Creativity: Definition, Examples, & Psychology​

By Charlie Huntington, M.A., Ph.D. Candidate
Creativity is the capacity to come up with original and effective ideas or solutions for problems. Let’s see what psychology research says about how to develop this critical skill.
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There were few non-negotiable expectations in my household growing up, but a firm one was the expectation that each child in the family would take – or at least try out – piano lessons. From age six to age sixteen, I had nearly weekly piano lessons, with bouts of practicing sprinkled throughout the week. I loved a few of the countless classical songs I learned, but by age fourteen, I was craving something different. I picked up the guitar, and soon the piano dropped out of my life.
What was so different about the guitar? My piano lessons were all about learning how to play what other people had written, but I could not tell you why a song sounded good or how to create one myself. Teaching myself the guitar, I learned about song structure, how to improvise, and how to develop my own voice. As a pianist, I had been musical and artistic, but as a guitarist, I was truly exercising my creativity – and that’s what keeps me writing music today.

In this article, we will take a look at the power of creativity to give our lives meaning and fulfillment, as well as improve the world around us.
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What Is Creativity? (A Definition)​

Over the centuries, people have focused on many aspects of the experience of being creative when trying to define creativity (Walia, 2019). Scholars have focused on the ability to generate new ideas, think outside the box, and identify problems and solutions through experimentation. Across the various definitions and conceptualizations, two key themes have emerged (Mumford, 2003): newness and productivity. This has led to a standard definition of creativity as being the capacity to demonstrate both originality and effectiveness in one’s actions (Runco & Jaeger, 2012).
 
Importantly, this definition of creativity means possessing originality and effectiveness at the same time. Simply generating lots of new ideas is not being creative if those ideas are not effective. Think about it: if your car is stuck in the mud, you would much rather have somebody suggest a single solution that works than fifty solutions that don’t help move your car.
 
At the same time, being effective but unoriginal is also not being creative. To illustrate this, I want to let you in on a secret: pop music, and most rock music, is really quite simple. There are a handful of very catchy (in other words, effective) chord progressions that you can build a hit song around. However, simply playing those chords won’t wow anybody – to really capture people’s attention, one must use those chords in some kind of innovative or unexpected (in other words, original) manner.

​​The Creative Response

Also implicit in the definition of creativity is a context that calls for a creative response (Walia, 2019). Creativity rarely happens in a vacuum because without a situation that demands it, things will likely stay as they are. For example, the songs I have written of which I’m proudest have emerged from a genuine need to process some painful feelings and express myself. In these moments, I am creatively reacting to my circumstances, where I could instead have called a friend, journaled, or made myself a snack.
 
So to recap, creativity is something that we demonstrate through action, in response to a specific context. It often results in some sort of product, whether that is a new design, a new way of apologizing, or a work of art (Kampylis & Valtanen, 2010). And if that product or outcome is effective – even just for the person who made it, as when I write a song and am satisfied to keep it just to myself – then it was the result of a creative act.

Opposite of Creativity​

The opposite of creativity is acting in an unoriginal and ineffective way. I think plagiarism is likely a good example of being uncreative – especially if the source that’s plagiarized wasn’t very good in the first place! 

Another example of the opposite of creativity might be compulsive or addictive behaviors. People engaged in compulsive or addictive behaviors are doing the same thing again and again – not very original of them – and it is steadily becoming less effective as they become habituated to the experience. For people with addictions, there is nothing less creative than falling into one’s addictive patterns yet again, while healing from addiction, by contrast, actually requires a great deal of creativity.​

Benefits of Creativity

Being a creative person, or even just exercising creativity at times in your life, is associated with lots of benefits. On the topic of everyday creativity, people seem to be happiest in their day-to-day lives when they are engaged in creative activities (Silvia et al., 2014), which may be why engaging in regular creative activities is associated with better psychological health (Richards, 2007).

More generally, the ability to respond creatively to one’s environment should translate into better outcomes throughout one’s life. This is because, from an evolutionary psychology perspective, creativity is a skill or characteristic that should improve one’s chances of surviving and reproducing (Bonetto et al., 2021). Let’s unpack that thought a bit.

Do you know the saying, “When all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail?” The more creatively we can respond to the world, the more effective we will be in solving our problems and not making them worse. A child who cannot think of any other options but to hit his playmate when a conflict starts may not keep his friends very long. If he grows into an adult who still cannot find more creative ways to resolve disputes, he may end up in jail or dead. At the same time, a person who demonstrates creativity in problem-solving sends a clear signal to other people: I am adaptive – I’m the kind of person you can trust with your problems. This increases the likelihood that the creative person will have positive relationships and good support in their lives.

Interestingly, the benefits of creativity can come with an interesting drawback: creative responses are often unexpected or unorthodox. They can be so unusual as to violate other people’s social expectations, which can get us into trouble with others (Bonetto et al., 2021). So in this sense, creativity is also a deviation from the norm – it is an essential skill, but it may not always be appreciated.

Examples of Creativity

At this moment in time, I happen to be reading a book about the Beatles, whose music is among the most innovative and enduring artwork of modern times. Innovative and enduring – those words are almost code for how creative the Beatles were. While they started off playing other people’s music, they quickly began to take the raw ingredients of pop and rock music and use them in their own novel ways. From there, the Beatles were relentlessly creative – their signature move was to continue to defy expectations while still writing music that was catchy and relatable.

As psychologists have observed, creativity is contextual – it is a response to a stimulus or a problem. So anywhere problems come up, there is the potential for creativity. In the case of musicians, and perhaps most artists, there is some sort of internal or external motivator or problem that needs to be resolved. Perhaps it is the need to earn a living, or perhaps, as many artists have articulated in one way or another, their lives will feel incomplete if they do not create something to express what’s inside them.​

Psychology of Creativity

When psychologists stress that creativity is contextual, they have the culture and the environment in mind (Amabile & Pillemer, 2012). The time and place in which we try to exercise our creativity makes a big difference. It is the catalyst for creativity, presenting us with modern-day problems to solve. It is also the reference point for our creative processes because most of us have a hard time imagining things without considering how socially acceptable or desirable they are.
 
This has led psychologists to wonder whether any act of creation can be creative without also having a social context (Amabile & Pillemer, 2012). For example, is a piece of artwork really a creative achievement if it is not seen by other people as both original and valuable? If I write a song that is fulfilling for me, but nobody else seems to like it, how creative were my songwriting efforts? These are hard questions to answer.

Creative Abilities

One thing we can say with more certainty is that psychologists have broken down creativity into different abilities or characteristics (Cropley, 2000). For example, neuropsychological tests that are thought to measure aspects of creativity are those that test our abilities to think outside the box, combine categories, and draw associations between topics. Traits such as openness to experience, tolerance for uncertainty, willingness to take risks, and overall mental flexibility are also thought to support one’s capacity to be creative. Although these aspects of creativity do predict some things in people’s lives, they are best understood as reflecting one’s potential to be creative, and not as determinants of one’s creativity.
 
Let’s think a bit more about thinking outside the box. Psychologists call this “cognitive disinhibition”, and it seems to involve the ability to notice things that other people don’t notice as well as a capacity to understand how those things that seem irrelevant to other people might be important or relevant in the present moment (Carson et al., 2003). People who think outside the box too much or too often may be at risk of experiencing mental health disorders, but a healthy dose of cognitive disinhibition seems to support creativity.

Creativity Development​

How does one develop creativity, whether in childhood or as an adult? One interesting finding is that exposure to differences – different cultures, lifestyles, countries, etc. – seems to promote creativity (Simonton, 2012). For example, people who have lived abroad and people who are multilingual may demonstrate more creativity than people without these characteristics or experiences.
 
At the same time, the personality traits that make us more or less creative are quite heritable, so some aspects of our creative potential are driven simply by the genes we inherit (Simonton, 2008). As with most psychological phenomena, we probably develop our creativity over time as our natures or personalities interact with the world around us – another instance of nature and nurture, rather than nature versus nurture.
 
If you are wondering about how to unlock more of your creative potential, you might enjoy watching this video:

Video: A powerful way to unleash your natural creativity

Creativity at Work

The belief that employees’ creativity should be encouraged and harnessed by their employers is a relatively novel idea in workplace culture (Bilton, 2014). Industrial-organizational psychologists, as well as the business owners they work for, have become more interested in how systems in companies can promote creativity, without employees getting too far off task. Chances to exercise our creativity help companies grow and are really satisfying to employees, potentially generating a positive feedback loop of happiness and creativity (Amabile et al., 2005). For managers, it is simply a task of balancing that potential with the company’s needs for order and profit (Florida & Goodnight, 2005).

Creativity and Leadership

While leaders have long been expected to embrace creative solutions and to be creative themselves, they are currently also understood as responsible for establishing environments that allow their subordinates’ creativity to flourish (Reiter-Palmon & Illies, 2004). Leaders who use more positive leadership styles with their employees seem most able to achieve this (Hughes et al., 2018).

Quotes on Creativity

  • “Creativity, as has been said, consists largely of rearranging what we know in order to find out what we do not know. Hence, to think creatively, we must be able to look afresh at what we normally take for granted.” – George Kneller
  • “Creativity is merely a plus name for regular activity. Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better.” – John Updike
  • “Creativity is intelligence having fun.” – Albert Einstein
  • “Creativity itself doesn’t care at all about results – the only thing it craves is the process. Learn to love the process and let whatever happens next happen, without fussing too much about it. Work like a monk, or a mule, or some other representative metaphor for diligence. Love the work. Destiny will do what it wants with you, regardless.” – Elizabeth Gilbert
  • “Your ego can become an obstacle to your work. If you start believing in your greatness, it is the death of your creativity.” – Marina Abramovic
  • “I apply the term ‘creativity’ broadly… it’s problem solving. We are all faced with problems, and we have to address them and think of something new, and that’s where creativity comes in.” – Edwin Catmull
  • “To have a great idea, have a lot of them.” – Thomas A. Edison
  • “Mystery is at the heart of creativity. That, and surprise.” – Julia Cameron

Articles Related to Creativity

​Want to learn more? Check out these articles:

Books Related to Creativity

If you’d like to keep learning more, here are a few books that you might be interested in.

Final Thoughts on Creativity​

You have opportunities all around you to exercise your creativity. I hope you take satisfaction in the moments when you are able to devise original and effective solutions for the problems that present themselves in your life.

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