Creativity is an overused word globally. Experts and laymen alike use it to explain everything that is wrong with everything from education systems to fashion and movies, and the host of solutions that are being proposed to ensure the survival of the planet. The knowledge that is lacking though is how creativity is born and can be nurtured to the point that it is able to be applied.
What is this creativity? Why are so many of us convinced that this is the one trait that will solve all our problems and be a stepping stone to success? Let’s start with some simple experiments that try to deal with the little details of this big picture called “Creativity”.
1. The Einstellung Effect (when thinking is mechanised due to previous experience): Lurchins Water Jar experiment, 1942
2. Incubation effect (when interruption of the task improves eventual success rate): Silveira’s Cheap-necklace problem experiment, 1971
3. Functional Fixedness (when problem solving is fixed by a perceived fixed use of objects, leading to failure): Dunker’s The Candle Experiment, 1945
4. Issues of Correct representation (when presentation of a problem can influence the ease by which it is solved): Wickelgren’s Mutilated Checkerboard problem, 1974
5. Spontaneous Transfer (when people solve new problems using learning from a prior experience, even when not conscious of the connection): Maiers’s Two String Problem, 1931
6. Intrinsic motivations (when people perform better and more consistently when they are motivated intrinsically) Deci’s Soma Cube Experiment, 1969
Knowing all these, where do we go next? How do we use this knowledge we have from all the research that shows what blocks, sparks and sustains creativity and intrinsic motivations?
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