Cognition and Creativity
Creativity Models
What makes a person creative? This is one of the questions that researchers in the field of creativity have been trying to solve and understand. In this paper I will compare the two theorists, Teresa Amabile and J.P. Guilford. Each has proposed a model of creativity in order to understand exactly what creativity is and how it works. The hope in doing so is that understanding how creativity functions will stimulate more creative thinking and problem solving. Guilford was the first to identify creativity as a type of intelligence and sought to identify common characteristics and cognitive abilities of known creative individuals and promote the development of those characteristics in order to help stimulate creative thinking. Amabile categorizes these characteristics and cognitive abilities as creative-relevant skills; one of four components in her model of creativity. Amabile believes that while these skills are needed, they need to work with domain-relevant skills, task motivation, and the social environment of the problem-solver. The two models have commonalities as well as well as differences. It is my hope to explain each, while comparing the two, and applying this knowledge to my own work.
J.P. Guilford developed a model for creativity based on the idea that creativity is a form of intelligence. Until Guilford released his research, psychologists were under the belief that creativity was a byproduct of intelligence, linking the two in a dependent relationship where high IQ means high creativity and vice versa. In his psychological model called “Structure of Intellect” Guilford used a factor analytic technique to separate intelligence into two forms of thinking: divergent and convergent thinking. Divergent thinking is the ability to access memory, from which one can derive numerous unique answers to a single problem; convergent thinking is the ability to come up with 1 correct answer for each question. (Explaining Creativity, Sawyer)
What makes a person creative? This is one of the questions that researchers in the field of creativity have been trying to solve and understand. In this paper I will compare the two theorists, Teresa Amabile and J.P. Guilford. Each has proposed a model of creativity in order to understand exactly what creativity is and how it works. The hope in doing so is that understanding how creativity functions will stimulate more creative thinking and problem solving. Guilford was the first to identify creativity as a type of intelligence and sought to identify common characteristics and cognitive abilities of known creative individuals and promote the development of those characteristics in order to help stimulate creative thinking. Amabile categorizes these characteristics and cognitive abilities as creative-relevant skills; one of four components in her model of creativity. Amabile believes that while these skills are needed, they need to work with domain-relevant skills, task motivation, and the social environment of the problem-solver. The two models have commonalities as well as well as differences. It is my hope to explain each, while comparing the two, and applying this knowledge to my own work.
J.P. Guilford developed a model for creativity based on the idea that creativity is a form of intelligence. Until Guilford released his research, psychologists were under the belief that creativity was a byproduct of intelligence, linking the two in a dependent relationship where high IQ means high creativity and vice versa. In his psychological model called “Structure of Intellect” Guilford used a factor analytic technique to separate intelligence into two forms of thinking: divergent and convergent thinking. Divergent thinking is the ability to access memory, from which one can derive numerous unique answers to a single problem; convergent thinking is the ability to come up with 1 correct answer for each question. (Explaining Creativity, Sawyer)
Cited: Amabile, Teressa M. Componential Theory of Creativity. Harvard Business School. Harvard Business School, n.d. Web. . "Measuring Creativity." All Psychology Careers. AllPsychologyCareers.com, n.d. Web. 01 Nov. 2013. . Sawyer, R. Keith. Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. Print.