Plucker
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When the DNA Tower by acclaimed glass artist Dale Chihuly was installed in the atrium of the Van Nuys Medical Science Building at IUPUI, it served, literally, as the focal point of the Sept. 30 dedication of the nearby Research II facility.
The Chihuly sculpture, and the scientific discovery on which its artistic representation was based, brings up some interesting questions about human creativity. Is the process that propels artistic expression the same as the process that leads to medical and technological breakthroughs? Who is creative? Who is not?
While art is frequently associated with the word ”creativity,” science and medicine generally are not—unless, of course, you are into “creativity research.” Jonathan Plucker, associate professor of learning, cognition and instruction in the IU School of Education, and associate professor of cognitive science in the College of Arts and Sciences at IUB, talked to IU Home Pages about new thinking on creativity. Plucker, who also is director of the Indiana Education Policy Center, teaches courses in learning and cognitive theory, intelligence and creativity.
Q. When we think of creativity, many of us automatically associate the word with artists, musicians and writers; there is much more to it. How do you define “creativity?”
A. My colleagues and I define creativity as “the interplay between ability and process by which an individual or group produces an outcome or product that is both novel and useful as defined within some social context.”
We believe this perspective addresses several weaknesses of previous definitions, especially those that only focus on uniqueness. Our take on it is: originality of and by itself is not creativity. Based on this definition, it should be easy to see that creativity can emerge in any area of human endeavor.
Q. So, creativity is much more than simply being a creative person. There is also the concept of a creative process or “problem solving,” and another area of creativity research involves determining characteristics of the creative product. Could you explain a bit about all three aspects of creativity?
A. Actually, there’s a fourth area—environmental influences on creativity. Lots of business applications of creativity are starting to accent this aspect, which involves shaping the environments in which one plays, works, lives, etc., to maximize opportunities to be creative. I’m not a big fan of person approaches to creativity, as research on personality characteristics of creative people is not conclusive and is easily misinterpreted. Educators tend to accent process aspects of creativity, especially those related to problem solving. Focusing on creative products has a few advantages, most notably, the fact that you have something observable to study, whereas creative process can be more ambiguous.
Q. We’ve moved, then, from the Greeks, who believed that creativity was a gift of the gods, to thinking that creativity has much more to do with the brain. What is the latest thinking about the brain and where creativity resides within it?
A. This is finally starting to receive some attention, but the research in this area is just getting started. MRI studies have furthered our understanding of other cognitive processes, and I expect the same benefit for our understanding of creativity. One caution, however: Creativity is influenced by a range of non-cognitive factors, too, such as one’s environment, attitudes toward creativity and peers. Fruitful inquiry about creativity has to consider a wide range of potential factors from the biological to the motivational to the social.
Q. Because so many of the most brilliant artists, writers and composers have suffered from mental illness, there has been a great deal of research into the possible relationship between creativity and mental illness. Interestingly, even Socrates thought that ideas came not when a person was rational, but when that person was “bereft of senses.” Is there new research in this area?
A. This is a very controversial area. Much of the research on mental illness and creativity comes from case studies, which provide great depth and colorful anecdotes but do not help us understand how prevalent mental illness is among highly creative people. At most, the relationship is probably highly overstated: Is there a link between mental illness and creativity? Maybe. It probably depends on the specific mental illness and specific area of creativity, but the relationship may have little meaning. For example, we normally wouldn’t conclude that having eyebrows and driving a car have a causal relationship, even though research would probably provide evidence that people who drive cars do indeed have eyebrows. Just because two things appear to be related does not mean there is a direct relationship between them.
Q. If part of creativity is learning a skill and achieving mastery, does everyone have the capacity for creativity? How do we know if we’re creative? How do we develop or enhance our creativity?
A. We believe everyone has the potential to be creative, with very few exceptions that result from cognitive disabilities and injuries. And I’ve seen this with my students. Even in my creativity classes, most students begin the semester believing that they aren’t creative. By the end of the semester, almost everyone believes they are creative. This is why my colleagues and I suspect that traditional approaches to creativity are misguided—they focus on learning creativity and problem-solving techniques, but they rarely address the social and motivational barriers that keep people from using their creativity.
I take the opposite approach in my courses: We start by addressing the social and motivational issues first, after which students are much more receptive to the use of specific problem-solving strategies. To use a sports example, I have had many golf lessons where I am taught the correct way to swing the golf club. I have even taught others how to improve their swing. But my father is convinced that I am a bad golfer because I just can’t convince myself that I have the ability to golf well. Creativity probably works in the same way. We need to wipe out all the myths and stereotypes, after which we can help people fine-tune their creativity.
Q. So, how similar is the creative process, are there points of similarity for those who create in the arts, in technology, or in medicine, for example.
A. The question about whether creativity and problem solving are the same in different domains is another hot topic among creativity scholars. Many people appear to be adopting the position that many aspects of creativity are universal, but that specific skills and knowledge limited to an area such as medicine are necessary to produce creative work in that area. This makes a lot of sense to me, but I’ve never been entirely comfortable with this for two reasons.
First, becoming immersed in a discipline can lead people to develop an attitude of ‘This is the way we do things here—other ways won’t work.’ That attitude is the best way to kill creativity. I sat through a creativity session for a Fortune 500 company a few years ago, and the group came up with dozens of brilliant, creative ideas for new products. At the end of the day, everyone was talking about how excited they were to return to work and start working on these new ideas. But then the division’s manager said, ‘I appreciate everyone’s effort and ideas, but none of this will work.’ That was the end of it—the enthusiasm disappeared from the room, and everyone left dejected. Not surprisingly, that company has not done well lately, and many analysts suggest it is due to a conservative attitude toward innovation. Gee, do you think?
Second, some of the best and most influential ideas in a field often are introduced by people with training outside of that field. We need to make sure those people have avenues through which to share ideas.
Over-specializing builds walls that keeps those people, and hence their ideas, out.
Q. Western society, it seems, hasn’t been traditionally supportive of creativity. School programs seem to focus much more on “process” and learning the facts than on encouraging creative or original thinking. Do you agree and, if so, why do you think that is, because it seems that creativity is key to human development and advancement on all fronts?
A. I agree, and we can do much, much better. My major concern right now is the increasing emphasis on achievement tests at all levels of education. This pushes teachers to teach to the test, which simply doesn’t allow a lot of attention on creativity. For that matter, it doesn’t allow a lot of attention to ‘anything’ else.
When I was a high school junior, my English teacher spent the first half of the year preparing us for the SAT. We did little else—there simply wasn’t time—and as a group we did pretty well on the SAT that winter. After that, the teacher focused on creative writing, and I give her a lot of credit for my ability to approach writing in creative ways.
But a lot has changed since then in high schools—more tests, more penalties for students not doing well on those tests, few rewards for high levels of achievement and creativity. If that teacher were still in the schools, she wouldn’t be able to switch gears and focus on non-test-related issues the second half of the year.
This country has thrived because of its creativity, and I worry that de-emphasizing creativity in education will impact our society more broadly than people realize. The business community appears to realize this, but the educational system is moving in the opposite direction.
http://php.indiana.edu/~jplucker/
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