I have been pondering the term “creativity” lately. Creativity is a term that “everybody” knows but nobody manages to define. Here, I will describe how I came up with my current definition of creativity as the ability to create something novel and meaningful.
Defining creativity
The American Psychological Association (APA) defines creativity as:
the ability to produce or develop original work, theories, techniques, or thoughts.
They focus on creation through (new) production or development. It is not only tangible, however, as it can also include theories or thoughts. This resonates with the definition by Cambridge Dictionary):
the ability to produce or use original and unusual ideas.
This definition is not only about production but also usage. This opens up the possibility of using existing “things” in new ways. Merriam-Webster has two different definitions:
- The ability to create
- The quality of being creative
Here, they include not only the act of creating (the ability) but also the possibility of creating (the trait). Let us consider that more.
On being creative
APA defines being creative as:
A creative individual typically displays originality, imagination, and expressiveness. Analyses have failed to ascertain why one individual is more creative than another, but creativity does appear to be a very durable trait.
In psychology, a trait is a quality that distinguishes individuals. Traits can be physical, such as eye color or height, or they can be behavioral and psychological, such as kindness, intelligence, or creativity. They can be inherited genetically or developed through environmental influences and experiences. Traits are often considered stable over time and can influence how a person thinks, feels, and behaves.
Creativity can come from personality but can also be developed through experience, education, and practice. In psychology, creativity is often associated with traits like openness to experience, curiosity, and a willingness to take risks.
More specifically, creativity can be broken down into two types of thinking:
- Divergent thinking: the ability to generate multiple solutions to a problem
- Convergent thinking: involving narrowing down new solutions to find the best one
I find this combination of divergent and convergent thinking central to defining creativity.
Novel and meaningful
As described above, being creative is not only about novelty. Humans are inherently capable of coming up with new things all the time. Anyone can open a door in 20 different ways (with hands, feet, nose, etc.). Kids in a kindergarten can produce a hundred drawings every day, each slightly different from the other. Random generators on a computer can spit out as many new combinations as you want, only limited by computing resources.
However, selecting one or only a few things from a pile of many, that is, converging the ideas to the best one, involves deciding on what is meaningful or has a value of some sort. People who score high on creativity have the capacity to quickly come up with many ideas but also select the best ones. An interesting question these days is to what extent machines can do the same.