; London: 2004. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Byron Kris, Khazanchi Shalini. Rewards and Creative Performance: A Meta-Analytic Test of Theoretically Derived Hypotheses. Psychological Bulletin. 2012; 138 :809–30. doi: 10.1037/a0027652. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Byron Kris, Khazanchi Shalini, Nazarian Deborah. The Relationship between Stressors and Creativity: A Meta-Analysis Examining Competing Theoretical Models. Journal of Applied Psychology. 2010; 95 :201–12. doi: 10.1037/a0017868. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Campbell Donald T. Blind Variation and Selective Retentions in Creative Thought as in Other Knowledge Processes. Psychological Review. 1960; 67 :380–400. doi: 10.1037/h0040373. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Carson Shelley H., Peterson Jordan B., Higgins Daniel M. Reliability, Validity, and Factor Structure of the Creative Achievement Questionnaire. Creativity Research Journal. 2005; 17 :37–50. doi: 10.1207/s15326934crj1701_4. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Casner-Lotto Jill, Barrington Linda. [(accessed on 26 June 2019)]; Are They Really Ready to Work? Employers’ Perspectives on the Basic Knowledge and Applied Skills of New Entrants to the 21st Century U.S. Workforce. 2006 Partnership for 21st Century Skills. Available online: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED519465
• Cassandro Vincent J. Explaining Premature Mortality Across Fields of Creative Endeavor. Journal of Personality. 1998; 66 :805–33. doi: 10.1111/1467-6494.00033. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Chamorro-Premuzic Tomas, Furnham Adrian. Intellectual Competence and the Intelligent Personality: A Third Way in Differential Psychology. Review of General Psychology. 2006; 10 :251–67. doi: 10.1037/1089-2680.10.3.251. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Chan David W., Zhao Yongjun. The Relationship Between Drawing Skill and Artistic Creativity: Do Age and Artistic Involvement Make a Difference? Creativity Research Journal. 2010; 22 :27–36. doi: 10.1080/10400410903579528. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Cole Jonathan R., Cole Stephen. Social Stratification in Science. University of Chicago Press; Chicago: 1973. [ Google Scholar ]
• Colvin Geoff. Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else. Hachette UK; London: 2011. [ Google Scholar ]
• Creativity Testing Services . Runco Creativity Assessment Battery (RCAB) Creativity Testing Service; Bishop: 2011. [(accessed on 26 June 2019)]. Available online: http://creativitytestingservices.com/ [ Google Scholar ]
• Cronbach Lee J. The Two Disciplines of Scientific Psychology. American Psychologist. 1957; 12 :671–84. doi: 10.1037/h0043943. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Cropley Arthur J. Defining and Measuring Creativity: Are Creativity Tests Worth Using? Roeper Review. 2000; 23 :72–79. doi: 10.1080/02783190009554069. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Dane Erik. Reconsidering the Trade-off Between Expertise and Flexibility: A Cognitive Entrenchment Perspective. Academy of Management Review. 2010; 35 :579–603. doi: 10.5465/amr.35.4.zok579. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• De Dreu Carsten K. W., Nijstad Bernard A., Baas Matthijs, Wolsink Inge, Roskes Marieke. Working Memory Benefits Creative Insight, Musical Improvisation, and Original Ideation Through Maintained Task-Focused Attention. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 2012; 38 :656–69. doi: 10.1177/0146167211435795. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Deary Ian J., Strand Steve, Smith Pauline, Fernandes Cres. Intelligence and Educational Achievement. Intelligence. 2007; 35 :13–21. doi: 10.1016/j.intell.2006.02.001. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Den Hartigh Ruud J. R., Van Dijk Marijn W. G., Steenbeek Henderien W., Van Geert Paul L. C. A Dynamic Network Model to Explain the Development of Excellent Human Performance. Frontiers in Psychology. 2016; 7 doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00532. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• DeYoung Colin G. Higher-Order Factors of the Big Five in a Multi-Informant Sample. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2006; 91 :1138–51. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.91.6.1138. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Dietrich Arne, Kanso Riam. A Review of EEG, ERP, and Neuroimaging Studies of Creativity and Insight. Psychological Bulletin. 2010; 136 :822–48. doi: 10.1037/a0019749. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Ericsson K. Anders, Krampe Ralf T., Tesch-Römer Clemens. The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance. Psychological Review. 1993; 100 :363–406. doi: 10.1037/0033-295X.100.3.363. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Ericsson K. Anders. Creative Expertise as Superior Reproducible Performance: Innovative and Flexible Aspects of Expert Performance. Psychological Inquiry. 1999; 10 :329–33. [ Google Scholar ]
• Ericsson K. Anders. An Introduction to the Second Edition of The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance: Its Development, Organization, and Content. In: Ericsson K. Anders, Hoffman Robert R., Kozbelt Aaron, Williams Mark A., editors. The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance. 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press; Cambridge: 2018. pp. 3–20. [ Google Scholar ]
• Ericsson K. Anders, Harwell Kyle W. Deliberate Practice and Proposed Limits on the Effects of Practice on the Acquisition of Expert Performance: Why the Original Definition Matters and Recommendations for Future Research. Frontiers in Psychology. 2019; 10 doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02396. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Eysenck Hans Jürgen. Genius: The Natural History of Creativity. Cambridge University Press; Cambridge: 1995. [ Google Scholar ]
• Feist Gregory J. The Influence of Personality on Artistic and Scientific Creativity. In: Sternberg Robert J., editor. Handbook of Creativity. Cambridge University Press; Cambridge: 1999. pp. 273–96. [ Google Scholar ]
• Feist Gregory J. The Function of Personality in Creativity. In: Kaufman James C., Sternberg Robert J., editors. The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity. Cambridge University Press; Cambridge: 2019. pp. 353–73. [ Google Scholar ]
• Feist Gregory J., Barron Frank X. Predicting Creativity from Early to Late Adulthood: Intellect, Potential, and Personality. Journal of Research in Personality. 2003; 37 :62–88. doi: 10.1016/S0092-6566(02)00536-6. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Finke Ronald A., Ward Thomas B., Smith Steven M. Creative Cognition: Theory, Research, and Applications. MIT Press; Cambridge: 1992. [ Google Scholar ]
• Ford Cameron M. A Theory of Individual Creative Action in Multiple Social Domains. Academy of Management Review. 1996; 21 :1112–42. doi: 10.5465/amr.1996.9704071865. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Gabora Liane. Honing Theory: A Complex Systems Framework for Creativity. Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology, and Life Sciences. 2017; 21 :35–88. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Gardner Howard. Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. Hachette UK; London: 2011. [ Google Scholar ]
• German Tim P., Defeyter Margaret Anne. Immunity to Functional Fixedness in Young Children. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. 2000; 7 :707–12. doi: 10.3758/BF03213010. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Glăveanu Vlad Petre. Habitual Creativity: Revising Habit, Reconceptualizing Creativity. Review of General Psychology. 2012; 16 :78–92. doi: 10.1037/a0026611. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Gocłowska Małgorzata A., Ritter Simone M., Elliot Andrew J., Baas Matthijs. Novelty Seeking Is Linked to Openness and Extraversion, and Can Lead to Greater Creative Performance. Journal of Personality. 2019; 87 :252–66. doi: 10.1111/jopy.12387. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Gottfredson Linda S. Why g Matters: The Complexity of Everyday Life. Intelligence. 1997; 24 :79–132. doi: 10.1016/S0160-2896(97)90014-3. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Grabner Roland H., Stern Elsbeth, Neubauer Aljoscha C. Individual Differences in Chess Expertise: A Psychometric Investigation. Acta Psychologica. 2007; 124 :398–420. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2006.07.008. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Grohman Magdalena G., Ivcevic Zorana, Silvia Paul, Kaufman Scott Barry. The Role of Passion and Persistence in Creativity. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. 2017; 11 :376–85. doi: 10.1037/aca0000121. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• de Groot Adrianus D. The Meaning of ‘Significance’ for Different Types of Research [Translated and Annotated by Eric-Jan Wagenmakers, Denny Borsboom, Josine Verhagen, Rogier Kievit, Marjan Bakker, Angelique Cramer, Dora Matzke, Don Mellenbergh, and Han L. J. van Der Maas] Acta Psychologica. 2014; 148 :188–94. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2014.02.001. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Guilford Joy P. Creativity: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. The Journal of Creative Behavior. 1967; 1 :3–14. doi: 10.1002/j.2162-6057.1967.tb00002.x. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Han Ki-Soon. Domain-Specificity of Creativity in Young Children: How Quantitative and Qualitative Data Support It. The Journal of Creative Behavior. 2003; 37 :117–142. doi: 10.1002/j.2162-6057.2003.tb00829.x. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hargadon Andrew B., Bechky Beth A. When Collections of Creatives Become Creative Collectives: A Field Study of Problem Solving at Work. Organization Science. 2006; 17 :484–500. doi: 10.1287/orsc.1060.0200. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Harris Julie A. Measured Intelligence, Achievement, Openness to Experience, and Creativity. Personality and Individual Differences. 2004; 36 :913–29. doi: 10.1016/S0191-8869(03)00161-2. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hayes John R. Cognitive Processes in Creativity. In: Glover John A., Ronning Royce R., Reynolds Cecil R., editors. Handbook of Creativity. Springer US; Boston: 1989. pp. 135–45. Perspectives on Individual Differences. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hélie Sébastien, Sun Ron. Incubation, Insight, and Creative Problem Solving: A Unified Theory and a Connectionist Model. Psychological Review. 2010; 117 :994–1024. doi: 10.1037/a0019532. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hennessey B. A. Motivation and Creativity. In: Kaufman James C., Sternberg Robert J., editors. The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity. Cambridge University Press; Cambridge: 2019. pp. 374–95. [ Google Scholar ]
• Henriksen Danah, Mishra Punya, Fisser Petra. Infusing Creativity and Technology in 21st Century Education: A Systemic View for Change. Journal of Educational Technology & Society. 2016; 19 :27–37. [ Google Scholar ]
• Hunter John E., Schmidt Frank L. Methods of Meta-Analysis: Correcting Error and Bias in Research Findings. SAGE; Thousand Oaks: 2004. [ Google Scholar ]
• IBM Capitalizing on Complexity: Insights from the Global Chief Executive Officer Study. CTB10. [(accessed on 2 November 2020)]; 2010 Available online: www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/31670.wss
• Jaeggi Susanne M., Martin Buschkuehl, John Jonides, J Perrig Walter. Improving Fluid Intelligence with Training on Working Memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2008; 105 :6829–33. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0801268105. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Jauk Emanuel, Benedek Mathias, Dunst Beate, Neubauer Aljoscha C. The Relationship between Intelligence and Creativity: New Support for the Threshold Hypothesis by Means of Empirical Breakpoint Detection. Intelligence. 2013; 41 :212–21. doi: 10.1016/j.intell.2013.03.003. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Jensen Arthur R. The g Factor: The Science of Mental Ability. Praeger Publishers/Greenwood Publishing Group; Westport: 1998. [ Google Scholar ]
• de Jesus Saul Neves, Rus Claudia Lenuţa, Lens Willy, Imaginário Susana. Intrinsic Motivation and Creativity Related to Product: A Meta-Analysis of the Studies Published Between 1990–2010. Creativity Research Journal. 2013; 25 :80–84. doi: 10.1080/10400419.2013.752235. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Johnson Steven. Where Good Ideas Come from: The Natural History of Innovation. Penguin UK; London: 2010. [ Google Scholar ]
• Karwowski Maciej, Dul Jan, Gralewski Jacek, Jauk Emanuel, Jankowska Dorota M., Gajda Aleksandra, Chruszczewski Michael H., Benedek Mathias. Is Creativity without Intelligence Possible? A Necessary Condition Analysis. Intelligence. 2016; 57 :105–17. doi: 10.1016/j.intell.2016.04.006. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kaufman James C. Why Creativity Isn’t in IQ Tests, Why It Matters, and Why It Won’t Change Anytime Soon Probably. Journal of Intelligence. 2015; 3 :59–72. doi: 10.3390/jintelligence3030059. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kaufman James C., Beghetto Ronald A. Beyond Big and Little: The Four C Model of Creativity. Review of General Psychology. 2009; 13 :1–12. doi: 10.1037/a0013688. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kaufman James C., Beghetto Ronald A., Baer John. Finding Young Paul Robeson: Exploring the Question of Creative Polymathy. In: Sternberg Robert J., Preiss David D., editors. Innovations in Educational Psychology: Perspectives on Learning, Teaching, and Human Development. Springer Publishing Company; New York: 2010a. pp. 141–62. [ Google Scholar ]
• Kaufman James C., Beghetto Ronald A., Baer John, Ivcevic Zorana. Creativity Polymathy: What Benjamin Franklin Can Teach Your Kindergartener. Learning and Individual Differences. 2010b; 20 :380–87. doi: 10.1016/j.lindif.2009.10.001. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kaufman James C., Glaveanu Vlad P. A Review of Creativity Theories. In: Kaufman James C., Sternberg Robert J., editors. The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity. Cambridge University Press; Cambridge: 2019. pp. 27–43. [ Google Scholar ]
• Kaufman James C., Kaufman Scott Barry, Lichtenberger Elizabeth O. Finding Creative Potential on Intelligence Tests via Divergent Production. Canadian Journal of School Psychology. 2011; 26 :83–106. doi: 10.1177/0829573511406511. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Khan Mahreen, Minbashian Amirali. The Effects of Ageing on Creative Performance Trajectories. Applied Psychology. 2019; 71 :384–408. doi: 10.1111/apps.12235. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kharkhurin Anatoliy V. Creativity. 4in1: Four-Criterion Construct of Creativity. Creativity Research Journal. 2014; 26 :338–52. doi: 10.1080/10400419.2014.929424. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kim Kyung Hee. Meta-Analyses of the Relationship of Creative Achievement to Both IQ and Divergent Thinking Test Scores. The Journal of Creative Behavior. 2008; 42 :106–30. doi: 10.1002/j.2162-6057.2008.tb01290.x. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kim Kyung Hee. Proven Reliability and Validity of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. 2011a; 5 :314–15. doi: 10.1037/a0021916. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kim Kyung Hee. The APA 2009 Division 10 Debate: Are the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking Still Relevant in the 21st Century? Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. 2011b; 5 :302–8. doi: 10.1037/a0021917. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kozbelt Aaron. Longitudinal Hit Ratios of Classical Composers: Reconciling ‘Darwinian’ and Expertise Acquisition Perspectives on Lifespan Creativity. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. 2008; 2 :221–35. doi: 10.1037/a0012860. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kozbelt A., Beghetto Ronald A., Runco Mark A. Theories of Creativity. In: Kaufman James C., Sternberg Robert J., editors. The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity. Cambridge University Press; Cambridge: 2010. pp. 20–47. [ Google Scholar ]
• Krampe Ralf T., Charness Neil. Aging and Expertise. In: Ericsson K. Anders, Hoffman Robert R., Kozbelt Aaron, Williams Mark A., editors. The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance. 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press; Cambridge: 2018. pp. 835–56. [ Google Scholar ]
• Kuncel Nathan R., Hezlett Sarah A., Ones Deniz S. Academic Performance, Career Potential, Creativity, and Job Performance: Can One Construct Predict Them All? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2004; 86 :148–61. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.86.1.148. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Law Lily N. C., Zentner Marcel. Assessing Musical Abilities Objectively: Construction and Validation of the Profile of Music Perception Skills. PLoS ONE. 2012; 7 :e52508. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0052508. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lotka Alfred J. The Frequency Distribution of Scientific Productivity. Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences. 1926; 16 :317–23. [ Google Scholar ]
• Lubart Todd, Besançon Maud, Barbot Baptiste. Evaluation Du Potentiel Créatif (EPoC) [Evaluation of Creative Potential] Editions Hogrefe France; Paris: 2011. [ Google Scholar ]
• Lubart Todd, Guignard Jacques-Henri. Creativity: From Potential to Realization. American Psychological Association; Washington, DC: 2004. The Generality-Specificity of Creativity: A Multivariate Approach; pp. 43–56. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Ma Yifang, Uzzi Brian. Scientific Prize Network Predicts Who Pushes the Boundaries of Science. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2018; 115 :12608–15. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1800485115. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• van der Maas Han L. J., Dolan Conor V., Grasman Raoul P. P. P., Wicherts Jelte M., Huizenga Hilde M., Raijmakers Maartje E. J. A Dynamical Model of General Intelligence: The Positive Manifold of Intelligence by Mutualism. Psychological Review. 2006; 113 :842–61. doi: 10.1037/0033-295X.113.4.842. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• van der Maas Han L. J., Kan Kees-Jan, Marsman Maarten, Stevenson Claire E. Network Models for Cognitive Development and Intelligence. Journal of Intelligence. 2017; 5 :16. doi: 10.3390/jintelligence5020016. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• van der Maas Han L. J., Wagenmakers Eric-Jan. A Psychometric Analysis of Chess Expertise. The American Journal of Psychology. 2005; 118 :29–60. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Macnamara Brooke N., Hambrick David Z., Oswald Frederick L. Deliberate Practice and Performance in Music, Games, Sports, Education, and Professions: A Meta-Analysis. Psychological Science. 2014; 25 :1608–18. doi: 10.1177/0956797614535810. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Mednick Martha T. Research Creativity in Psychology Graduate Students. Journal of Consulting Psychology. 1963; 27 :265–66. doi: 10.1037/h0042429. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Mednick Sarnoff. The Associative Basis of the Creative Process. Psychological Review. 1962; 69 :220–32. doi: 10.1037/h0048850. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Montag Tamara, Maertz Carl P., Baer Markus. A Critical Analysis of the Workplace Creativity Criterion Space. Journal of Management. 2012; 38 :1362–86. doi: 10.1177/0149206312441835. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Mumford Michael D., McIntosh Tristan. Creative Thinking Processes: The Past and the Future. The Journal of Creative Behavior. 2017; 51 :317–22. doi: 10.1002/jocb.197. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Murphy Kevin. What Can We Learn from ‘Not Much More than g’? Journal of Intelligence. 2017; 5 :8. doi: 10.3390/jintelligence5010008. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Murray Charles. Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950. Harper Collins; New York: 2009. [ Google Scholar ]
• Myszkowski Nils, Storme Martin. Judge Response Theory? A Call to Upgrade Our Psychometrical Account of Creativity Judgments. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. 2019; 13 :167–75. doi: 10.1037/aca0000225. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Newell Allen, Simon Herbert Alexander. Human Problem Solving. Prentice-Hall; Upper Saddle River: 1972. [ Google Scholar ]
• Nijstad Bernard A., De Dreu Carsten K. W., Rietzcshel Eric F., Baas Matthijs. The Dual Pathway to Creativity Model: Creative Ideation as a Function of Flexibility and Persistence. European Review of Social Psychology. 2010; 21 doi: 10.1080/10463281003765323. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Nijstad Bernard A., Stroebe Wolfgang. How the Group Affects the Mind: A Cognitive Model of Idea Generation in Groups. Personality and Social Psychology Review. 2006; 10 :186–213. doi: 10.1207/s15327957pspr1003_1. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Nosek B. A., Alter G., Banks G. C., Borsboom D., Bowman S. D., Breckler S. J., Buck S., Chambers C. D., Chin G., Christensen G., et al. Promoting an Open Research Culture. Science. 2015; 348 :1422–25. doi: 10.1126/science.aab2374. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Oberauer Klaus, Lewandowsky Stephan. Addressing the Theory Crisis in Psychology. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. 2019; 26 :1596–618. doi: 10.3758/s13423-019-01645-2. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Perry-Smith Jill E., Mannucci Pier Vittorio. From Creativity to Innovation: The Social Network Drivers of the Four Phases of the Idea Journey. Academy of Management Review. 2017; 42 :53–79. doi: 10.5465/amr.2014.0462. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Plucker Jonathan A. Is the Proof in the Pudding? Reanalyses of Torrance’s (1958 to Present) Longitudinal Data. Creativity Research Journal. 1999; 12 :103–14. doi: 10.1207/s15326934crj1202_3. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Plucker Jonathan A., Beghetto Ronald A. Creativity: From Potential to Realization. American Psychological Association; Washington: 2004. Why Creativity Is Domain General, Why It Looks Domain Specific, and Why the Distinction Does Not Matter; pp. 153–67. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Powers Donald E. Validity of Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) General Test Scores for Admissions to Colleges of Veterinary Medicine. Journal of Applied Psychology. 2004; 89 :208–19. doi: 10.1037/0021-9010.89.2.208. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Preckel Franzis, Holling Heinz, Wiese Michaela. Relationship of Intelligence and Creativity in Gifted and Non-Gifted Students: An Investigation of Threshold Theory. Personality and Individual Differences. 2006; 40 :159–70. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2005.06.022. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Rhodes Mel. An Analysis of Creativity. The Phi Delta Kappan. 1961; 42 :305–10. [ Google Scholar ]
• Runco Mark A. Parsimonious creativity and its measurement. In: Villalba Ernesto., editor. Measuring Creativity. Publications Office of the EU; Brussels: 2009. pp. 393–406. Proceedings of Can Creativity Be Measured? [ Google Scholar ]
• Runco Mark A., Acar Selcuk. Divergent Thinking as an Indicator of Creative Potential. Creativity Research Journal. 2012; 24 :66–75. doi: 10.1080/10400419.2012.652929. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Runco Mark A., Albert Robert S. The Reliability and Validity of Ideational Originality in the Divergent Thinking of Academically Gifted and Nongifted Children. Educational and Psychological Measurement. 1985; 45 :483–501. doi: 10.1177/001316448504500306. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Runco Mark A., Jaeger Garrett J. The Standard Definition of Creativity. Creativity Research Journal. 2012; 24 :92–96. doi: 10.1080/10400419.2012.650092. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Said-Metwaly Sameh, Van den Noortgate Wim, Kyndt Eva. Methodological Issues in Measuring Creativity: A Systematic Literature Review. Creativity. Theories–Research-Applications. 2017; 4 :276–301. doi: 10.1515/ctra-2017-0014. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Salthouse Timothy A. When Does Age-Related Cognitive Decline Begin? Neurobiology of Aging. 2009; 30 :507–14. doi: 10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2008.09.023. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Schmidhuber Jürgen. Formal Theory of Creativity, Fun, and Intrinsic Motivation (1990–2010) IEEE Transactions on Autonomous Mental Development. 2010; 2 :230–47. doi: 10.1109/TAMD.2010.2056368. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Schmidt Frank L., Hunter John E. The Validity and Utility of Selection Methods in Personnel Psychology: Practical and Theoretical Implications of 85 Years of Research Findings. Psychological Bulletin. 1998; 124 :262–74. doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.124.2.262. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Scott Ginamarie, Leritz Lyle E., Mumford Michael D. The Effectiveness of Creativity Training: A Quantitative Review. Creativity Research Journal. 2004; 16 :361–88. doi: 10.1080/10400410409534549. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Silvia Paul J. Intelligence and Creativity Are Pretty Similar After All. Educational Psychology Review. 2015; 27 :599–606. doi: 10.1007/s10648-015-9299-1. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Silvia Paul J., Sanders Camilla E. Why Are Smart People Curious? Fluid Intelligence, Openness to Experience, and Interest. Learning and Individual Differences. 2010; 20 :242–45. doi: 10.1016/j.lindif.2010.01.006. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Simonton Dean K. Creative Productivity, Age, and Stress: A Biographical Time-Series Analysis of 10 Classical Composers. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1977; 35 :791–804. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.35.11.791. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Simonton Dean K. Personality Correlates of Exceptional Personal Influence: A Note on Thorndike’s (1950) Creators and Leaders. Creativity Research Journal. 1991; 4 :67–78. doi: 10.1080/10400419109534374. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Simonton Dean K. Creative Productivity: A Predictive and Explanatory Model of Career Trajectories and Landmarks. Psychological Review. 1997; 104 :66–89. doi: 10.1037/0033-295X.104.1.66. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Simonton Dean K. Talent and Its Development: An Emergenic and Epigenetic Model. Psychological Review. 1999a; 106 :435–57. doi: 10.1037/0033-295X.106.3.435. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Simonton Dean K. The Continued Evolution of Creative Darwinism. Psychological Inquiry. 1999b; 10 :362–67. [ Google Scholar ]
• Simonton Dean K. Origins of Genius: Darwinian Perspectives on Creativity. Oxford University Press; Oxford: 1999c. [ Google Scholar ]
• Simonton Dean K. Creative Development as Acquired Expertise: Theoretical Issues and an Empirical Test. Developmental Review. 2000; 20 :283–318. doi: 10.1006/drev.1999.0504. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Simonton Dean K. Genius and g: Intelligence and Exceptional Achievement. In: Nyborg Helmuth., editor. The Scientific Study of General Intelligence. Pergamon; Oxford: 2003a. pp. 229–45. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Simonton Dean K. Expertise, Competence, and Creative Ability: The Perplexing Complexities. In: Sternberg Robert J., Grigorenko Elena L., editors. The Psychology of Abilities, Competencies, and Expertise. Cambridge University Press; Cambridge: 2003b. [ Google Scholar ]
• Simonton Dean K. Scientific Creativity as Constrained Stochastic Behavior: The Integration of Product, Person, and Process Perspectives. Psychological Bulletin. 2003c; 129 :475–94. doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.129.4.475. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Simonton Dean K. Scientific Talent, Training, and Performance: Intellect, Personality, and Genetic Endowment. Review of General Psychology. 2008; 12 :28–46. doi: 10.1037/1089-2680.12.1.28. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Simonton Dean K. Foresight, Insight, Oversight, and Hindsight in Scientific Discovery: How Sighted Were Galileo’s Telescopic Sightings? Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. 2012; 6 :243–54. doi: 10.1037/a0027058. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Sio Ut Na, Ormerod Thomas C. Does Incubation Enhance Problem Solving? A Meta-Analytic Review. Psychological Bulletin. 2009; 135 :94–120. doi: 10.1037/a0014212. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Sternberg Robert J. A Triangular Theory of Creativity. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. 2018; 12 :50–67. doi: 10.1037/aca0000095. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Sternberg Robert J., Grigorenko Elena L., Bundy Donald A. The Predictive Value of IQ. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly. 2001; 47 :1–41. doi: 10.1353/mpq.2001.0005. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Sternberg Robert J., Kaufman James C., Roberts Anne M. The Relation of Creativity to Intelligence and Wisdom. In: Kaufman James C., Sternberg Robert J., editors. The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity. Cambridge University Press; Cambridge: 2019. pp. 337–52. [ Google Scholar ]
• Sternberg Robert J., O’Hara Linda A. Handbook of Intelligence. Cambridge University Press; Cambridge: 2000. Intelligence and Creativity; pp. 611–30. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Stevenson Claire E., Kleibeuker Sietske W., de Dreu Carsten K. W., Crone Eveline A. Training Creative Cognition: Adolescence as a Flexible Period for Improving Creativity. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. 2014; 8 doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00827. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Süb Heinz-Martin, Beauducel André. Faceted Models of Intelligence. In: Wilhelm Oliver, Engle Randall W., editors. Handbook of Understanding and Measuring Intelligence. SAGE; London: 2005. pp. 313–22. [ Google Scholar ]
• Torrance E. Paul. Guiding Creative Talent. Prentice-Hall, Inc.; Englewood Cliffs: 1962. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Torrance E. Paul. The Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking—Norms—Technical Manual—Figural (Streamlined) Forms A and B. Scholastic Testing Service; Bensenville: 2008. [ Google Scholar ]
• Wallach Michael A., Kogan Nathan. A New Look at the Creativity-Intelligence Distinction. Journal of Personality. 1965; 33 :348–69. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-6494.1965.tb01391.x. [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Wallas Graham. The Art of Thought. Harcourt, Brace; San Diego: 1926. [ Google Scholar ]
• Weisberg Robert W. Creativity and Knowledge: A Challenge to Theories. In: Sternberg Robert J., editor. Handbook of Creativity. Cambridge University Press; Cambridge: 1999. pp. 226–50. [ Google Scholar ]
• Weisberg Robert W. Expertise and Structured Imagination in Creative Thinking: Reconsideration of an Old Question. In: Ericsson K. Anders, Hoffman Robert R., Kozbelt Aaron, Williams Mark A., editors. The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance. 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press; Cambridge: 2018. pp. 812–34. [ Google Scholar ]
• Zabelina Darya, Beeman Mark. Short-Term Attentional Perseveration Associated with Real-Life Creative Achievement. Frontiers in Psychology. 2013; 4 doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00191. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Zeng Liang, Proctor Robert W., Salvendy Gavriel. Can Traditional Divergent Thinking Tests Be Trusted in Measuring and Predicting Real-World Creativity? Creativity Research Journal. 2011; 23 :24–37. doi: 10.1080/10400419.2011.545713. [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]

Thinking and Analysis

• Creative Thinking Skills

Everybody has a creative potential and from the moment you can express this creative potential, you can start changing the world. —Paulo Coelho, author and lyricist

Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Define creative thinking
• Identify the value of creative thinking in education
• Describe the impact of limitations (such as rules) on creative thinking
• Describe the role of creative thinking skills in problem-solving

Creative Thinking

Think about a time when you visited a museum or a sculpture garden, or you attended an orchestral performance or a concert by a favorite performer. Did you marvel at the skill, the artistry, and the innovation? Did you imagine how wonderful it must feel to have those abilities?

If you’ve ever had thoughts like this, you must know you’re not alone. It’s hard for anyone to behold a great work of art or performance and not imagine standing, even briefly, in the artist’s shoes.

But when you’ve admired creative works or creative people, have you acknowledged the seeds of creativity within yourself?

You might be surprised to know that everyone has creative abilities: it’s true of everyone who fully expresses creative abilities as well as those who express them very little or not at all. All humans are innately creative, especially if creativity is understood as a problem-solving skill.

Put another way, creativity is inspired when there is a problem to solve. For example, when a sculptor creates an amazing sculpture, it’s an act of problem-solving: perhaps she must determine which artistic style to use in order to create the likeness of an object, or perhaps she is deciding which tools will most suit her purpose or style, perhaps she is assessing how best to satisfy a customer’s request or earn income from her art—you get the idea. In every case, the problem sparks the sculptor’s creativity and she brings her creativity to bear in finding an artistic solution.

Considered as an act of problem-solving, creativity can be understood as a skill —as opposed to an inborn talent or natural “gift”—that can be taught as well as learned. Problem-solving is something we are called upon to do every day, from performing mundane chores to executing sophisticated projects. The good news is that we can always improve upon our problem-solving and creative-thinking skills—even if we don’t consider ourselves to be artists or “creative.” The following information may surprise and encourage you!

• Creative thinking (a companion to critical thinking) is an invaluable skill for college students . It’s  important because it helps you look at problems and situations from a fresh perspective. Creating thinking is a way to develop novel or unorthodox solutions that do not depend wholly on past or current solutions. It’s a way of employing strategies to clear your mind so that your thoughts and ideas can transcend what appear to be the limitations of a problem. Creative thinking is a way of moving beyond barriers. [1]
• As a creative thinker, you are curious, optimistic, and imaginative. You see problems as interesting opportunities, and you challenge assumptions and suspend judgment. You don’t give up easily. You work hard. [2]

Is this you? Even if you don’t yet see yourself as a competent creative thinker or problem-solver, you can learn solid skills and techniques to help you become one.

Activity: Assess Your Creative Problem-Solving Skills

• Evaluate your attitude toward problem-solving in the context of cultivating creative thinking.

Directions:

• Access Psychology Today ’s Creative Problem-Solving Test at the Psychology Today  Web site.
• Read the introductory text, which explains how creativity is linked to fundamental qualities of thinking, such as flexibility and tolerance of ambiguity.
• Then advance to the questions by clicking on the “Take The Test” button. The test has 20 questions and will take roughly 10 minutes.
• After finishing the test, you will receive a Snapshot Report with an introduction, a graph, and a personalized interpretation for one of your test scores.

Complete any further steps by following your instructor’s directions.

Creative Thinking in Education

Now that you have taken the creative problem-solving self-assessment test, do you have a better sense of which creative thinking skills and attitudes you have, and which ones you might want to improve upon?

College is great ground for enhancing creative thinking skills. The following are some college  activities that can stimulate creative thinking. Are any familiar to you?

• Design sample exam questions to test your knowledge as you study for a final.
• Devise a social media strategy for a club on campus.
• Propose an education plan for a major you are designing for yourself.
• Prepare a speech that you will give in a debate in your course.
• Develop a pattern for a costume in a theatrical production.
• Arrange audience seats in your classroom to maximize attention during your presentation.
• Arrange an eye-catching holiday display in your dormitory or apartment building.
• Participate in a brainstorming session with your fellow musicians on how you will collaborate to write a musical composition.
• Draft a script for a video production that will be shown to several college administrators.
• Compose a set of requests and recommendations for a campus office to improve its customer service.
• Develop a marketing pitch for a mock business you are developing.
• Develop a comprehensive energy-reduction plan for your cohousing arrangement.

How to Stimulate Creative Thinking

The following video, How to Stimulate the Creative Process , identifies six strategies to stimulate your creative thinking.

• Sleep on it. Over the years, researchers have found that the REM sleep cycle boosts our creativity and problem-solving abilities, providing us with innovative ideas or answers to vexing dilemmas when we awaken. Keep a pen and paper by the bed so you can write down your nocturnal insights if they wake you up.
• Go for a run or hit the gym. Studies indicate that exercise stimulates creative thinking, and the brainpower boost lasts for a few hours.
• Allow your mind to wander a few times every day. Far from being a waste of time, daydreaming has been found to be an essential part of generating new ideas. If you’re stuck on a problem or creatively blocked, think about something else for a while.
• Keep learning. Studying something far removed from your area of expertise is especially effective in helping you think in new ways.
• Put yourself in nerve-racking situations once in a while to fire up your brain. Fear and frustration can trigger innovative thinking.
• Keep a notebook with you so you always have a way to record fleeting thoughts. They’re sometimes the best ideas of all.

A Brainstorm of Tips for Creative Thinking

The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas. —Linus Pauling, double Nobel Laureate, chemist, biochemist, and peace campaigner

Below are some additional tips to help you tap into original and creative thinking in your college assignments and endeavors:

• Use all your senses—see, taste, smell, touch, hear, think, speak.
• Be a good observer of people, nature, and events around you.
• Engage thinking on the right side of your brain (intuition, open-mindedness, visual perception, rhythm . . .).
• Change  your interpretation of an event, situation, behavior, person, or object.
• Allow ideas to incubate.
• Be open to insight as ideas pop into your mind.
• Brainstorm by generating ideas with a group of people.
• Ask, “What would happen if . . .”
• Ask, “In how many different ways . . .”
• Develop ideas and expand their possibilities.
• Envision the future.

Speaking and Writing

• Use your words and your “voice” when conveying your original ideas.
• Avoid using clichés or overly familiar responses to questions or problems.
• Explain how your ideas move beyond the status quo and contribute to a discussion.
• Take notes.
• Use mind-mapping to capture ideas; start with a key concept and write it in the center of your page; use connecting lines, radiating from the central concept, and write down any connected or related ideas that come to you.
• Create pictures or drawings of situations (“rich pictures”) to show them in a different way.
• Find ways to demonstrate your personal investment in projects.
• Gather knowledge and conduct research.
• Have more fun learning!
• Do physical activities to engage the creative areas of your brain and think differently.
• Take breaks.

Creative Thinking Fiction and Facts

As you continue to develop your creative thinking skills, be alert to perceptions about creative thinking that could slow down progress. Remember that creative thinking and problem-solving are ways to transcend the limitations of a problem and see past barriers. It’s a way to think “outside of the box.”

Problem-Solving with Creative Thinking

Creative problem-solving is a type of problem-solving. It involves searching for new and novel solutions to problems. Unlike critical thinking, which scrutinizes assumptions and uses reasoning, creative thinking is about generating alternative ideas— practices and solutions that are unique and effective. It’s about facing sometimes muddy and unclear problems and seeing how “things” can be done differently—how new solutions can be imagined. [4]

The following words, by Dr. Andrew Robert Baker, are excerpted from his “Thinking Critically and Creatively” essay introduced earlier. Below, Dr. Baker continues to illuminate some of the many ways that college students will be exposed to creative thinking and how it can enrich their learning experiences.

Thinking Critically and Creatively

While critical thinking analyzes information and roots out the true nature and facets of problems, it is creative thinking that drives progress forward when it comes to solving these problems. Exceptional creative thinkers are people that invent new solutions to existing problems that do not rely on past or current solutions. They are the ones who invent solution C when everyone else is still arguing between A and B. Creative thinking skills involve using strategies to clear the mind so that our thoughts and ideas can transcend the current limitations of a problem and allow us to see beyond barriers that prevent new solutions from being found.

Brainstorming is the simplest example of intentional creative thinking that most people have tried at least once. With the quick generation of many ideas at once, we can block-out our brain’s natural tendency to limit our solution-generating abilities so we can access and combine many possible solutions/thoughts and invent new ones. It is sort of like sprinting through a race’s finish line only to find there is new track on the other side and we can keep going, if we choose. As with critical thinking, higher education both demands creative thinking from us and is the perfect place to practice and develop the skill. Everything from word problems in a math class, to opinion or persuasive speeches and papers, call upon our creative thinking skills to generate new solutions and perspectives in response to our professor’s demands. Creative thinking skills ask questions such as—What if? Why not? What else is out there? Can I combine perspectives/solutions? What is something no one else has brought-up? What is being forgotten/ignored? What about ______? It is the opening of doors and options that follows problem-identification.

Consider an assignment that required you to compare two different authors on the topic of education and select and defend one as better. Now add to this scenario that your professor clearly prefers one author over the other. While critical thinking can get you as far as identifying the similarities and differences between these authors and evaluating their merits, it is creative thinking that you must use if you wish to challenge your professor’s opinion and invent new perspectives on the authors that have not previously been considered.

So, what can we do to develop our critical and creative thinking skills? Although many students may dislike it, group work is an excellent way to develop our thinking skills. Many times I have heard from students their disdain for working in groups based on scheduling, varied levels of commitment to the group or project, and personality conflicts too, of course. True—it’s not always easy, but that is why it is so effective. When we work collaboratively on a project or problem we bring many brains to bear on a subject. These different brains will naturally develop varied ways of solving or explaining problems and examining information. To the observant individual we see that this places us in a constant state of back and forth critical/creative thinking modes.

For example, in group work we are simultaneously analyzing information and generating solutions on our own, while challenging other’s analyses/ideas and responding to challenges to our own analyses/ideas. This is part of why students tend to avoid group work—it challenges us as thinkers and forces us to analyze others while defending ourselves, which is not something we are used to or comfortable with as most of our educational experiences involve solo work. Your professors know this—that’s why we assign it—to help you grow as students, learners, and thinkers!

—Dr. Andrew Robert Baker,  Foundations of Academic Success: Words of Wisdom

Resources for Creative Thinking

• Games That Stimulate Creativity
• 45 Websites on Creative Thinking and Creative Skills
• Creativity Techniques A To Z
• Mumaw, Stefan. "Born This Way: Is Creativity Innate or Learned?" Peachpit . Pearson, 27 Dec 2012. Web. 16 Feb 2016. ↵
• Harris, Robert. "Introduction to Creative Thinking." Virtual Salt . 2 Apr 2012. Web. 16 Feb 2016. ↵
• "Critical and Creative Thinking, MA." University of Massachusetts Boston . 2016. Web. 16 Feb 2016. ↵
• Creative Thinking Skills. Authored by : Linda Bruce. Provided by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution
• Image of throwing a pot. Authored by : Sterling College. Located at : https://flic.kr/p/qFFeQG . License : CC BY: Attribution
• Creative Thinking Skills. Provided by : Fostering Creativity and Critical Thinking with Technology. Located at : https://creativecriticalthinking.wikispaces.com/Creative+Thinking . License : Other . License Terms : GNU Free Documentation License
• Foundations of Academic Success: Words of Wisdom. Authored by : Thomas C. Priester, editor. Provided by : Open SUNY Textbooks. Located at : http://textbooks.opensuny.org/foundations-of-academic-success/ . License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
• How to Stimulate the Creative Process. Authored by : Howcast. Located at : https://youtu.be/kPC8e-Jk5uw . License : All Rights Reserved . License Terms : Standard YouTube License