Creativity Theories and Systems Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards covering psychological and systems views of creativity, Boden's categories, Csikszentmihalyi's 3-part framework, and Weisberg's anti-genius model.

Verification

The stage in problem-solving where the new solution is tested against the original problem.

Psychological View of Creativity

A perspective in psychology where definitions of creativity coincide with novelty and view creative thought as occurring inside the brain.

Margaret Boden

The researcher who defined two different kinds of creativity: P-creativity (personal) and H-creativity (historical).

P-creativity (Personal)

Everyday problem-solving that is new to the individual (e.g., a kid figuring out a math trick).

H-creativity (Historical)

Breakthroughs that are new to the world (e.g., Einstein's relativity, the first smartphone, sliced bread).

Scale and Luck

The only difference between personal and historical creativity according to the psychological view, which considers the underlying thought process to be identical.

Limits of the Psychological View

The limitation that creativity is not exclusively inside the brain, because creative ideas must also be useful or valued by someone and recognized or validated externally.

System View of Creativity

A perspective stating that creativity is not the result of one person or a single stroke of genius, but of intersecting and interacting relationships between people.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

A Hungarian psychologist who described creativity as a process going beyond the individual mind, emerging through interactions with social and cultural contexts.

Systems View of Creativity Model Diagram

A diagram illustrating how Culture (Domain), Society (Field), and Individual (Personal Background) interact by producing, selecting, stimulating novelty, and transmitting information.

Individual (Systems View)

One of the three shaping forces of creativity who brings about some change in the domain that the field considers to be creative.

Field / Social Institutions

A set of social institutions in the system view that selects from the variations produced by individuals those that are worth preserving.

Domain / Cultural Domain

A stable cultural domain in the system view that preserves and transmits selected new ideas or forms to following generations.

Weisberg

A researcher (cited in Bilton & Leary, 2002) who argued that creative people are not dreamers and visionaries, but intellectual beachcombers.

Intellectual Beachcombers

Weisberg's concept describing creative people who skilfully reclaim ideas and experiences from the past and reapply them to problems in the present.

"Aha" Moment

The visible tip of a long process of learning within a specific, bounded domain that comes from sustained effort rather than sudden flashes of insight.