Positive Psychology – Creativity

Hello friends!

A few days ago I wrote about Positive Psychology, this new area of ​​psychology that is still little known among us and that has been developing in this new century that we are in. From now on, we are going to have a Complete Course here on our website – free of charge and through texts – on the 24 strengths of character studied and, among them, is creativity.

See also – Positive Psychology – Curiosity

In the book by Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman, Strengths and Virtues, A Handbook and Classification – still without translation into Portuguese, we can find an entire section dedicated to creativity, as a strength of character, sometimes also called originality or naivety.

When we talk about creativity, the great geniuses of humanity immediately come to mind, the great artists like Mozart, Picasso, Da Vinci, Michelangelo. However, creativity is a character strength that can be present in all of us, to a greater or lesser degree.

For positive psychology, creativity has two fundamental aspects: 1) the creative person – to be creative – must produce ideas or behaviors that can be considered original; 2) The original behaviors or ideas have to be adaptive.

Both aspects must be present, because if we take only the first into account, we will have to define symptoms such as hallucinations and neologisms of schizophrenia as creativity. That is, in schizophrenia, the person exhibits behaviors or ideas that are original but not adaptive. This means that this originality does not help her, on the contrary, it only hinders her.

Therefore, a new, original behavior or idea must also have this aspect of adaptation, in the sense of contributing to the life of the person himself or the people around him.

In the book that we will always use here – Strengths and Virtues, A Handbook and Classification – The authors begin the section on creativity by citing an example of an ordinary lady, Elizabeth Layton, who, after a life of suffering, with periods of depression and suicidal thoughts, begins to paint at the age of 68. In painting classes, her teacher soon recognizes her creative ability and helps her. Over the next fifteen years, she produces more than 1000 works and art saves her from depression and isolation.

This example is useful because it shows that creativity has no necessary relationship with the genius of a renowned artist. Producing art is being creative, because something new is produced (be it music, poem, painting, sculpture) and this novelty that is produced is adaptive, it is useful, it is beneficial for the person and often for the people around.

Considering the two aspects of creativity (originality and adaptation or usefulness), let’s see that depending on the person, the two aspects can vary. For example, a scientist may be creative, tending more towards the practical and useful side, while an artist may tend towards originality, novelty, naivety.

Research on creativity in psychology

In Seligman and Peterson’s book we also find a brief bibliographic review of research on creativity within psychology. According to them, JP Guilford should be considered the first theorist to draw attention to the need to study creativity in depth, still in the 1950s, and also for having contributed to the attempt to create psychological tests to measure the creativity of individuals. . In the following decades, studies grew enormously with the creation of several manuals, specialized scientific journals and encyclopedias.

For them, now “creativity can be considered a legitimate topic of scientific research within psychology”. And, of course, due to the fact that psychology is a very broad and varied field of study, the various areas of psychology have approached the study of creativity in their own way.

Cognitive psychology studies the thoughts that underlie the process of being creative; social psychology focuses on the social interactions that contribute to or hinder individual creativity; developmental psychology researches childhood and adolescence and how these stages of development deal with creativity and whether it continues or disappears in adulthood.

Personality psychology investigates the character traits, values, motivations and styles of creative people, while clinical psychology uses creativity for the betterment of patients, for example in art therapy.

As one of the goals of positive psychology is to also create ways to empirically study character strengths, researchers in the field work with psychological tests to measure and access creativity.

For Seligman and Peterson, to measure creativity we have to take into account 4 fundamental questions:

1) How old is the population?

2) What domain of creativity will be investigated?

3) What is the magnitude of creativity that will be measured? (For example, solving everyday problems or winning awards for being creative)?

4) Which manifestation of creativity will be the target of measurement? (That is, creativity through products, through mental processes or through personality)?

The last question is the most important, as it allows for a more detailed and accurate assessment. When they say products, they mean the production that comes from creativity. For example, a scientist can be evaluated as creative based on his academic production. In terms of quantity of publication in a scientific journal or terms of the quality of articles, by citation of colleagues.

When they say about processes, they are referring to cognitive forms that predispose to creativity. Guilford, the author who must be considered the first theorist to truly measure creativity, stressed that divergent thinking was a fundamental characteristic of a person’s creativity. In other words, for us to evaluate a creative person, we are going to evaluate the way he thinks – his thought process – and one of the characteristics would reside in the ability to think of several answers to a problem and not just one way.

And finally, when they mention personality – or personal measures – they are interested in personality traits like always having broad interests, good humor, self-confidence, tolerance of criticism and so on.

Some interesting questions about creativity

The famous question whether or not a creative person has a mental problem is quite old. In fact, it can be traced back to the ancient Greek philosophers. Does a poet have to be depressed? Does a creative scientist have to be crazy, weird, elusive?

Well, there is no simple answer to the relationship between creativity and psychopathology. According to the authors: “Highly creative individuals are often prone to exhibit levels of abnormality symptoms that are often associated with clinical diagnoses. Examples include introversion with withdrawal, depression, manic episodes, and antisocial behaviors. What’s more, epidemiological studies indicate that creativity tends to be greater in those people who come from families in which psychopathology is more present than average”.

However, the relationship is not so direct. We cannot say that creativity depends on a psychopathic personality, with one or another mental illness. Humanist authors such as Carl Rogers and Maslow argued that creativity is based on the individual’s ability to self-actualize, that is, even if the person may have a trait or symptom of a mental illness, self-actualization would make the person used such traits or symptoms to create, to be original, to adapt.

Another interesting question is about the stimulation of creativity. Several psychology studies point out that creativity can be nourished with an environment that contains books and magazines, incentive to go to museums, concerts, trips. Children who were considered creative – in psychological tests – generally have parents who are more educated (academically speaking) and who often encourage creative activities.

And finally, how can we be more creative or how can we encourage more creativity in others?

Creativity tends to be greatest in environments that are open to new ideas, that praise frequently, that are informal, and that are unconditionally supportive. On the other hand, creativity is inhibited in environments of constant criticism, when there is exaggerated supervision (from a relative, teacher or boss, for example), and also when there is time to finish the activity. Unfortunately, it seems that it’s easier to inhibit creativity than it is to stimulate it.

A technique that is constantly used to stimulate creativity is the so-called brainstorming, literally mind storm. In this technique, the person – in a group or individually – has to freely associate and go thinking and saying or writing all the new ideas that come to him, no matter if they are silly, ridiculous or meaningless. The key point is to avoid any and all criticism.

For positive psychologists, there is great evidence that creativity can be stimulated by brainstorming activities, however, it is necessary to add that this activity generates new ideas, but does not necessarily cause them to be produced, carried out or finalized.

In the next text, we will talk about the second character strength studied by positive psychology, curiosity.

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