The Creativity Crisis

July 15, 2010 9:02 AM

For the first time, research shows that American creativity is declining. What went wrong? Can we fix it? 'Nobody would argue that Torrance’s tasks, which have become the gold standard in creativity assessment, measure creativity perfectly. What’s shocking is how incredibly well Torrance’s creativity index predicted those kids’ creative accomplishments as adults. Those who came up with more good ideas on Torrance’s tasks grew up to be entrepreneurs, inventors, college presidents, authors, doctors, diplomats, and software developers. Jonathan Plucker of Indiana University recently reanalyzed Torrance’s data. The correlation to lifetime creative accomplishment was more than three times stronger for childhood creativity than childhood IQ.'

'Like intelligence tests, Torrance’s test—a 90-minute series of discrete tasks, administered by a psychologist—has been taken by millions worldwide in 50 languages. Yet there is one crucial difference between IQ and CQ scores. With intelligence, there is a phenomenon called the Flynn effect—each generation, scores go up about 10 points. Enriched environments are making kids smarter. With creativity, a reverse trend has just been identified and is being reported for the first time here: American creativity scores are falling.

Kyung Hee Kim at the College of William & Mary discovered this in May, after analyzing almost 300,000 Torrance scores of children and adults. Kim found creativity scores had been steadily rising, just like IQ scores, until 1990. Since then, creativity scores have consistently inched downward. “It’s very clear, and the decrease is very significant,” Kim says. It is the scores of younger children in America—from kindergarten through sixth grade—for whom the decline is “most serious.”'

How Creative Are You?

posted by VikingSword (88 comments total)

But do more creative people tend to lead happier lives?
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 9:05 AM on July 15, 2010

Solution: The tests are subjectively judged. The end.
posted by DU at 9:07 AM on July 15, 2010 [5 favorites]

But do more creative people tend to lead happier lives?

From the article:

"dark, depressed, anxious, or neurotic. It’s a myth that creative people have these traits. (Those traits actually shut down creativity; they make people less open to experience and less interested in novelty.) Rather, creative people, for the most part, exhibit active moods and positive affect. They’re not particularly happy—contentment is a kind of complacency creative people rarely have. But they’re engaged, motivated, and open to the world."

and

"In Runco’s subsequent research, those who do better in both problem-finding and problem-solving have better relationships. They are more able to handle stress and overcome the bumps life throws in their way. A similar study of 1,500 middle schoolers found that those high in creative self-efficacy had more confidence about their future and ability to succeed. They were sure that their ability to come up with alternatives would aid them, no matter what problems would arise."

DU wrote:

Solution: The tests are subjectively judged. The end.

Problem: Correlation. Tests are done first - however subjective, and you get a score and assessment. Subsequently, your accomplishments as an adult are catalogued. If they correlate well, then these tests have predictive value. The beginning.
posted by VikingSword at 9:14 AM on July 15, 2010 [9 favorites]

felix salmon had a piece on this the other day. (Here)

For those of you who don't want to click through - basically the Torrance test was never intended to be used across generations because the definition of creativity changes over time.
posted by JPD at 9:18 AM on July 15, 2010 [4 favorites]

Hypothesis: Maybe the test is getting less predictive. 1990 was only 20 years ago and you have to give the test to ~5 year olds, so those people aren't even adults yet. How can we know the 1990+ tested kids actually are less creative?

Also, in the newsweek article, at least one volunteer got opposing scores from the judges. Which judge was the predictive one? Or do they average the results or what?
posted by DU at 9:19 AM on July 15, 2010

If children are developmentally divided based on class, is there any relationship between Class:Creativity score? Could it just be that happy and creative kids are just the wealthier kids who are statistically more likely to succeed anyway?
posted by Think_Long at 9:21 AM on July 15, 2010 [3 favorites]

Obviously what's needed in our schools is some type of standardized creativity program, with performance tracking via standardized creativity testing. This will all be paid for with teacher salary cuts.
posted by Pants McCracky at 9:21 AM on July 15, 2010 [30 favorites]

the Torrance test was never intended to be used across generations because the definition of creativity changes over time

What if the scores in one generation showed f.ex. 15 out of 100 as creative people. Then, for those 15 we'd correlate "creative accomplishments" in latter life. If the latter can be quantified reliably across generations, then in principle, it should be possible to maintain comparability across generations, as long as the test-accomplishments correlation holds in a steady ratio in each generation. That would be one way to make it work across generations.
posted by VikingSword at 9:23 AM on July 15, 2010

This article upset me because it kept making me think about how creative I was as a child, and how my creativity has been systematically crushed by one unsuccessful creative project after another, to the point that now I'm in a dead-end job that does require creative solutions to various problems but makes me miserable. :(

So I stopped reading the article and applied to law school. :)
posted by luvcraft at 9:24 AM on July 15, 2010 [3 favorites]

HFCS...oh wait I say that in response to any reported decline in capability.

nevermind
posted by edgeways at 9:25 AM on July 15, 2010

From the article:

The potential consequences are sweeping. The necessity of human ingenuity is undisputed. A recent IBM poll of 1,500 CEOs identified creativity as the No. 1 “leadership competency” of the future. Yet it’s not just about sustaining our nation’s economic growth. All around us are matters of national and international importance that are crying out for creative solutions, from saving the Gulf of Mexico to bringing peace to Afghanistan to delivering health care. Such solutions emerge from a healthy marketplace of ideas, sustained by a populace constantly contributing original ideas and receptive to the ideas of others.

Cynical addendum: happiness is not a goal in the school system, though productivity and market potential are goals.

Snarky comment on the intro paragraph: how is improving a toy fire truck to make it more fun to play with with a removable ladder and springs to the wheels comments derived from creativity? Those sound like aspects of real fire trucks that are lacking in a cheap toy. In short: it sounded like a marketing exercise.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:25 AM on July 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

But do more creative people tend to lead happier lives?

I read that article a couple days ago. If I remember correctly, there was a great quote somewhere towards the end maybe that said "In the space between anxiety and boredom...creativity flourishes." As a creative person myself, I often think of large amounts of artistic creativity as burdensome.

In any case, it's hardly a wonder that creativity is on the decline. I think we're all well aware that it mostly goes back to teachers needing to ensure their students score sufficiently on standardized tests, which are at least partially necessary to ensure quality, etc...

The real danger is that the public education community has largely decided that creativity and learning are somehow distinct entities, when in fact the two are symbiotically and necessarily correlated. Creativity is what helps children build intelligences, helps them learn how to learn, helps them make vital connections and learn to integrate information, creative activities lead children to abstract and critical thinking, as well as expression. Scientific evidence of this is overwhelming.

It's really actually quite scary. The entire history of human progress, insofar as what we've done might be considered 'progress,' is the result of human ingenuity and creativity and the independence of thought. We have used our creative capacities to get ourselves into all sorts of current pickles, and it's going to take even greater creative energy to get ourselves out.

Too often the idea of teaching creativity is assumed to help children develop only those "useless artistic skills." But to a child in school, painting or molding clay or any creative activity is serving a much grander and deeper cognitive purpose. That some of those children go on to create great artworks is wonderful. Most of them won't. Most of them will go on to become engineers or scientists or politicians - and I sure as hell want our future scientists and engineers to be creative. Building creativity into public education is not about breeding artists, it's about every kid realizing his or her intelligence potential. It's great for art; it's absolutely necessary to sustainability.

/end polemic.
posted by Lutoslawski at 9:25 AM on July 15, 2010 [14 favorites]

So I stopped reading the article and applied to law school. :)

Not to be a Negative Ninny, but you might want to look elsewhere than law school.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:27 AM on July 15, 2010

Viking Sword - read the article and also the paper he links to about test comparability (ironically by the same author as this study).

For example when they recalibrate the tests they don't change the questions, so much as change what the right answer is.

Also I think but am not sure the sort of creativity these exams test for is different from the sort of "Creative accomplishments" you have in mind.
posted by JPD at 9:27 AM on July 15, 2010

Dominic Basulto (who was editor of the now defunct Fortune Innovation Insider blog) has a nice post on this today, here's a snippet:

The current cover of Newsweek - The Creativity Crisis in America - admittedly had me intrigued, especially given all the press that Newsweek has generated of late about a potential sale to a new buyer. Is this cover a prescient, forward-looking attempt to spot a crisis before it even emerged, solidifying Newsweek's reputation for spirited, journalistic debate -- or just one last desperate attempt to grab readers with a sensationalist premise?

As for the topic, I just popped in to see if a) I could FPP yet or b) was it up, and voila, here's a thread in which to pontificate. Back online with thoughts after I get some fuel for the braincells in me (dinner).
posted by infini at 9:28 AM on July 15, 2010

If children are developmentally divided based on class, is there any relationship between Class:Creativity score? Could it just be that happy and creative kids are just the wealthier kids who are statistically more likely to succeed anyway?

I was thinking the same thing. The set of "entrepreneurs, inventors, college presidents, authors, doctors, diplomats, and software developers" would be heavily weighted toward people who grew up in wealthy families. I assume any decent statistical analysis of the data would take those factors into account, and it would be interesting to see the data specifically on kids who would otherwise not be expected to make it into those fields.
posted by burnmp3s at 9:29 AM on July 15, 2010 [2 favorites]

If children are developmentally divided based on class, is there any relationship between Class:Creativity score? Could it just be that happy and creative kids are just the wealthier kids who are statistically more likely to succeed anyway?

Most definitely. Title I schools are always the first to have to strip curricula down to the bare minimum to meet state mandates. What's funny is that studies have shown that creative or artistic activities in the classroom can significantly reduce the achievement gap between socio-economic classes.
posted by Lutoslawski at 9:30 AM on July 15, 2010

If the rate of creativity definitional change is non-constant (like the rate of scientific discovery, invention/internet innovation, etc) I think it's going to be hard to make this cross-generational.

Another alternative explanation is that our creativity has gotten channeled from line drawings on paper to some other venue. Math, software, music, invention, etc.
posted by DU at 9:30 AM on July 15, 2010

Also I think but am not sure the sort of creativity these exams test for is different from the sort of "Creative accomplishments" you have in mind.

But does it matter what it tests for exactly, as long as the correlation holds? What if we correlated, say, shoe size with wealth accumulation. Then all we'd need to measure is shoe size for predictive value and not worry about what it is exactly that it measures, like drive, intelligence, persistence etc. - all we'd be predicting is "yep, will accumulate more/less".
posted by VikingSword at 9:31 AM on July 15, 2010

I could have read the article. But that would have been predictable. It's much more creative to comment based on what I think the article might have said. And what it might have said was stupid.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 9:33 AM on July 15, 2010

I'm not surprised by this. Not sure why, but suspect cable TV, computers, DVDs, CDs etc.. are at play. Instant entertainment never bored endless variety, too much of a good thing, no need to be creative its all done for you anywhere all the time.

If the creativity numbers began dropping in 1990, that would mean anyone born post 1980 roughly speaking.
posted by stbalbach at 9:33 AM on July 15, 2010

Another alternative explanation is that our creativity has gotten channeled from line drawings on paper to some other venue. Math, software, music, invention, etc.

That's exactly it. It has become channeled into math and software and gadgets - indeed these things would not exist without creativity. But that creative software developer? He started with line drawings.
posted by Lutoslawski at 9:33 AM on July 15, 2010

But does it matter what it tests for exactly, as long as the correlation holds?

Yes yes it does very very very very much.
posted by JPD at 9:35 AM on July 15, 2010

Again, does it matter what the test is: line drawings vs math skills, or shoe size. If subsequently we can correlate those scores with some reliable measure of accomplishments (say, likelihood of starting your own business, number of patents etc.) , that's all that matters, seems to me - the tests would still be valuable, because they have predictive power.
posted by VikingSword at 9:37 AM on July 15, 2010

The Capitalist-Industrial machinery laments our lack of creativity. What's wrong with America?
posted by kuatto at 9:39 AM on July 15, 2010

if we are going to rebuild downtown we need to attract the creative class and their disposable income.
posted by the aloha at 9:39 AM on July 15, 2010

I think that's a pretty good article for Newsweek, thanks for posting it.

Although, thinking about it, with the main jobs that are available to people who graduate public schools but don't move on to college (and even to college graduates) is creativity a boon? Is it good to be creative in a service sector job, or is it good to memorize how to do the job and then do it. It's good to be manageable; and creativity is a plus, but definitely not the emphasis.

That's my immediate reaction, anyway.
posted by codacorolla at 9:39 AM on July 15, 2010

Again, does it matter what the test is: line drawings vs math skills, or shoe size. If subsequently we can correlate those scores with some reliable measure of accomplishments (say, likelihood of starting your own business, number of patents etc.) , that's all that matters, seems to me

So you must be a big believer in the pirates and global warming causal relationship then.
posted by JPD at 9:41 AM on July 15, 2010

"In the space between anxiety and boredom...creativity flourishes."

What if the problem is not TV or video games per se, but the overall lack of boredom opportunities in general? Begin old man voice here: back in my day, we had a lot fewer things to do than kids today -- no video games, maybe 4 or 5 TV channels, and obviously no Internet. Even our toys were pretty basic compared to today. So the challenge for us kids was to maximize the fun we got out of what we had. The question was always, what can we do with this?

I don't know if kids have the same problem that my friends and I did, of having loads of free time and not much interesting to fill it with. I know that as an adult, I am absolutely glutted with entertainment choices, to the point where I have to deliberately empty out pockets of time in my life in which to do nothing. If you never have to exercise that boredom relief muscle, which I think is key to creativity, how can that skill not atrophy?
posted by Pants McCracky at 9:44 AM on July 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

So you must be a big believer in the pirates and global warming causal relationship then.

Or I must believe in how science works, particularly in biology, medicine etc - and most definitely in psychology and sociology. We rarely have a perfect explanation of how something works mechanistically. What we try to do is find the best correlations and exclude confounders, and then note the correlation. You are asking unreasonably more of sociology and psychology at this stage of scientific development (of course, a philosophical argument can be made that ALL science including physics is correlational observations with predictive powers - any explanation is necessarily limited).
posted by VikingSword at 9:47 AM on July 15, 2010

From the article:

All around us are matters of national and international importance that are crying out for creative solutions, from saving the Gulf of Mexico to bringing peace to Afghanistan to delivering health care.

Ok. Well, not to quibble, but I'm more interested in finding the new geniuses prescient enough to predict and prevent deep well blowouts, or wise enough not to get embroiled in pointless and interminable conflicts, or pragmatic enough to adopt health-care measures already proven elsewhere.

Also, name the last job posting you saw where creativity was the top-listed requirement, or even evaluated.

<grumble> and despite being an uber-creative kid, and having nearly 30 years of professional experience creating and fixing things (electronics, software) I'm currently unemployed and can't get noticed.... maybe I should demonstrate more creativity by LYING MY ASS OFF on my next job application...</grumble>
posted by Artful Codger at 9:49 AM on July 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

Are you actually accusing me of not believing in how science works when you are willfully saying the equivalent of "Fuckit we don't know why it works but it does" That is admirably mind blowing.
posted by JPD at 9:51 AM on July 15, 2010

For the first time, research shows that American creativity is declining. What went wrong? Can we fix it?

Oh, shit. That's my fault, people. I bought GTA IV and have been slacking. As soon as I shoot this police chopper out of the sky, I'll drive to a safehouse, and get right back on the creative tip, promise. Sorry 'bout that.
posted by grubi at 9:51 AM on July 15, 2010

A recent IBM poll of 1,500 CEOs identified creativity as the No. 1 “leadership competency” of the future.

Do CEOs see creativity the same way the rest of us do?
posted by Chuckles at 9:52 AM on July 15, 2010 [3 favorites]

No - and most of the people posting on this thread don't see it the same way the exam they are getting excited about does either.
posted by JPD at 9:55 AM on July 15, 2010

if we are going to rebuild downtown we need to attract the creative class and their disposable income.

we anticipate that within a few years downtown will be the central creative hub of the region. our creativity will boost us out of the recession. our creativity will attract other creatives. there will be boutique cupcake shops, farmer's markets, and galleries to hop all within walking distance of each other. downtown will be resurrected, and only then can we pat ourselves on the back.

what's more when the creative class moves back to downtown, we'll finally be able to push out the non-creative class that is there now. they can find new dwellings in less creative areas of the country.
posted by the aloha at 9:59 AM on July 15, 2010

What we try to do is find the best correlations and exclude confounders, and then note the correlation. You are asking unreasonably more of sociology and psychology at this stage of scientific development (of course, a philosophical argument can be made that ALL science including physics is correlational observations with predictive powers - any explanation is necessarily limited).

Well the claim in the FPP is "research shows that American creativity is declining." If a theory in physics with a decent amount of data behind starts making unexpected measurements, the fact that those unexpected measurements are valid is one possibility, but another possibility is that the theory is broken and we need to come up with a new one.

If for example a key component of this test involves drawing, and kids in general across creativity levels don't draw as much due to technological advancements and other changes, that may mean that this particular test would record lower scores for kids in general, even though the amount of creativity hasn't declined. Trusting the correlation and jumping to the conclusion that creativity has dropped is in my opinion not as useful as taking a better look at what the test actually measures and trying to figure out causal reasons for the declining scores.
posted by burnmp3s at 10:03 AM on July 15, 2010

Are you actually accusing me of not believing in how science works when you are willfully saying the equivalent of "Fuckit we don't know why it works but it does" That is admirably mind blowing.

It's not me accusing you. It's you characterizing yourself by your own statements.

Science starts with facts and observations. Only subsequently does science build an explanation. And the explanation is always provisory (in Popperian terms "falsifiable hypothesis"). All explanations are always pending being revised - that's science. A theory is proposed and accepted, and then one day it may get overturned. How does it get overturned? Because we again - observe that it doesn't fit with the facts. Facts don't change. The data doesn't change. The explanation changes. The facts and observations are what science starts with, and also what science ends with (as in: this is the ultimate test of a theory or explanation, does it square with the facts). So we always have a series of facts which are correlated with other facts and observations. We try to say "why", but it's always tentative and preliminary - the facts and observations are what is sturdy. All models (explanations) are necessarily simplified - what is being modeled remains richer and liable to overturn the model or explanation. At bottom, you could say, science is observation of correlations which we try to whittle free of confounders so as to get a more perfect correlation. Causation my friend, is for the birds - read some Hume. So yeah, for you to turn your nose at "mere correlation" as not scientific is pretty misguided.
posted by VikingSword at 10:11 AM on July 15, 2010

if we are going to rebuild downtown we need to attract the creative class and their disposable income.

"Creative Class" is a total bullshit misnomer, and has nothing to do with creativity. It's a nice way of saying "affluent people with free time and egos." Teaching creativity, as I said above, is actually a good means to systemically shrinking the socio-economic gap and lessening the negative impacts of gentrification on the lower class. You're conflating two different things: an actual cognitive capacity and a rather meaningless social meme.
posted by Lutoslawski at 10:16 AM on July 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

The accepted definition of creativity is production of something original and useful

It is?
posted by robself at 10:21 AM on July 15, 2010

You're conflating two different things: an actual cognitive capacity and a rather meaningless social meme.

oh, you are so going to be socially excluded from the activist clique. we are too busy trying to change downtown to deal with your negativity.
posted by the aloha at 10:24 AM on July 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

1990, huh?

So can we blame the internet?
posted by IndigoJones at 10:26 AM on July 15, 2010

Wouldn't 1990 correlate pretty well with the rise of the prescription of behavior-modifying drugs to school-age kids? Could it be that "creativity" is now defined as anti-social behavior, and treated accordingly?
posted by vibrotronica at 10:30 AM on July 15, 2010 [4 favorites]

Creativity requires time. Time to develop, when kids have long afternoons to themselves; sure, most of them will use the time to goof around, but some will draw or daydream or find new ways to build something cool. Time to perfect, when long hours are spent building the skills that allow you to succeed at creative endeavors, which gives you the confidence to continue being creative. Time to flourish, when your career being creative is allowed to begin, and you can make a living while making things.

Kids no longer seem to have much time; it's taken up by school, and homework, and afterschool programs, and yearlong enrollment. Teenagers have no time; school again, and work, and sports and socializing.

And no-one but the most successful artists, in almost any medium, can afford not to have a day job.

We're too busy getting the first few blocks of Maslow's hierarchy together to be able to climb the pyramid very often.
posted by MrVisible at 10:32 AM on July 15, 2010 [2 favorites]

Do CEOs see creativity the same way the rest of us do?

If they consider it to be "the No. 1 leadership competency of the future," then I'm pretty sure they're not thinking of what I'm thinking of when I think about creativity. A better word for what I suspect they're thinking of might be something like "cunning."
posted by Naberius at 10:38 AM on July 15, 2010

What’s shocking is how incredibly well Torrance’s creativity index predicted those kids’ creative accomplishments as adults. Those who came up with more good ideas on Torrance’s tasks grew up to be entrepreneurs, inventors, college presidents, authors, doctors, diplomats, and software developers.

Maybe it's just because I've been reviewing a spate of business/self-help books designed to encourage and inspire "creativity." (Particularly as it relates to problem-solving.) But name me an industry where creativity is not a factor. They all do!

The creativity index is said to be predictive, because the kids who scored high on it went on to work in creative fields. I submit that this is true of the kids who scored low on it, too.

The correlation to lifetime creative accomplishment was more than three times stronger for childhood creativity than childhood IQ.

Are we grading people now on "lifetime creative accomplishment"? How do you do that, exactly? Is there any significant lifetime accomplishment which doesn't require creativity?

In short: I call shenanigans.
posted by ErikaB at 10:45 AM on July 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

VikingSword put the Popper down. This isn't a discussion of the creation of the universe it is simply a discussion about an inflamatory article published by people with vested interets that is focused around a very very flawed test. Its ironic you want to have a discussion surrounding the failures of empiricism when the idea you wish to defend is nothing if not the very height of empirical research.

We aren't wondering about quantum mechanics, we're talking about the predictive power of an exam constructed by man.
posted by JPD at 10:50 AM on July 15, 2010

As a second point, in discussing this I think we need to decouple "creativity" from "artistic." Granted there's a lot of overlap between the two. And although I'm sure it's theoretically possible to be artistic without being creative, I can't think of an example.

However it is certainly possible to be creative without being artistic. Where "artistic" is defined as "producing a work of art in traditional media, such as would be displayed in a gallery."

Writing and designing software is an excellent example of something which requires a lot of creativity, but which isn't seen as being "artistic."

I don't want to get bogged down into a discussion of what is and isn't art. I just wanted to point out that a lot of people are conflating "creative" with "makes paintings." Whereas the study at hand is discussing "creative" in an entirely different sense.
posted by ErikaB at 10:50 AM on July 15, 2010

Is there any significant lifetime accomplishment which doesn't require creativity?

I would imagine that the contrast with IQ tests and future performance predictions, might be like this:

1)Creativity test shows 10 individuals out of 100 with high score. Out of the 10, say 9 achieve "a significant lifetime achievement" (from article: " grew up to be entrepreneurs, inventors, college presidents, authors, doctors, diplomats, and software developers")

2)IQ test shows 10 individuals out of 100 with high score. Out of the 10, say 3 (i.e. 3 times fewer than in the Torrance tests) achieve "a significant lifetime achievement".

Hence, creativity tests are 3 times more predictive of future success than IQ tests, FWIW.
posted by VikingSword at 10:53 AM on July 15, 2010

BTW - VikingSword - I don't think taking a cohort of creative people and seeing what the commonalities are and then testing that against a bigger population is unscientific the way abusing a test like this is. I think those are two totally different sorts of experiments.
posted by JPD at 10:53 AM on July 15, 2010

The actual detailed definition of creativity later in the article is a better one:


When you try to solve a problem, you begin by concentrating on obvious facts and familiar solutions, to see if the answer lies there. This is a mostly left-brain stage of attack. If the answer doesn’t come, the right and left hemispheres of the brain activate together. Neural networks on the right side scan remote memories that could be vaguely relevant. A wide range of distant information that is normally tuned out becomes available to the left hemisphere, which searches for unseen patterns, alternative meanings, and high-level abstractions.

Having glimpsed such a connection, the left brain must quickly lock in on it before it escapes. The attention system must radically reverse gears, going from defocused attention to extremely focused attention. In a flash, the brain pulls together these disparate shreds of thought and binds them into a new single idea that enters consciousness. This is the “aha!” moment of insight, often followed by a spark of pleasure as the brain recognizes the novelty of what it’s come up with.

Now the brain must evaluate the idea it just generated. Is it worth pursuing? Creativity requires constant shifting, blender pulses of both divergent thinking and convergent thinking, to combine new information with old and forgotten ideas. Highly creative people are very good at marshaling their brains into bilateral mode, and the more creative they are, the more they dual-activate.

As I understand it, the tests indicate less ability to think this way, to brainstorm and to generate new ideas.

That seems pretty concerning to me, and the obvious way to address it would be to look again at school curriculums and aim to include creative thinking approaches in each class, as well as homework that calls for creativity.
posted by bearwife at 10:53 AM on July 15, 2010

And as a third and final point I must cite Sheldon!

KNITTING: it's sitting for creative people.

posted by ErikaB at 10:54 AM on July 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

Do CEOs see creativity the same way the rest of us do?
I'm sure there's a Powerpoint on this subject.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:56 AM on July 15, 2010

Also, name the last job posting you saw where creativity was the top-listed requirement, or even evaluated.

Good grief, a thousand times, this.

I applied for a graphic design job at a company at which banners were the most commonly produced items. The three managers at the interview browsed through my portfolio, which contains a broad selection of the most creative things I have done, and mentioned that they were concerned that I didn't have any banners in my portfolio.

They had a broad display of creativity sitting in front of them, but were concerned about whether I would be at all capable of working on a differently shaped sheet of paper.

Many people can't recognize creativity when they see it, or even think creative ventures are a waste of time or "not real work".

Also, music and art are the first things to get cutbacks when school budgets run low. When I was in high school in the late 80s/early 90s, I had to do fund-raisers door-to-door in order to get enough funding to buy new sheet music and attend a music festival a few hours' drive away.
posted by Fleebnork at 10:58 AM on July 15, 2010 [2 favorites]

But VikingSword - respectfully - first of all, as you state, that's something you imagine. Absent any actual references, we can provisionally assume that your example is invalid.

The language used in the article is "lifetime creative accomplishment." Since everyone has accomplishments in their lifetimes, how do they determine which ones qualify as "creative"?

Let's say you have a list of 100 lifetime accomplishments. You decide that 25 of them count as "creative." I'm pretty sure a solid case could be made that the other 75 required a lot of creativity, too.
posted by ErikaB at 11:02 AM on July 15, 2010

JPD - the tests, vs abusing the tests are totally different things. I don't think it makes sense to attack the tests on account of people abusing them. There are all sorts of tests with much less predictive power (like the I.Q. test mentioned above used to get jobs in China) or like SAT, LSAT etc. being used to decide on school admissions, or personality and aptitude tests for jobs and so on. I am certainly not advocating or even addressing the use of creativity tests for any sort of discriminatory purposes or selection or preference processes. I merely think that the tests themselves are interesting. People can take that and then base policy on that, but that's stretching prescriptively. The tests don't tell you what to do with them. You might even identify a problem (as is purported here), but that's a far cry from telling us what to do about the given problem.
posted by VikingSword at 11:02 AM on July 15, 2010

But VikingSword - respectfully - first of all, as you state, that's something you imagine. Absent any actual references, we can provisionally assume that your example is invalid.

True - but how else do you determine "the correlation to lifetime creative accomplishment was more than three times stronger for childhood creativity than childhood IQ." if not through the quantitative method I described? There really are no other options - either the numbers are there, or not. Of course, the claim itself may be a lie, and I have no way of knowing one way or anther, but I don't assume anything quite as shabby as that going on here.

Let's say you have a list of 100 lifetime accomplishments. You decide that 25 of them count as "creative." I'm pretty sure a solid case could be made that the other 75 required a lot of creativity, too.

It's the same problem as in any of such tests. The I.Q. test measures general intelligence - but what is intelligence? In the end, we don't argue that specifically, because what is defined in psychology vs popular connotation of a word is not the same thing. Rather, the fallback is to say that I.Q. tests measure a "property" whatever that property is - and that a high vs low score is predictive of future performance. In the case of I.Q. it's a weak correlation with what we conventionally call success. In the case of the Torrance test, it's a very high correlation. As to what we call success, again - definitional issue. Someone's illiterate grandmother who rescued 7 kids in the midst of war was very successful and intelligent and creative, though that's "all" she accomplished. But again the fallback would be a hard number - from the article "entrepreneurs, inventors, college presidents, authors, doctors, diplomats, and software developers" - and that's quantifiable on a cohort basis - in one group with low scores there are low numbers of "entrepreneurs, inventors, college presidents, authors, doctors, diplomats, and software developers" and on the high score there were high numbers of "entrepreneurs, inventors, college presidents, authors, doctors, diplomats, and software developers". Whether you call them "creative" or "accomplished" is a matter of definition and common usage acceptance, but the numbers are what they are.
posted by VikingSword at 11:12 AM on July 15, 2010

Do CEOs see creativity the same way the rest of us do?

Enron was very creative.
posted by Artw at 11:13 AM on July 15, 2010

1990, huh?

So can we blame the internet?
posted by IndigoJones at 1:26 PM on July 15 [+] [!] [quote]

Wouldn't 1990 correlate pretty well with the rise of the prescription of behavior-modifying drugs to school-age kids? Could it be that "creativity" is now defined as anti-social behavior, and treated accordingly?
posted by vibrotronica at 1:30 PM on July 15 [+] [!] [quote]

NO! You're both wrong and uncreative. Netscape went public in 1995 and Ritalin has been around at least since the Exorcist (the little girl was on it in the film).

1990 is the first year of grunge music. Before that, all kids, every single one of them without exception, wanted to know how to wail on guitars and do that two-hand tapping thing to get the rad high notes. Kids spent hours practicing Van Halen, Iron Maiden, Ozzy, Metallica, Megadeth, etc. And then they spent more hours after that learning harmonic dive-bombs and pick slides on their Floyd-Rose equipped Ibanez guitars. Every song that came out had a guitar solo more kick-ass than the one before. And kids had to be really creative and well-read just to come up with band names. For example: Pantera. It's named for the Roman soldier who was Jesus's actual father. What's the matter, Dan Brown, cat got your tongue? No, that's Dimebag Darrell and he's got his fist down your throat from beyond the grave

But apparently metal was too complicated for generation Zero. So they turned to whiny little Kurt Cobain with his bitchy little non-problems. I'm a beta-male, girls don't love me, Courtney's mean, I can't play the guitar blah blah blah. It's pretty sad when the Weird Al Yankovic parody of your song is better than the original.

Did Weird Al ever lampoon metal? Fuck no--Weird Al is metal.

"But we had good bands names, too." You mean like "Pearl Jam," sk8er boi? "Get it ,heh heh, 'pearl' jam?" Fuck you, and your meatpuppet, soundgarden, Fender Jaguar four-chord failure.

Creativity's decline is solely and completely attributable to the release of Nirvana's Nevermind. As in "I want to play guitar like Eddie!" "Then you have to practice every day." "Oh, never mind. I'll just grow my hair long in the front instead of in the back and make fun of talent."

Grunge - ten talentless years without soul or solos.
posted by Pastabagel at 11:26 AM on July 15, 2010 [3 favorites]

Just because we have a name for something does not mean that it means the same thing to everyone, and by extension it does not mean that we can measure it. See: intelligence, success, emotional stability, personality "type," etc. That doesn't mean that these things don't exist, or that the tests we have developed to quantify them are meaningless, only that they mean way less than what they claim to represent. They measure one thing: a test score. They might correlate with other things, but they're not those other things. They are surrogates.

Is it good to be creative in a service sector job, or is it good to memorize how to do the job and then do it. It's good to be manageable; and creativity is a plus, but definitely not the emphasis.

This misconception is one of the reasons why manufacturing jobs are moving overseas, and why retail and service employees are almost always unpleasant to deal with. I've been in crappy jobs (busboy, cashier, delivery driver), and the worst thing about it is how dumb-acting(not dumb for real, not most of the time) all of my coworkers usually are. If I say something like "hey, why do we use these small buckets to haul ice when there's a pile of 5-gallon ones over there?" almost always the answer is something like "you can do that if you want, but the boss told us to get buckets from the back, and those big ones are here up front. obviously he has reasons that he wants us to use the small ones." And then I will because, obviously, it makes my job easier and faster. It's good for everybody, my manager included. Then when the boss sees me using the big ones and the other guy using the small ones, he'll post a sign by the ice machine telling us to do as much. (if he's half-intelligent. otherwise, I'll just quit after a while and I assume the big buckets gather dust) This should not be the job of a manager. We're the ones being paid to haul ice, and should figure out the best way to do it.

Even the most seemingly banal jobs need people to think for themselves rather than being automatons. If a factory worker is just a more expensive robot, with no inclination to adapt to changing conditions, then they're going to be replaced by a robot. More likely, their job will be sent to somewhere like China where their industrial culture hasn't calcified enough yet to produce people like the ice-hauler above.
posted by LiteOpera at 11:39 AM on July 15, 2010 [3 favorites]

I call shenanigans. I just took the Torrance’s creativity index twice, and the first time it told me I was as creative as Nabokov and the second time it said I was only as creative as Dan Brown!

Seriously, though, while I'm not convinced this testing method is particularly sound, I do think our current culture pays a lot of lip-service to valuing creativity, while in practice, often systematically selecting against it.
posted by saulgoodman at 11:46 AM on July 15, 2010 [2 favorites]

"It’s too early to determine conclusively why U.S. creativity scores are declining. One likely culprit is the number of hours kids now spend in front of the TV and playing videogames rather than engaging in creative activities. Another is the lack of creativity development in our schools. In effect, it’s left to the luck of the draw who becomes creative: there’s no concerted effort to nurture the creativity of all children."

These old bogeymen were just as prominent when CQ scores were going up. I think the author is displaying an alarmingly low CQ in pulling these tired old explanations out of the closet.

Here's a better explanation, free:
Kids These Days get more supervised structured playtime, and almost no unstructured time. As well as intuitive causation, there is also better correlation here, as this change in American childhoods accelerated immensely around about the same time as CQ stopped rising.
posted by -harlequin- at 11:51 AM on July 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

Many people can't recognize creativity when they see it, or even think creative ventures are a waste of time or "not real work".

Hence the prevailing stereotype of the "starving artist" - if we really valued creativity as we say we do, then more writers, musicians, painters, etc. would be able to make living wages. Oftentimes even ones that are well-known still have to hold down a day job. For some people who are creative, having to work at said day job crushes their souls and leaves them too physically and mentally exhausted at the end of the day to do anything creative.
posted by Anima Mundi at 12:06 PM on July 15, 2010

It's not hard to find examples of how random tests are misused in horrific ways - especially when there is an element of commerce. Here's a horrible example:

DNA talent tests for kids: Way ahead of the science (but still for sale)

"There's an informational video that the Inborn Talent website urges you to watch "if you end up doing nothing else today," because the information is "critical" and "will affect and impact both the childhood and the adulthood of your child." It warns that, without the info the test can provide, "you may be unconsciously forcing your child to do something that he or she really dislikes doing."
posted by VikingSword at 12:09 PM on July 15, 2010

Hence the prevailing stereotype of the "starving artist" - if we really valued creativity as we say we do, then more writers, musicians, painters, etc. would be able to make living wages. Oftentimes even ones that are well-known still have to hold down a day job.

Speaking as an occasional artist, I think the starving artist and difficulty of making living wages is more a reflection of most artists not being able to produce much that is of much value to many people, and is not a reflection of those people not valuing creative productions. 80% of everything is shit, so for works that are about quality of life rather than basic necessities of life, being shitty means being worthless.

To pick a possibly aggravating example, Avatar might have an embarrassingly formulaic plot and a formulaic lot of things, but it was creative in many ways, and extremely well implemented, and it struck a nerve with people's imagination and escapism. It was greatly rewarded.

In contrast, someone finding a creative expression for their personal navel-gazing is basically an exercise in hedonism, not the production of something that others should be expected to value. A lot of starving artists make mistakes like this one. Art does not intrinsically have merit; it must be good art, not shitty art, to be of value.

I see a lot of shitty art. That's what depressing, not the lack of money being made on the crap.
posted by -harlequin- at 12:40 PM on July 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

Who gets to decide which art is shitty?
posted by Fleebnork at 12:59 PM on July 15, 2010

Sure, creativity is hard to describe, and hard to test...but we know it when we see it.

Three reasons for the decline of creativity in our youngsters have appeared above, and they are all valid. 1) Lack of unstructured play time...with material around with which to exercise one's imagination, I might add. Cardboard, blocks, marbles, paper, musical instruments, magnifying glasses, microscopes (surprisingly cheap), sticks, rocks, dirt, trees, rope and string, etc. 2) The overabundance of mindless amusement to occupy children's time: TV, computers, and videogames. 3) In school life, the de-emphasis of the arts and science and social studies, all of which capitalize upon a child's natural curiosity about the world, but, unfortunately are not directly reflected (in uncreative administrators' minds) to what are often the ONLY TWO items on high stakes testing: math and literacy.

Not only does creativity add to a country's economic output (that's pulling out the big guns in American punditry), but without it a human's life is "nasty, brutish and short."
posted by kozad at 1:00 PM on July 15, 2010

Solution: The tests are subjectively judged. The end.

Interrater reliability helps with this. It is possible is possible to check the level of agreement between raters, even though the ratings involve judgment, to see if they all understand the rating system they're supposed to be using pretty much the same way. Outlier raters who don't seem to be on the same page about what the scoring system is supposed to mean can be eliminated or retrained and their assessments thrown out or done over. (Some details about statistical procedures used to measure this.)

I've been a rater in several assessments where this procedure was used to check reliability. I've seen people get fired for being consistent outliers despite retraining, and have all their data get thrown out and rescored; and I've seen a scoring system get redesigned because, based on initial interrater reliability results, it seemed to be too confusing. Use of interrater reliability is standard in psych. research that uses a scoring system requiring judgment by human scorers.

(People who do this kind of research aren't really dumb enough not to realize this is a problem, and are smart enough to use statistical procedures to deal with it.)

I'd wonder if a shift to more structured activities in day care and preschool, as opposed to the kind of free play parents might allow or engage in with their kids at home, has something to do with this.

DU's suggestion "that our creativity has gotten channeled from line drawings on paper to some other venue" also makes sense.

I'm more worried about the fact that this was "science news" reported in Newsweek. Differences between demographic groups assessed in the two time periods, differences in the assessment procedures, or differences in the training of the assesssors could account for the differences in the scores of kids in the '90's compared to kids earlier. It would be just like Newsweek (and other mainstream media) to ignore any caveats like that, even if stated clearly by the researchers, for the sake of a good story. I'd want to see the original study and what this test consisted of.
posted by nangar at 1:12 PM on July 15, 2010 [2 favorites]

Legalize it.
posted by LordSludge at 1:13 PM on July 15, 2010

Speaking as an occasional artist, I think the starving artist and difficulty of making living wages is more a reflection of most artists...

While I don't disagree with your broad dismissal of most art as "hedonistic, navelgazing crap," (except to note Blake's cautionary dictum "To generalize is to be an idiot"), I think you're missing the point.

The "starving artist" archetype is most commonly invoked in reference to celebrated artists from previous historical periods who were widely ignored or overlooked during their own lifetimes, only to find appreciative audiences, critical acclaim and perhaps even some modest measure of historical relevance posthumously.

You're argument, -harlequin-, while not devoid of certain purely incidental isomorphisms with reality, is basically a non-sequitur.
posted by saulgoodman at 1:15 PM on July 15, 2010

The point of questioning the "starving artist" myth to me, then, is why do we so willingly accept the notion that even good artists could and possibly even should expect to starve? It seems to me the starving artist myth is really more something we romanticize and internalize, culturally, than a simple social stigma associated with the over-production of bad art.

I've known talented artists who felt it was their duty to starve; I've also known consumers of art who seemed to take as a given the idea that the best artists in some sense needed to suffer in order to achieve artistic and creative greatness or perhaps deserved to suffer for daring to aspire to it. That's the more interesting facet of how the "starving artist" stereotype plays into cultural notions surrounding creativity to me.

Also, in rural towns, creativity is almost universally identified with teh gay. To the point that sticking out too far above the crowd (winning prizes for creative pursuits, etc.) can get your teeth bashed in.
posted by saulgoodman at 1:25 PM on July 15, 2010

A good deal of this is built on the conceit that certain activities are creative and others are not. It reminds me of a conversation I had at my last job :

Him : "Hi! I'm Tim, the new Creative in the marketing department."
Me : "Hi! I'm Pogo, the Useful in the IT department."

I spend all day devising innovative and practical solutions to the problems I and my users face in our unique computing environment. If I were call myself a "creative" or referred to my work as "creativity", people would think I was kerning serifs in Adobe PageDesign 7 or some shit.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 1:35 PM on July 15, 2010 [6 favorites]

As to what we call success, again - definitional issue.

Yes. That is the point that I am making.
posted by ErikaB at 1:54 PM on July 15, 2010

I spend all day devising innovative and practical solutions to the problems I and my users face in our unique computing environment. If I were call myself a "creative" or referred to my work as "creativity", people would think I was kerning serifs in Adobe PageDesign 7 or some shit.

This. Almost everything a tool-using species does requires creativity. It's a shame that, as a culture, we've moved on from the quaint view that practical invention and problem-solving of the franklin stove type (the ad-hoc shell script flavor of sysadmining is a modern equivalent) is slighted as technician's work, and not a worthy pursuit of someone with real intellect.
posted by LiteOpera at 1:59 PM on July 15, 2010

I spend all day devising innovative and practical solutions to the problems I and my users face in our unique computing environment.

Agreed. People tend to wayyy underestimate how much creativity goes into being a software developer.
posted by saulgoodman at 2:00 PM on July 15, 2010

I put a huge amount of creativity into just the swearing alone!
posted by Artw at 2:18 PM on July 15, 2010 [2 favorites]

schools without art, music or physical education = children who lack creativity
posted by jeffmac at 2:54 PM on July 15, 2010

"The point of questioning the "starving artist" myth to me, then, is why do we so willingly accept the notion that even good artists could and possibly even should expect to starve? "

I'm happy to think that particular sense of "starving artist" is a confirmation-bias myth, and if so, it wouldn't need addressing as a factual problem, though I agree that popular romanticism of the idea works against artists - but everyone has stereotypes that work for and against them.
The major "starving artist" examples come from more than a hundred years ago, back when the foundations of society and technology and prosperity were simply ill-suited to many categories of artistic endeavor, while other overlooked categories of creative trade made a decent living. In modern times, the foundations are more accommodating of more categories, and un-valued masterpieces seem rarer, and even then, it often happens because genius is ahead of the times, and so it necessarily takes wider society years to catch up, rather than because creativity isn't valued.

You reminded me of a humorous retort my friend would sometimes throw at me - not even looking at my work, he'd say "Well I know you can't be a good artist because you haven't truly suffered".
It's a joke, but one of the implications is that you have to be able to bring something above-and-beyond jto the table, building something out of mediocre experience isn't much to bring. That might be a legitimate view.

I'd also argue that a Van Gogh painting isn't worth $1M, it's the mystique of owning the painting that is worth $1M. That mystique is not the work of Van Gogh, it's a side product of society over centuries. So to me, it doesn't follow that because he produced items now traded for vast sums, that he ought to have earned vast sums.
My own work has been credited with moving vast sums of money (in a different way), but the way it happened, it would have made no sense for me to get a lot of money. Value is a strange thing.

I can't speak to your experience in small towns. Ouch :(

I wonder if part of the problem isn't the attempt of many to separate art from being a trade. If art is not a trade, then full-time artists clearly should starve - because they're not working, and they're living in a society that expects people to work for their food. Treat art as just another trade and those issues evaporate. A concept artist earning a wage for his part in developing Avatar seems unlikely to get beaten up in a small town, because it's obvious that he's plying a trade, rather than hinting at being someone who is to special to have to earn an honest wage.
posted by -harlequin- at 2:54 PM on July 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

Who gets to decide which art is shitty?

If the artist is trying to sell it, anyone with dollars gets to decide if to them it's crap. If that consensus is universally arrived at by everyone, and organizations and companies as well, then chances are it's not a wonderful piece, and the artist may need to get a day job :-)
posted by -harlequin- at 3:31 PM on July 15, 2010

I would say being creative has improved my life to no end. I can't tell you how often this conversation takes place:

Not Me: There is a problem, we can't do X.
Me: Well how about if we try doing it this way instead.
Not Me: Oh. Huh. I never would have thought of that.

This always confounds me and makes me feel a tiny bit sad for the other person. How limiting to never see other approaches to problems. I'm not always the smartest person in the room, but that doesn't bother me because I know I'm smart enough to figure out how to overcome problems.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:51 PM on July 15, 2010

Could it just be that happy and creative kids are just the wealthier kids who are statistically more likely to succeed anyway?

well, fwiw, from the article...

Consider the National Inventors Hall of Fame School, a new public middle school in Akron, Ohio. Mindful of Ohio's curriculum requirements, the school's teachers came up with a project for the fifth graders: figure out how to reduce the noise in the library ... Working in small teams, the fifth graders first engaged in what creativity theorist Donald Treffinger describes as fact-finding ... Then, problem-finding ... Next, idea-finding ... Next, solution-finding: which ideas were the most effective, cheapest, and aesthetically pleasing ... Then teams developed a plan of action ... Finally, they presented designs to teachers, parents, and Jim West, inventor of the electric microphone.

Along the way, kids demonstrated the very definition of creativity ... And they'd unwittingly mastered Ohio's required fifth-grade curriculum—from understanding sound waves to per-unit cost calculations to the art of persuasive writing. "You never see our kids saying, 'I'll never use this so I don't need to learn it,' " says school administrator Maryann Wolowiec. "Instead, kids ask, 'Do we have to leave school now?' "

Two weeks ago, when the school received its results on the state's achievement test, principal Traci Buckner was moved to tears. The raw scores indicate that, in its first year, the school has already become one of the top three schools in Akron, despite having open enrollment by lottery and 42 percent of its students living in poverty.

With as much as three fourths of each day spent in project-based learning, principal Buckner and her team actually work through required curricula, carefully figuring out how kids can learn it through the steps of Treffinger’s Creative Problem-Solving method and other creativity pedagogies.

i thought that was pretty inspiring! maybe it's just that more effort and attention is placed on educating wealthier kids, making them more likely to succeed, but it seems like it's more the setting than innate genetics* or whatever that determines the outcome ... which i thought was pretty inspiring :P altho, of course, that also means we should all be putting in more effort in tackling inequality so we might, one day, reach that promised land...

But do more creative people tend to lead happier lives?

there was also: "It's this inability to conceive of alternative approaches that leads to despair." what we've got here is ... a failure to imaginate! (or rationalise ;)

---
*the article allows "there are certain innate features of the brain that make some people naturally prone"
posted by kliuless at 4:20 PM on July 15, 2010 [1 favorite]

Why would you need to add anything to the drawings in the creativity test? They were already fine as they were, and needed nothing more to complete them. They are obviously the Pope's hat, Ceiling Cat, and the 28 of Diamonds playing card.
posted by effwerd at 4:35 PM on July 15, 2010

/glances at article

Po Bronson? Really? Does he still fellate billionaires for a living?

/skims same

Yeah, I guess so.
posted by hap_hazard at 6:23 PM on July 15, 2010

and the 28 of Diamonds playing card.

I hate it when I get that damn card in blackjack.
posted by jefbla at 7:17 PM on July 15, 2010

Kim found creativity scores had been steadily rising, just like IQ scores, until 1990. Since then, creativity scores have consistently inched downward.

The first Land Before Time film was made in 1988, and the latest one is three years old. Spelberg and Lucas have a lot to answer for.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 11:29 AM on July 16, 2010

I wonder if part of the problem isn't the attempt of many to separate art from being a trade. If art is not a trade, then full-time artists clearly should starve - because they're not working, and they're living in a society that expects people to work for their food. Treat art as just another trade and those issues evaporate..

I actually agree with your gist here, -halequin-. There's an excellent (IMO) book that goes quite deeply into this general subject called What Good Are the Arts? While I don't necessarily agree with the author's conclusions, I find a lot of his supporting arguments very compelling. In particular, the parts of the book dealing with how our contemporary ideas of 'Art' with a capital 'A' (i.e., art as a proper noun denoting some wispy abstract ideal distinct from the merely tangible products of certain traditional trades or crafts) are historical anomalies and may actually represent a kind of conceptual error that's been compounded over the years into an article of cultural currency.

A concept artist earning a wage for his part in developing Avatar seems unlikely to get beaten up in a small town, because it's obvious that he's plying a trade, rather than hinting at being someone who is to special to have to earn an honest wage

No, he's just more likely to get beaten up when, as a kid growing up in a small rural town developing the basic skills he'll need to start developing early in order to stand a fair competitive shot at earning a wage for his role in creating Avatar, he spends any amount of time drawing, entering school art contests, and so on. It's the development of the skills such trades require that we tend to penalize; no one is born a skilled craftsman fully formed, even granting there are occasionally prodigies. (FWIW, the only time my own teeth ever got bashed in as a kid was in a skateboarding accident when I was 13 or 14, but as a younger kid growing up in Bayou George, Florida, I did see a lot of kids who were more interested in activities like drawing, writing, or any of the creative arts than in sports and hunting tend to get the brunt of a lot of social grief for having such "eccentric" interests.)
posted by saulgoodman at 11:40 AM on July 16, 2010

I keeping thinking about the firetruck and drawing exercises given as examples, and I wonder if the journalists (if not the researchers) are missing something. Creative addition (e.g. adding, extending) seems easier to me than creative subtraction, or economizing. What if the kid was given an elaborate, all bells and whistles added firetruck and asked how many features he could take away and still have a pretty fun toy? It's sort of an unfair challenge. Here the problem is defined by what you can still imagine as "fun" once you've had a chance with something that super-stimulates your senses. A variant of the drawing test might be ask for a drawing on a specific subject but on a paper with smudges and random marks to work around and with. I've got some more ideas on this, but I want to think about them more. Probably this has already been researched.
posted by wobh at 3:07 PM on July 16, 2010

How to improve creativity - Called 'Janusian thinking' after the many-faced Roman god Janus, it involves conceiving of multiple simultaneous opposites. Integrative ideas emerge from juxtapositions, which are usually not obvious in the final product, theory or artwork.

also btw came across this comment by a 13yo on askme that i thought might be relevant :P

Mmkay. About school: Learning stuff in school is important but when was the last time you were actually IN a middle school? My parents finally pulled me out of public school and let me go to a private school cuz our schools are so huge and institutionalized. At my other school you got good grades if you didn't talk, didn't think, could fill out worksheets well, didn't make eye contact with anyone, had a #2 pencil so you could fill in bubbles, didn't bother a teacher, didn't mark in a book, didn't draw attention to yourself, didn't defend yourself against the kids who are always in trouble, didn't mind waiting 25 minutes in line for lunch and could wolf it down in 3 so that you weren't tardy, only walked on certain tiles in the hallway,didn't use certain stairways to get to class, didn't ask to use the restroom after lunch, didn't try to go into the library before or after school. It was a joke. The 8th grade science teacher at our school called the smartest kid in every classs period "Wienie Boy" so that they wouldnt' challenge him intellectually. Some of the PE coaches threw things, screamed and humiliated kids in the locker room. Yeah. Great. Give us schools where it's cool to learn and we will. Give us a situation where all we do is try to stay alive and see what happens. My new school rox and it is none of the things I just mentioned. Classes are small and teachers will correct you if you DON'T challenge their ideas. So before you talk school with a kid, you should find out what's REALLY going on there cuz it's prolly not what you remembered it was.

cheers!
posted by kliuless at 7:42 AM on July 19, 2010