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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Creativity | 13/14 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creativity | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T07:11:10.173371+00:00 | kb-cron |
=== Team composition === The diversity of team members' backgrounds and knowledge can increase team creativity by expanding the collection of unique information that is available to the team and by introducing different perspectives that can be integrated in novel ways. The Millennium Conferences on Creativity, a two-year-long Canadian review of the subject, for example, advocated for new linkages between the arts and science communities and targeted funding for multidisciplinary research. However, under some conditions, diversity can also decrease team creativity by making it more difficult for team members to communicate about ideas and causing interpersonal conflicts between those with different perspectives. Thus, the potential advantages of diversity must be supported by appropriate team processes and organizational cultures in order to enhance creativity.
=== Team processes === Team communication norms, such as respecting others' expertise, paying attention to others' ideas, expecting information sharing, tolerating disagreements, negotiating, remaining open to others' ideas, learning from others, and building on each other's ideas, increase team creativity by facilitating the social processes involved with brainstorming and problem solving. Through these processes, team members can access their collective pool of knowledge, reach shared understandings, identify new ways of understanding problems or tasks, and make new connections between ideas. Engaging in these social processes also promotes positive team affect, which facilitates collective creativity.
=== Constraints ===
There is a long-standing debate on how material constraints (e.g., lack of money, materials, or equipment) affect creativity. In psychological and managerial research, there are two competing views. In one view, scholars propose a negative effect of material constraints on innovation and claim that material constraints starve creativity. Proponents argue that adequate material resources are needed to engage in creative activities such as experimenting with new solutions and idea exploration. In an opposing view, scholars assert that people tend to stick to established routines or solutions as long as they are not forced to deviate from them by constraints. For example, material constraints facilitated the development of jet engines in World War II. To reconcile these competing views, contingency models were proposed. The rationale behind these models is that certain contingency factors (e.g., creativity climate or creativity-relevant skills) influence the relationship between constraints and creativity. These contingency factors reflect the need for higher levels of motivation and skills when working on creative tasks under constraints. Depending on these contingency factors, there is either a positive or negative relationship between constraints and creativity.
== Fostering creativity ==
Several researchers have proposed methods of increasing a person's creativity. Such ideas range from the psychological-cognitive—such as the Osborn-Parnes Creative Problem Solving Process, Synectics, science-based creative thinking, Purdue Creative Thinking Program, and Edward de Bono's lateral thinking—to the highly structured—such as TRIZ (the Theory of Inventive Problem-Solving) and its variant Algorithm of Inventive Problem Solving (developed by the Russian scientist Genrich Altshuller), and Computer-Aided morphological analysis. An empirical synthesis, of which methods work best in enhancing creativity, was published by Haase et al. Summarising the results of 84 studies, the authors found that complex training courses, meditation, and cultural exposure were most effective in enhancing creativity, while the use of cognitive-manipulation drugs was noneffective.
=== Need for closure === Experiments suggest the need for closure of task participants, whether as a reflection of personality or induced (through time pressure), negatively impacts creativity. Accordingly, it has been suggested that reading fiction, which can reduce the cognitive need for closure, may encourage creativity.
== Malevolent creativity ==
"Malevolent creativity" is the "dark side" of creativity. This type of creativity is not typically accepted within society and is defined by the intention to cause harm to others through original and innovative means. While it is often associated with criminal behavior, it can also be observed in ordinary day-to-day life as lying, cheating, and betrayal. Malevolent creativity should be distinguished from negative creativity in that negative creativity may unintentionally cause harm to others, whereas malevolent creativity is malevolently motivated.
=== Crime === Malevolent creativity is a key contributor to crime and in its most destructive form can even manifest as terrorism. As creativity requires deviating from the conventional, there is permanent tension between being creative and going too far—in some cases to the point of breaking the law. Aggression is a key predictor of malevolent creativity, and increased levels of aggression correlate with a higher likelihood of committing crime.
=== Predictive factors === Although everyone shows some levels of malevolent creativity under certain conditions, those that have a higher propensity towards it have increased tendencies to deceive and manipulate others for their own gain. While malevolent creativity appears to dramatically increase when an individual is treated unfairly, personality, particularly aggressiveness, is also a key predictor in anticipating levels of malevolent thinking. Researchers Harris and Reiter-Palmon investigated the role of aggression in levels of malevolent creativity, in particular levels of implicit aggression and the tendency to employ aggressive actions in response to problem solving. The personality traits of physical aggression, conscientiousness, emotional intelligence, and implicit aggression all seem to be related with malevolent creativity. Harris and Reiter-Palmon's research showed that when subjects were presented with a problem that designed to trigger malevolent creativity, participants high in implicit aggression and low in premeditation expressed the largest number of malevolently themed solutions. When presented with the more benign problem designed to trigger prosocial motives of helping others and cooperating, those high in implicit aggression, even if they tended to be highly impulsive, were far less destructive in their imagined solutions. The researchers concluded premeditation, more than implicit aggression, controlled an individual's expression of malevolent creativity. The current measure for malevolent creativity is the 13-item Malevolent Creativity Behaviour Scale (MCBS).
== Academic journals ==
== See also ==
== References ==