SCIENCE SPEAKS

The creativity paradox: Why everyone and no one seems to appreciate creative work

By Robert J. Sternberg, PhD
Yale University

A creative idea is one that is novel and good. Many of us have endured the frustrating, even sickening, experience of conceiving what we believe to be a wonderfully creative idea, only to have

other people roundly pan it. Our unappreciated idea may have taken the form of a new teaching method, a new psychotherapeutic technique, a research proposal or article or an administrative reorganization plan.

Adverse reactions to our creative ideas often lead us to believe that others do not appreciate our creativity. Yet there is a paradox: Many of us believe we appreciate creative ideas but that our creative ideas often are unappreciated by our colleagues; yet we are those colleagues with respect to others. In other words, we are to others what they are to us: the unappreciative colleagues. Are people failing to practice what they preach, deceiving themselves or perhaps even lying?

A simple resolution to this apparent paradox is that some kinds of creativity are more appreciated and others less so. In an article published earlier this year in Review of General Psychology (Vol. 3, No 2, p. 83-100), I proposed a "propulsion model of creative contributions." According to this model, creative contributions propel a field in some direction in a metaphorical multidimensional conceptual space. Creative contributions can be of seven kinds that are neither better nor worse intrinsically, simply different. The kinds involve new work that does the following:

* Conceptual replication. Attempts to determine whether past work is solid or generalizable (e.g., attempts to replicate the "Mozart effect").

* Redefinition. Views old work in a new way, perhaps seeing it as answering a question different from that it originally intended to answer (e.g., first viewing a computer program as providing a theory of thinking).

* Forward incrementation. Extends an already existing paradigm, moving forward in an already established direction (e.g., the next study on "attentional blink").

* Advance forward incrementation. Extends an already existing paradigm, but further than its audience is ready to go at a given time (e.g., Binet's studies of eyewitness testimony).

* Redirection. Starts where others have left off, but then moves a field in a new direction (e.g., self-perception theory relative to cognitive-dissonance theory).

* Reconstruction and redirection. Returns us to a point that may have been dismissed by much of the field, and then attempts to further develop that point, arguing that the old paradigm still has life left in it (e.g., revivals of Freudian ideas).

* Re-initiation. Begins at a point radically different from the field's current positions, and then takes off in a new direction from there (e.g., Binet's original intelligence test).

My thesis is that almost everyone does appreciate creativity, but that people most readily accept the first three kinds. The ideas that probably are most well received are forward incrementations, which extend existing paradigms without challenging them. Advance forward incrementations extend existing paradigms, but take them so far ahead that it is likely that you will have to present the idea at a later time or that someone else will do so and get the credit.

Redirections, and especially re-initiations, challenge existing paradigms and thus, as Thomas Kuhn pointed out in his discussion of revolutionary science, tend to be ill received. This reaction is not because colleagues eschew creativity, but because they do not recognize the out-of-paradigm ideas as creative.

The value of a taxonomy is that it may help us better focus our own creative ideas and appreciate those of others. In particular, whether in teaching, psychotherapy, research or administration, we need to encourage paradigm-breaking as well as paradigm-accepting ideas; critically consider the value of those ideas rather than dismissing them outright; and reward people who are willing to risk such ideas, even if the ideas need polishing, further formation or considerable revision. We need also to recognize that novelty is not tantamount to quality.

We work in an environment that more heavily rewards memory and analytical abilities than creative abilities through our instruction and our assessments of abilities and achievements. This environment emphasizes question-answering more than question-asking, and more regularly teaches students how to critique others' ideas than how to come up with their own ideas. By realizing how varied creative contributions can be and that some break contributions out of existing molds, we may resolve the paradox whereby everyone and no one seems to appreciate creative work.



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