Creativity..

Creativity has been described in various ways, but most definitions view its essence as placing things in new perspectives and seeing connections that were previously unsuspected. Creativity thus entails originality, but originality is not always creative. To be creative, an idea or product must be original and appropriate; it must fit the content or make sense in the light of demands of the situation.

Creative thinking is believed to be taking place in five stages.

1. Preparation - includes training and hard work; as Thomas Edison said, much of his inspiration was perspiration.
2. Incubation - characterized by no obvious progress;an idea in the back of the mind.
3. Illumination - a creative solution appears unexpectedly, as a sudden illumination.
4. Evaluation - idea being evaluated.
5. Revision - idea being revised.

Creative people are usually intelligent, often have a special talent and are generally strongly motivated to solve the problems that interest them, usually interested in humor, use fractionation, have divergent thinking and also flexible. A personality dimension called "origence" seems to be related to creativity. Origence refers to the unique ability to invent or create something novel.

Creative thinking is said to reach its peak in gifted persons somewhere between the ages of twenty and forty. Highly talented people , however, often exhibit far into old age creative ability which is superior to that of average people in youth.

Creativity is now believed to be more diffuse and less dramatic than these stages indicated. The creative process instead apparently involves considerable "trial and error", which is random and exploratory activity, without a clear hypothesis.

What do you think about creativity and creative thinkers??

(Sources: Munn's Introduction to Psychology: Some of my notes)