CREATIVITY

This is an introduction in the clinical study of creativity which was realized for an collaborative study of childrens creativity planned for the next year.

All the bibliographical resources consulted begin their approach of creativity by emphasizing its importance, both for the inpidual and for the society we live in, as well as the evolution of mankind.

Thus, one of the first psychologists who underlined the importance of creativity was Guilford, the Chairman of the American Psychologist’ Association. He (1950, quoted by Sternberg, (2005), page 13) urged psychologists to grant more attention to this ”neglected, but extremely important aspect”, as a result of ascertaining the following fact: less than 0,2% of the articles published in ”Psychological Abstract” up to 1950 had creativity as a topic. After 1950, it would seem that the interest for creativity increased, as several research institutes were founded. The number of articles which appeared in various publications also increased.

But what is creativity?

The word originates in the latin term ”creare”, meaning ”to create”, ”to forge”, ”to give birth to”. The very etymology of the word indicates that this term ”defines a process, a dynamic act which develops, evolves and engulfs both the origin and the purpose” (Cîmpean, E.A., 2005, page 13). The term and generic notion were introduced for the first time by the American psychologist G.W. Allport, in 1937; later, in the ’70, it was taken over as a neologism in most international languages.

Currently, there are hundred of ways to define creativity. It is generally claimed that “being creative“ means “creating something new, original and adequate to reality“ (Roco, M, 2004, page 17).

Al. Rosca (1981, page 17) shows that it represents “an activity or process which leads to a product characterised by novelty or originality and value for the society“, in a narrow sense. In the wider sense, “creativity also refers to finding solutions, ideas, problems, methods, etc., which are not new for society, but which were reached independently“.

“Creativity denotes the ability to achieve innovative (original, ingeniuos) creations, but also adequate, useful, adapted depending on the task requirements“ (Lubart, 1994, Ochse, 1990, Sternberg, 1988b, Sternberg and Lubart, 1991, 1995, 1996, quoted by Sternberg, (2005), page 13).

In his Psychology Dictionary, Norbert Sillamy defines creativity as the “disposition to create which exists in a potential state in any inpidual and at all ages“ (Sillamy, 2009, page 82).

A.L. Taylor (Cîmpean, 2005, page 15) proposes a distinction of creativity into five levels:

1. Expressive creativity – involves free and spontaneous expression of a person, with no preoccupation regarding the expressions’ utility or value. This is encountered in the case of little children’s drawings. This is an excellent means to cultivate their creative abilities for the future.
2. Productive creativity – it is manifested when the person has aquired skills and abilities allowing them to produce useful things, but in which its nature is very little expressed. In this case we talk about skilled workers who put into practice known techniques and which do not involve originality.
3. Inventive creativity – has the role to facilitate inventions and improvement of various products, devices, sufficiently important in order to be patented and released into production. But inventivity is specific to a very narrow range of persons: the inventors, that is to say those who manage to bring partial improvement to a device, a tool or a controversial theory. For eg., in Japan, a very densely populated country, over 100000 invention patents are registered every year. As a consequence, there is a visible progres of production.
4. Inovative creativity allows for themodification of the principles which form the basis of some fields; it is specific to the elite. This involves the so-called ”talented” people, who create works the originality of which is acknowledged at least nationally.
5. Emergent creativity is specific to geniuses. They revolutionize a field or create remarkable works of art. They open new ways of approach, as Einstein did in physics.

From all that was presented above, creativity emerges as a complex psychological formation, characterised by a multitude of meanings: productivity, utility, efficiency, value, ingenuity, novelty, originality. Novelty and originality are the defining concepts for creativity. Creativity facilitates the making of real or purely mental products, leading to social progress.

Tha main component of creativity is imagination. This is seen as ”the skill to represent absent objects and to combine images” (Sillamy, 2009, page 147). It achieves a fusion of information into new structures, melting, transforming, unifing ideas, images, objects, phenomena, thus reaching an entirely new product. Among the factors of creative imagination, the following where also emphasised: intuition, ingenuity, originality.

Alongside the above, motivation is also extremely important from several points of view: on the one hand it is subject to external influences, which will also influence creativity; on the other hand, intrinsic motivation plays a main part in creation, as it has the posibility to replace certain gaps, lacks, deficiencies which regard to abilities in the field and even creative abilities.

However, one must not forget will, perseverance, which allows us to perform in numerous trials and evaluations of what we have created. In certain fields, it is very important to have detailed documentation, to perform numerous demonstrations, until a creative result or product can be reached, which involves the existence of a high degree of will, perseverance.

The connection between intelligence and creativity has also been studied. Guilford (Cîmpean, 2005, page 18), showed that the existence of ”convergent thinking” leads to a single solution, while ”pergent thinking” will generate multiple solutions. Intelligence allows one to operate with abstractions and find correct solutions, but it is not sufficient in the absence of a creative capacityor in case the creativity level is low.

There is also a close connection between aptitudinal factors and creativity, meaning that creativity will manifest predominantly in the field in which the subject possesses skills.

Mihaela Roco presents the main qualities of creativity (Roco, 2004, page 18):

• Productivity – the high number of ideas, solutions, specialised publications, material products and more, which result from an inpidual’s creativity.
• Utility – the results of the work must be useful, must help in one’s activity.
• Efficiency – regards, in the first place, the performances that can be obtained if we take into account the results of the creative activity.
• Value – what results from a creative activity must have a certain value, meaning, must be recognised as being important
• Ingenuity – the solving methods used must be new, original, must suppose a method never used before
• Novelty – reffers to the distance in time of the works, the ideas. Although there are lots of new, recent products, they are not necesarily original, creative.
• Originality – means the sparesness, uniqueness of the solution, the products, the results of the activity.

Over the time, there have been created a number of ways by which you could have measured the creativity level of a person. As this term requires originality, novel solutions, something new and unexpected that few people think about, this side of the human psychic is very dificult to investigate and measure. Also, from my point of view, it is possible that, at some point in life and due to a different number of reasons, a person does not have a high level a creativity in some field while in others it can be considered very creative.

The one who initiated the measurement of creativity  was J.P. Guilford, when he used the test of the unusual use. The subjects were required to say as many unusual uses as they could for an usual object, like ”brick”.

Creativity and creative people have been studied over long perriods of time, taking into account, also, the field they worked in. Hayes (1989, quoted by Sternberg, 2005, page 176) studied the role of a factor that he called: ”the preparation for producing creative results”. He studied the career evolution of some important people in different fields that required a creative thinking: musical composition, painting and poetry. His conclusion: even the most remarkable and ”talented” people needed years of training until they could create what made them famous. So, this way, he introduced ”the ten years rule”.

I tried to select the creativity tests I found by their complexity and the degree in which they are used by the specialists in the field.

TTCT-TORRENCE CREATIVE  THINKING TESTS

• Author: Paul E Torrance
• Creativity is assessed by way of five indicators:
  • fluency – the ability to produce a great number of ideas, indicator of speed, ease of association in thinking.
  • flexibility – ability to produce a great variety of ideas, indicator of the ability to restructure thinking in relation to new situations
  • elaboration – ability to develor, build or complete an idea
  • originality – ability to produce unusual ideas, statistically with low frequency, which are not at all trivial or obvious
  • resistance to the premature closing of the image – the ability to take into consideration a wide range of images, the extent to which the subject is independent from perceptive learning.
• Has two forms: figural and verbal.
• Application time: 30 min, and 40 min respectively
• Age limit: over 5 years old
• 3 activities for the figural form
• 6 activities for the verbal form

Barron-Welsh Art Scale –BWAS

• Author: Frank Barron
• It is anonverbal test measuring creativity and opening towards experience
• It is a component of the Welch Figure Preference nonverbal personality Test
• The test consists of 86 black and white images-from simple geometric figures to complex patterns, with variations in terms of symmetry, quality and hand drawings versus elaborate drawings. He respondent has to tick whether he/she likes each image or not
• Short application time: 15-20 min, age limit: over 19 years old.

Behavioural Anchors Assessment Scale

• Consists of 12 items corresponding to 12 traits: being different/unusual, ambition, curiosity, unspent energy, no limits, fun, inventiveness, stubbornness, nonconformism, observant, spontaneity, humour
• Allows for the assessment of creative performance from the point of view of the assessments made by the social group the subject is part of, by means of anchors or sets of behaviours recognised as being typical for good, average or inferior performance.
• Recommended to be used for people aged between 12-20 years old.
• The subjects are assessed on a 9-level scale, from very good performance (9, 8, 7), to average (6, 5, 4) and inferior (3, 2, 1)
• Can be applied inpidually or in a group. It is advisable that each subject be assessed by a minimum of 3 assessors. It isnot advisable for groups to be larger than 10assessed subjects and 30 assessors.
• Application time: 15-30 minutes.

me²-General Factor of Creativity

• The model contains 12 inpidual factors which together form The General Factor of Creativity, the 12 factors being pided in 4 groups:
• Group 1: generation of ideas-fluency, originality, incubation, illumination
• Group 2: personality-curiosity, ambiguity
• Group 3: motivation-intrinsic, competitive, achievement
• Group 4: confidence-producing, sharing with others, implementing
• This test was created so it could be easily integrated in an assessment program utilising the diagnostic, but also as a developing instrument which can be used in other programs aming to develop inpidual and group creativity.
• There is also a creative forces indicator- a questionnaire containing 103 items, with answers in the form of a 7-level Lickert scale.
• A personalised report is generated in the end, containing 23 feedback pages, reguarding the psychology of creativity and the inpidual.

Titles for an image

• Measures the most important intellectual factors of creativity: fluency of ideas, flexibility of thinking and originality, also offering a general mark for creativity.
• Can be applied inpidually or in a group, for subjects over the age of 16.
• Needs paper, pencil and a timer, as application time must not exceed 5 minutes.
• The test requires the subject to give as many titles as possible, as original as possible, to an image, noting them one after another.

Creative Attitude Questionnaire

• The Questionnaire helps one discover one’s own creative attitudes.
• It has 50 items and measures 16 creative attitudes: energy, focus, novelty, orientation, supporting ideas, independence, nonconformity, self confidence, moral values, orientation towards a far future, finalization, risk, preference, attraction towards difficult problems, persity of interests, spiritual values, practical values, lie scale.
• The items are presented in the form of statements, the respondent having to choose one of five possible answers (1-5 scale), that which best fits his/her person, from ”entirely untrue” to ”entirely true”.

The last aspect I wanted to approach was that of the possibility to educate creativity. Research was performed in this area of creativity as well, and most of the experts agree that this dimension of the human psyche can be educated. Of course, both the teacher and the student are important in this activity. First and foremost, the person seeking to train creativity must be aware that the learner might achieve results which are entirely different from what the trainer expects to obtain. When one wishes to raise a person’s creativity level, one must make the learer aware of the fact that the first results obtained might be disastrous, which is not necessarily a bad thing. One must first give up the rules and rigid models and not consider what is expected of you, but rather following one’s feelings.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Butler-Bowdon, T., „50 Fundamental Psychology Books“, Editura Meteor Press, București, 2009
2. Chelcea, A., „Psihoteste“, Editura Polsib, Sibiu, 1994
3. Cîmpean, E.A., „Psihopedagogia creativității și a excelenței intelectuale“, Editura Dimitrie Cantemir, Târgu-Mureș, 2005
4. Dincă, M., „Teste de creativitate“, Editura Paideia, București, 2001
5. Roco, M., „Creativitate și inteligență emoțională“, Editura Polirom, Iași, 2004
6. Roșca, Al., „Creativitatea generală și specifică“, Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, București, 1981
7. Sillamy, N., „Dicționar de psihologie“, Editura Univers Enciclopedic Gold, București, 2009
8. Sternberg, R.J., „Manual de creativitate“, Editura Polirom, Iași, 2005
9. www.testcentral.ro
10. http://www.e-metrixx.com/products/creative-strengths-indicator-model/
11. http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Can-we-teach-creativity-2316564.S.81767269?view=&srchtype=discussedNews&gid=2316564&item=81767269&type=member&trk=eml-anet_dig-b_pd-ttl-cn&ut=0v1w4kmcPecBc1

Correspondence to:
Cristina Monica Ormenisan: cristina_ormenisan@gmail.com, Phone +40722-278.361