Creativity

1
Creativity

• What is creativity?
• Creativity and constraints.
• Is there a way to be more creative?

2
What is creativity?

• The problem with creativity is that we know it
  when we see it, but it is hard to define.

Picasso Les Demoiselles DAvignon
3
Creative stuff
Frank Lloyd Wright
Charles Darwin
Michael Jordan
4
Creativity and Cognition

• Creativity involves generation of new ideas
• Boden
• p-creativity A new idea for a person
• A person may come to a new realization
• h-creativity A new idea historically
• Novel inventions are h-creative
• Most of what we think of as creative is an
  example of h-creativity.
• h-creativity can be studied historically
• You do not know when a creative event will happen
• p-creativity can be studied

5
H-creativity

• We saw the dangers of looking at h-creativity
  when we talked about insight.
• There are many myths that grow up around great
  inventions.
• The significance of inventions is not realized
  until much later
• Stories must be told in retrospect.
• People tend to dramatize the story.
• Most creative acts are rather mundane
• Invention is 99 perspiration and 1
  inspiration. -Thomas Alva Edison

6
Incremental invention

• Sewing machines

Invented in 1848
7
Why is invention incremental?

• How can a creative idea come about?
• It must be related to existing ideas
• Otherwise, how would people think it up?
• How could it be implemented?
• What does it mean for an idea to be ahead of its
  time?
• A creative idea must be comprehensible to others
• What good is an invention that nobody wants?
• Suggests that existing ideas may constrain
  creativity.

8
New inventions

• Innovative inventions are often based on known
  products.

Early railroad cars were designed like
stagecoaches on tracks. Engineer and
brakeman were not moved inside until later.
Stagecoaches were a good solution to initial
problems Other problems were not discovered
until later.
9
P-creativity

• In order to understand creative invention better,
  use college students.
• The ideas may not be h-creative
• The same processes may be at work.
• Questions
• Are creative ideas influenced by existing
  concepts?
• What will make people more creative?
• How should creativity be judged?

10
Creativity and Concepts

• Draw an animal that does not exist.
• Ward
• Karmiloff-Smith

Novel animals have many properties of real
animals Often have bilateral symmery
Sense organs on head Similar sense
organs to humans.
11
Where do examples come from?

• People select common concepts as examples
• They seem to use specific items
• When asked to create novel intelligent beings
• Animals typically walk upright
• Animals typically have two arms and two legs
• People seem to be using humans as a basis.
• Effect not limited to college students.

Even sci-fi authors and movies seem to have the
same constraints.
12
What makes people more creative?

• A paradox
• People access categories when being creative
• Categories are retrieved on the basis of cues
  during the creative process
• The more cues available, the more access
• More specific situations lead to less creativity.
• Forcing people into strange situations can lead
  to higher levels of creativity

13
An example

• Four conditions.
• Pick a category of invention and pick parts
• Parts assigned pick category
• Category assigned pick parts
• Both category and parts assigned
• Creativity of inventions increases as you move
  down this list

14
Measuring creativity

• There is no objective measure of creativity
• Most studies just ask people to create something
  and then have others rate it.
• Poses a problem for studying creativity
• If we do not know what it is well enough to be
  able to measure it, how can we study it?

15
Is creativity special?

• There are certainly exceptional people
• Are they doing something very different from what
  normal people do?
• Most current research suggests that the same
  processes are at work.
• Creative people may have good strategies for
  exploring novel portions of creative space.
• May be good at using analogies to bring knowledge
  from one domain to another.

16
Summary

• H-creativity and p-creativity
• It is hard to study h-creativity
• Myths grow up around creative acts
• It is easier to study p-creativity
• May miss some aspects of highly creative
  situations.
• People are constrained by their knowledge
• We often create variations on known categories.

17
(No Transcript)