How Does It Work? : Creativity: It May Be More Than Biology

Why is it that Leonardo da Vinci could paint the Mona Lisa, while another person is barely able to draw a stick figure? What enabled Emily Dickinson, in only four years, to write nearly 1,800 poems, some of the most lyrical in the English language, while many people can barely piece together an office memo? And how is it that Albert Einstein could revolutionize the world of physics, when most people don’t even know how their car radios work?

For centuries, philosophers and teachers have speculated on why some human beings are extraordinarily creative and others have merely mortal abilities.

The ancient Greeks thought it was the result of divine inspiration--a gift from the gods. Some modern thinkers have theorized that it is just a lucky combination of genes, a happy but largely accidental coincidence of events. Others have equated creativity with the ability and tenacity to solve problems--a skill, they insist, that can be learned by almost anyone, or even by a computer.

Dissatisfied with these pet theories and intrigued by the seemingly endless stream of contradictory observations, a small but determined number of researchers have renewed the study of creativity--a subject that until recently had fallen into disfavor among serious scientists.

Some of the findings confirm earlier suspicions about the curious natures of creative individuals, but others are forcing scientists and educators to rethink what creativity is and how it is manifested.

Creative people may have certain inherited talents or biologically controlled predilections--a painter, for example, might have peculiar sensitivity to light; a musician, an unusual awareness of sound; a dancer, a certain physical size or muscle mass. Yet, scientists are finding that creativity goes beyond biology.

One of the most surprising and important findings has been that, as people become more creative, they also become more consumed by their work. And their devotion seems to be at least as important to their success as innate talents.

Many creative people, scientists now realize, also live with a certain degree of mental illness. In fact, one of the fundamental attributes of creative people may be the ability to make productive use of mental states, such as depression and mania, that tend to cripple others.

Although still in its infancy, the study of creativity could have profound implications for modern society. If creativity can be understood--better yet, if it can be cultivated and taught--then mankind will surely be better equipped to do any of a number of things: beautify cities, cure diseases, improve the economy.

While it may be some time before science can offer a reliable blueprint of how to teach creativity in the classroom or to encourage it in the workplace, enough information about creativity has been uncovered to begin to fill in important blanks in science’s picture of the mind.

It was World War II that provoked the first round of serious research on creativity.

Some of the first research was financed by the War Department. The military wanted new technology and more creative leaders.

Over the next 20 years, scientists devised dozens of tests to measure creativity. But most were little more than word games and visual puzzles--interesting, but probably capable of measuring only the most trivial aspects of the creative process.

By the mid-1970s, most respectable scientists had all but abandoned studies of creativity.

It was the 1960s’ preoccupation with pseudo-creativity and free life styles that was partly responsible for giving the whole subject of creativity a “bad name,” said Frank Barron, a retired professor of psychology at UC Santa Cruz and a leading expert on creativity.

About the same time, social scientists became preoccupied with seeking more respect from the rest of the scientific and medical community. They concentrated on observable, quantifiable behavior and tried to distance themselves from subjects as intangible as creativity.

What scientists did discover during these early years, however, were some puzzling inconsistencies in creativity research. While some creative people were clearly geniuses, others did not appear to be especially gifted. While some were unusually confident, others were remarkably insecure. Still others appeared to fluctuate, in a cycle of despair and optimism, self-doubt and self-assurance.

There remained some universal traits that creative individuals seem to share: insatiable curiosity, openness to new experiences, willingness to take risks, a tendency to think in images. There was also what one researcher described as “the uncontrollable urge of almost every creative person” to go beyond established limits, to break rules.

Although athletes are not usually thought of as “creative,” Dick Fosbury was someone who seemed to meet all the criteria.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, he was just a lanky, awkward Oregon boy who wouldn’t do the high jump like everyone else. Fosbury insisted on going over the bar backwards and headfirst. But the “Fosbury flop” not only won him an Olympic gold medal, it also inspired athletes that followed to break records experts said could not be touched.

But fame and glory do not seem to drive most creative people, researchers found. It is the intrinsic rewards of the work--the fascination of mixing paint or combining sounds or manipulating numbers.

And the willingness to take risks.

Dennis Farber, a New York artist, recently described his work this way:

“You put yourself in a situation where you don’t know what’s going to happen. If you really say what you think, you risk being ostracized; you may make a fool of yourself. But if you don’t say what you think, you’ll let yourself down. And that’s worse. . . . It’s that risk that is so compelling. It’s like rock climbing, if you don’t think something terrible could happen, it’s not much fun.”

Although his ability to paint may in part be “biological,” Farber said, it is also a matter of hard work.

“The idea of inspiration is a romantic one that has done artists as much harm as good,” Farber said. “Sometimes people ask me where I get my ideas. It’s simple. The ideas come from working, from getting up everyday and going to work.”

As Sir Isaac Newton so disarmingly put it when asked how he was able discover the law of universal gravitation: “By thinking on it continuously.”

Why are some people so driven?

That question intrigued Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a Hungarian-born professor of psychology at the University of Chicago.

Csikszentmihalyi wondered how creative people behaved when they were alone. He also wanted to know what they thought about when they were in the throes of creation. Were they happy, sad, worried, relaxed?

Csikszentmihalyi had an idea.

He would ask research subjects to carry beepers, which could be activated randomly throughout the day. Subjects would stop and jot down what they were doing right then, and how they felt about it. The data would be fed into a computer and analyzed.

Csikszentmihalyi’s idea not only worked in the 1970s, when he began to use it, the method caught on with other researchers. In a decade, thousands of subjects--artists, composers, dancers, chess players, mountain climbers, basketball players, ordinary people--had given researchers detailed snapshots of their activities and moods.

The University of Chicago researcher documented what philosophers had long suspected--that creative people simply do not always do things the way other people do--nor do they think about what they are doing in the same way.

People performing at their peak seem to enter another world, Csikszentmihalyi explained recently. “Time is distorted, a sense of happiness and well-being overcomes them.” They have entered, what he calls, a state of “flow,” “when things seem to go just right, when you feel alive and fully attentive to what you are doing.”

Athletes talk about entering of “the zone”--when a basketball player makes one shot after another from seemingly impossible angles or distances. Batters will see a baseball gliding toward them, looking as big as a beach ball. They know they cannot miss, and they don’t.

Creative people such as professional athletes or gifted musicians are not the only ones to experience this state. But what makes them different is that they get these highs from their work, and with inordinate frequency.

What about the people who have the potential to be creative, but are not?

Csikszentmihalyi wanted to know more about them, too.

This time, he chose as his subjects high school students who were highly gifted in mathematics.

“All these students were equally talented, but, in the opinion of their teachers, half of them no longer showed any real interest in mathematics. We wanted to know why. Why should one group virtually abandon the subject while another group would take advanced courses, compete in tournaments, be involved in math clubs?” Csikszentmihalyi asked.

“When you look at all the data and analyze it, in the end what you find is that the committed students like spending time alone, they like solitude and in their solitude they find the time to pursue . . . their passions,” Csikszentmihalyi said.

In contrast, he said, “most people cannot put up with solitude for very long. After a few minutes and certainly after a few hours, they start to feel a kind of psychic entropy. They are unable to coordinate their thoughts and feelings and actions in orderly ways. . . . To keep from feeling unhappy or bored, they pick up a telephone or turn on the television.”

Charles L. Fefferman, a professor at Princeton University who is considered one of the great mathematicians of this century, described some years ago how he spent his days after he had won a prestigious fellowship that freed him from his ordinary teaching duties.

Every morning, he went to his office--in his home. There, making himself comfortable in a wingback chair, he worked quietly by himself the entire day. During those hours he did not talk. He did not turn on a computer. He did not even pick up a pencil or piece of paper. He simply sat--and thought. Eight, 10 hours a day doing nothing but thinking.

Such solitude would drive most people crazy.

What drives a chosen few to go off by themselves and concentrate, to tolerate solitude and even flourish in it?

“We’re only beginning to have some of those answers but clearly it has something to do with their homes and their families,” said Csikszentmihalyi, who is now writing a book on the subject. “If the family environment is supportive but expecting children to do well and to work hard, that clearly helps. . . . If there is too much turmoil or if the families are too complacent, that will clearly affect the ability to focus and concentrate.”

What some researchers suspect--and hope--is that exposure to productive solitude will make talented young people crave more. Just like addicts who want drugs or athletes who seek runners’ highs, truly creative people, those who are both talented and productive, have had an extraordinary experience, one they very much want to repeat--again and again.

“I think,” Csikszentmihalyi said, “the desire to capture this euphoria is the root of all artistic pursuits.”

Whatever else can be said about creativity, one thing is now clear: It takes more than raw talent or devotion to an idea to be genuinely creative, Csikszentmihalyi said.

“To have creativity requires a society that cultivates creativity and promotes creativity,” Csikszentmihalyi said in a recent telephone interview. “I studied the subject for over 24 years and only recently did I realize what creativity really is: It is the interaction between societal needs and individual talents.”

Schools have begun to realize this and are encouraging students to participate in creativity contests--the most notable of which is “Odyssey of the Mind,” started by a New Jersey couple 10 years ago and now financed partly by IBM.

The program, which includes classroom materials and extracurricular art and science projects, encourages youngsters to have unpredictable ideas; to ask questions, rather than simply look for answers; to understand that there is nothing whatsoever wrong with failure, that it is a natural and necessary part of discovery. The idea is to make children realize that they are different and to understand that being different is good.

And, fearing that Americans were not as creative as their counterparts in Japan, companies over the last 20 years have turned to “creative consultants.” In fact, an entire industry of these experts has flourished in the United States. Dr. Edward deBono, a British professor of medicine, has toured the country, explaining the concept of brainstorming. William J. J. Gordon and George M. Prince, co-founder of Synectics Inc., has started a think tank in Boston to promote creativity in corporations. And James Adams, a Stanford University business professor, has explained the concepts of creative thinking to hundreds of thousands of people in a book titled “Conceptual Blockbusting.”

The only problem with efforts to cultivate creativity is that there is no “proof” that they do what they claim, said Robert W. Weinberg in a 1986 book “Creativity: Genius and Other Myths.” For every study that said a certain approach worked, there was another study saying that it did not. Some studies, for example, have shown that brainstorming generates more ideas, but other studies say it does not always produce better ones.

Although there may be no scientific formula for how to do it, one thing is clear about creativity, Csikszentmihalyi concluded: When cultures value it, creativity flourishes. When they ignore it or are afraid of it, creativity declines.

Renaissance Italy was one culture that revered creativity, Csikszentmihalyi said. “Some of the greatest art the world has ever seen was produced in Florence in the 15th Century, not just because there happened to be some talented people living there at the time, but because the bankers and powers of the city wanted it. They wanted to create a community so impressive that it would be known as the second Athens. And so they did; they saw to it that it happened.”

In contrast, creativity was reviled in ancient Egypt. “For nearly 3,000 years, works of art made in Egypt looked the same . . . because what society valued then was order and consistency.”

In the modern world, particularly in the United States, there now exists an odd combination of reverence and indifference toward creativity.

“Americans are people who strongly believe in the idea of creativity,” Csikszentmihalyi said. “We admire it. We are proud of it. . . . But we do very little to encourage it.

“Partly it is because we aren’t sure how. . . . Perhaps we are a little afraid of it.”