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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Creativity | 3/14 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creativity | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T07:11:10.173371+00:00 | kb-cron |
mini-c ("transformative learning" involving "personally meaningful interpretations of experiences, actions, and insights"). little-c (everyday problem-solving and creative expression). Pro-C (exhibited by people who are professionally or vocationally creative, though not necessarily eminent). Big-C (creativity considered great in a given field). This model was intended to help accommodate models and theories of creativity that stressed competence as an essential component and a historic transformation of a creative domain as the highest mark of creativity. It also, the authors argued, made a useful framework for analyzing creative processes in individuals. The contrast signified by the terms "Big C" and "little C" has been widely used. Kozbelt, Beghetto, and Runco used a little-c/Big-C model to review major theories of creativity. Margaret Boden distinguished between h-creativity (historical) and p-creativity (personal). Ken Robinson and Anna Craft focused on creativity in a general population, particularly with respect to education. Craft makes a similar distinction between "high" and "little c" creativity and cites Robinson as referring to "high" and "democratic" creativity. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi defined creativity in terms of individuals judged to have made significant creative and perhaps domain-changing contributions. Simonton analyzed the career trajectories of eminent creative people in order to map patterns and predictors of creative productivity.
=== "Four P's" aspects === Theories of creativity (and empirical investigations of why some people are more creative than others) have focused on a variety of aspects. The dominant factors are usually identified as "the four P's," a framework first put forward by Mel Rhodes:
Process A focus on process is shown in cognitive approaches that try to describe thought mechanisms and techniques for creative thinking. Theories invoking divergent rather than convergent thinking (such as that of Guilford), or those describing the staging of the creative process (such as that of Wallas) are primarily theories of the creative process. Product A focus on a creative product usually attempts to assess creative output, whether for psychometrics (see below) or to understand why some objects are considered creative. It is from a consideration of product that the standard definition of creativity as the production of something both novel and useful arises. Person A focus on the nature of the creative person considers more general intellectual habits, such as openness, levels of ideation, autonomy, expertise, exploratory behavior, and so on. Press and place A focus on place (or press) considers the circumstances in which creativity flourishes, such as degrees of autonomy, access to resources, and the nature of gatekeepers. Creative lifestyles are characterized by nonconforming attitudes and behaviors, as well as flexibility.
=== "Five A's" aspects === In 2013, based on a sociocultural critique of the Four-P's model as individualistic, static, and decontextualized, psychology professor and author Vlad Petre Glăveanu proposed a "Five A's" model consisting of actor, action, artifact, audience, and affordance. In this model, the actor is the person with attributes but who is also located within social networks; action is the process of creativity not only in internal cognitive terms but also external, bridging the gap between ideation and implementation; artifacts emphasize how creative products typically represent cumulative innovations over time rather than abrupt discontinuities; and "press/place" is divided into audience and affordance, which consider the interdependence of the creative individual with the social and material world, respectively. Although not supplanting the Four P's model in creativity research, the Five A's model has exerted influence over the direction of some creativity research, and has been credited with bringing coherence to studies across a number of creative domains.
== Process theories == There has been significant research conducted in the fields of psychology and cognitive science towards better understanding the processes by which creativity occurs. The results of these studies have led to several possible explanations of the sources and methods of creativity.
=== Incubation ===
"Incubation" is a temporary break from creative problem solving that can result in insight. Empirical research has investigated whether, as the concept of "incubation" in Wallas's model implies, a period of interruption or rest from a problem may aid creative problem-solving. Early work proposed that creative solutions to problems arise mysteriously from the unconscious mind while the conscious mind is occupied with other tasks. This hypothesis is included in Csikszentmihalyi's five-phase model of the creative process, which describes incubation as a time when one's unconscious takes over. This was supposed to allow for unique connections to be made without the conscious mind trying to make logical order out of the problem. Ward listed various hypotheses that have been advanced to explain why incubation may aid creative problem-solving and notes how some empirical evidence is consistent with a different hypothesis: incubation aids creative problems in that it enables "forgetting" of misleading clues. The absence of incubation may lead the problem solver to become fixated on inappropriate problem-solving strategies.
=== Divergent thinking === J. P. Guilford drew a distinction between convergent and divergent production, or convergent and divergent thinking. Convergent thinking involves aiming for a single, correct, or best solution to a problem (e.g. "How can we get a crewed rocket to land on the moon safely and within budget?"). Divergent thinking, on the other hand, involves the creative generation of multiple answers to an open-ended prompt (e.g. "How can a chair be used?"). Divergent thinking is sometimes used as a synonym for creativity in psychological literature or is considered the necessary precursor to creativity. However, as Runco pointed out, there is a clear distinction between creative thinking and divergent thinking. Creative thinking focuses on the production, combination, and assessment of ideas to formulate something new and unique, while divergent thinking focuses on conceiving a variety of ideas that are not necessarily new or unique. Other researchers have occasionally used the terms flexible thinking or fluid intelligence, which are also roughly similar to (but not synonymous with) creativity. While convergent and divergent thinking differ greatly in terms of approach to problem solving, it is believed that both are employed to some degree in solving most real-world problems.