The Creativity Syndrome
Creativity is not a trait… or an ability…
The Creativity Choice is one year old today! Happy birthday to us! How about blowing a dandelion instead of a candle?
In this year, I have received feedback from readers and from other authors. I have seen what podcasters and journalists found most interesting, from rethinking creativity as a decision making process to the nature of passion as something we develop (rather than find) to the fact that there are no inherently good or bad emotions for creativity and to the ways our social connections can support successful creativity. And how all of this can be applied to building our own capacity for creativity, as well as supporting others as leaders, mentors, or educators.
The most important thing about creativity
Often, I get asked what is one key to creativity. I understand where the question is coming from. One is a place to start. But I don’t think that is a helpful question in the case of creativity.
Imagine one key – trait or ability – being dropped onto a calm surface. Perhaps it can ripple. We come to understand its role and apply it. Like ripples on the water.
We come to understand that openness to experience predisposes people to have broad interests. Which in turn can become raw material from which to make connections in thinking to come up with new ideas. Broader thinking takes us to more original territories and we start noticing our own creativity, a powerful force in building creative confidence. Indeed, openness to experience has been called the personality disposition for creativity.
When asked to pick one most important attribute of creative individuals, many scholars pick openness to experience. Myself included. There are good reasons for choosing it if we really had to pick just one.
But others might pick divergent thinking. Or problem finding and construction. Or intrinsic motivation. Or creative self-efficacy.
And they could all be argued for convincingly. Meta-analyses examining the relationship between each of these attributes and creativity exist. They predict creative achievement in real life to a remarkably similar extent. If we just look at these numbers, there isn’t a clear winner in the most important attribute of creativity contest.
When asked what is one key to creativity, scholars answer. But we answer because people give answers when asked a question. Not because there is necessarily a truly good or valid answer.
I would pick openness to experience because as a personality psychologist I know about pervasiveness of personality and how it colors our thinking, feeling, and action, as well as how early it appears developmentally.
A cognitive neuroscientist might argue for divergent thinking. Because that is what their methods can assess. You cannot at this time do functional brain imaging for tasks that last anywhere from hours to months or more, as is the case for creativity that makes a difference in the real world. So scientists have to argue for approximations of some processes in the laboratory. Divergent thinking seems like a good candidate because it intuitively looks like creativity.
None of these answers are silly.
But none of them are doing justice to what it really takes to make creativity happen and what we know about creativity.
What we really know about creativity
We could start with what creativity is not.
Creativity is not a trait. Conceiving of creativity as a trait suggests that it is a largely internal psychological attribute that is mostly stable. Some people have more of it (are gifted) and others less.
Creativity is not a trait even though we use the adjective ‘creative’ to describe people. People are often creative in one domain and not others; not something that is typically trait-like. And creativity is something that very much can be built and developed.
How about creativity being a skill? It acts like skills do: we can train creative thinking and get better at it through training.
But that is limiting too.
If creativity is a skill, what skill are we talking about?
The World Economic Forum identified five groups of skills in the broad category of problem solving: creativity, originality, and initiative; analytical thinking and innovation; complex problem solving; critical thinking and analysis; reasoning, problem solving, and ideation. All are necessary for real life creativity.
The same list also includes active learning and learning strategies and resilience, stress tolerance, and flexibility. These are not creativity skills per se, but without them, creativity will not happen.
Rather than conceiving of creativity as a trait or a particular skill, it is best to think of it as a process that requires a confluence of attributes. Here are the big groups:
Traits like openness to experience make it easier for a person to broaden their attention, emotional range, and try something new.
Then, there are cognitive abilities, from identifying gaps in existing knowledge to making connections between not obviously related ideas to being able to evaluate strengths and weaknesses of what we are doing as we are doing it.
Creative thinking abilities act on a bed of existing knowledge, which is often dismissed in our discussions of creativity because of a belief that all the knowledge of the world is at our disposal (on the internet and through AI tools). The trouble is that without starting knowledge we will not be well equipped to search, ask, or recognize the quality of what we are presented.
Because creative work attempts something original, it is riddled with uncertainties. Which are emotionally challenging. And because we are attempting something original, there are likely false starts or bottlenecks along the way. We have to navigate these rough seas to make it on the coast of creative achievement. For that, we need capacities that are emotional in nature. They are not creativity skills in themselves. They will not helps us come up with ideas, but they will help us make them happen by aiding persistence.
Last, but not least, creativity is social. The nature of our social environments can make or break potential for creativity. If people are afraid to voice ideas, they will not do it. If they have to share only solutions and not problems, they will do so, even if solutions did not have a chance to benefit from collective wisdom. If either irrational exuberance or acute caution dominate the climate, creativity will suffer.
If creativity is not a trait and it is not a skill, what is it? Michael Mumford talked about the creativity syndrome. And that is the best term we have. If we are serious about making creativity happen, we should not focus on one attribute.
Instead of a pebble making circles on the water, a better metaphor for creativity would be Wassily Kandinsky’s Circles in a Circle. We can spotlight creativity as a beautiful ‘thing’, but for it to come into being, many other things need to come in place.
The Creativity Choice is my synthesis of what constitutes the creativity syndrome. From considering what constitutes barriers to action to thinking and emotional tools for action to social conditions that create an ecosystem for it.
If you take just one thing from the book or just one thing about creativity, I hope it is that no single “thing” makes creativity happen on its own. Creativity is as beautiful as Kandinsky shows it to be.
If you’ve been enjoying this newsletter and found The Creativity Choice meaningful, I would be deeply grateful if you shared a brief review on a site like Amazon or Goodreads. Even a few sentences make a difference. Reviews help other readers discover the book and decide whether it speaks to them — and they matter more than most people realize.
Thank you for helping me celebrate The Creativity Choice birthday!
Just to say that I am very uncomfortable with the notion of portraying creativity as a syndrome.
There seem to be two related yet distinct meanings of the word syndrome.
The first seems to be broadly medical. The American Psychological Association Online Dictionary defines a syndrome as "a set of symptoms and signs that are usually due to a single cause (or set of related causes) and together indicate a particular physical or mental disease or disorder." The Oxford English Dictionary seems to concur: "a group of symptoms which consistently occur together, or a condition characterised by a set of associated symptoms," and gives a white blood cell disorder as an example. Merriam-Webster uses similar language: "a group of signs and symptoms that occur together and characterize a particular abnormality or condition." Finally, Black's Medical Dictionary defines it as "a set of medical signs and symptoms that occur together, are correlated with each other, and indicate a particular disease or condition."
This first meaning suggests that creativity is some sort of disease, something to be cured.
The second meaning appears to have a more general application, and mirrors the initial part of the first definition in that it concerns a pattern of simultaneously occurring signs. The OED offers this: "a characteristic combination of opinions, emotions, or behaviour." Again, Merriam-Webster uses similar language: "a set of concurrent things (such as emotions or actions) that usually form an identifiable pattern."
This second definition is so general as to add limited value, like saying a motor vehicle is a collection of components. I guess I would prefer to keep things simple and leave creativity unqualified.
On a related note, I contest Michael Mumford's characterisation of creativity as the production of novel, socially valued products. This mirrors Stein's generally accepted standard definition of creativity, which suggests that it involves producing something that is both novel and useful. This definition has enabled some scholars to exclude product they consider unoriginal and lacking in utility. I consider this perspective to be exclusive and elitist, and it is just one of too many reasons why so many people consider themselves not to be creative. Creativity is simply the act of bringing something into being. It is an evolutionary adaptation, present in the entire human population in varying degrees.
Thankfully, Mumford concludes by suggesting that "the effective translation of ideas into action will depend on a variety of individual and situational attributes," although this feels a bit like saying an internal combustion engine requires fuel and a competent driver to go from A to B.
I apologise if my comments are too strongly worded, but thank you for the opportunity to let off a little steam. I am new to the Substack ecosphere and still learning the etiquette.
By the bye, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!