Creativity

Creative potentials are universal and shared by everyone. There is, however, change as the individual ages. There are slumps and peaks in children and adolescents, for example, and changes in middle-age and later adulthood as well. This entry focuses on common changes that occur in adult creativity. Explanations for these changes are noted as well. One key premise is that creativity has requirements: originality (also called novelty) and effectiveness (also called fit, appropriateness, or usefulness). It is appropriate when discussing creativity in the East to also include authenticity and creativity that is tied to self-enlightenment.

A useful framework for understanding creativity was proposed 50 years ago. It distinguishes four specific approaches or foci: personality, process, place, and product. An update proposed in 2008 is even more helpful for understanding creativity across the lifespan. It is hierarchical, with creative potential and creative performance as the most general categories. Creative potential includes indicators of a creative capacity. These are called indicators because creative potential is distinct from actual creative performance, the former being latent and difficult to see and the latter being manifest and observable. Creative potential also includes creative personality; someone might have the core characteristics of creativity (e.g., openness, flexibility, intrinsic motivation, autonomy) but not actually use them in a way that leads to a product or manifest performance.

Similarly, the creative place is part of creative potential because the environmental and contextual factors thought to support creative behavior (e.g., tolerance, resources, latitude, and allowance of autonomy) do not guarantee it. They simply reward it when it is expressed or perhaps facilitate its expression of development. Test scores, including those obtained in research, are also indicators of potential. Tests are, after all, merely samples of behavior, and there is no guarantee that the potential uncovered by a test will actually be expressed in the natural environment.

The creative performance category, on the other hand, includes creative achievement, socially recognized creative work, and creative products. Unlike the indicators of creative potential, these are not latent but instead can be observed. This framework provides the specificity that is necessary to understand creativity across the lifespan. The work reviewed in what follows describes developmental changes, with some more about potential than actual performance.