Most people (including creativity researchers) act as if they believe that creativity is not simply a useful category or label but a real thing with its own essence (just as Plato would argue that an ideal triangle has an essence that is shared with all actual triangles). Most people (including creativity researchers) also believe that there is a set of general creativity-relevant skills that can be applied to most problems in ways that will lead to more creative outcomes. Creativity resea...

Creativity and the Common Core State Standards are both important to today’s teachers. Yet, for many educators, nurturing students’ creativity seems to conflict with ensuring that they learn specific skills and content. In this book, the authors outline ways to adapt existing lessons and mandated curricula to encourage the development of student creativity alongside more traditional academic skills. Based on cutting-edge psychological research on creativity, the text debunks co...

Do people have free will, or this universal belief an illusion? If free will is more than an illusion, what kind of free will do people have? How can free will influence behavior? Can free will be studied, verified, and understood scientifically? How and why might a sense of free will have evolved? These are a few of the questions this book attempts to answer. People generally act as though they believe in their own free will: they don't feel like automatons, and they don't treat one anoth...

Recent research findings have challenged the idea that creativity is domain-general. Domain Specificity of Creativity brings together the research information on domain specificity in creativity -- both the research that supports it and answers to research arguments that might seem to challenge it. The implications for domain specificity affect how we move forward with theories of creativity, testing for creativity, and teaching for creativity. The book outlines what these changes are and ...

Do general-purpose creative-thinking skills -- skills like divergent thinking, which is touted as an important component of creative thinking no matter what the task domain -- actually make much of a contribution to creative performance? Although much recent research argues against such domain-transcending skills -- including several new studies reported in this book -- the appeal of such general skills remains strong, probably because of the theoretical economy and power such skills would...

Creativity and Humor provides an overview of the intersection of how humor influences creativity and how creativity can affect humor. The book's chapters speak to the wide reach of creativity and humor with different topics, such as play, culture, work, education, therapy, and social justice covered. As creativity and humor are individual traits and abilities that have each been studied in psychology, this book presents the latest information. - Explains how, and why, humor enhances creati...

This book explores the development of cognitive skills related to reasoning and creativity, two strands that can intertwine to work together at times but may also be at odds. Spontaneity and freedom from constraint, characteristic of the thinking of young children, may be essential to creativity, which has prompted many to question how much we lose as we progress through childhood. Research and common sense tell us that effort, practice, and study are necessary for the highest levels of cr...

Creativity is of rising interest to scholars and laypeople alike. Creativity in the arts, however, is very different from creativity in science, business, sports, cooking, or teaching. This book brings together top experts in the field from around the world to discuss creativity across many different domains. Each chapter includes clear definitions, intriguing research, potential measures, and suggestions for development or future directions. After a broad discussion of creativity across d...

Creativity Across Domains: Faces of the Muse sorts through the sometimes-confusing theoretical diversity that domain specificity has spawned. It also brings together writers who have studied creative thinkers in different areas, such as the various arts, sciences, and communication/leadership. Each contributor explains what is known about the cognitive processes, ways of conceptualizing and solving problems, personality and motivational attributes, guiding metaphors, and work habi...

The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity is a comprehensive scholarly handbook on creativity from the most respected psychologists, researchers and educators. This handbook serves both as a thorough introduction to the field of creativity and as an invaluable reference and current source of important information. It covers such diverse topics as the brain, education, business, and world cultures. The first section, 'Basic Concepts', is designed to introduce readers to both the history of and k...

An integrative introduction to the theories and themes in research on creativity, this book is both a reference work and text for courses in this burgeoning area of research. The book begins with a discussion of the theories of creativity (Person, Product, Process, Place), the general question of whether creativity is influenced by nature or nurture, what research has indicated of the personality and style of creative individuals from a personality analysis standpoint, how social context a...

The key question this book addresses is how to identify and create optimal conditions for the kind of learning and development that is especially important for effectively functioning in the 21st century. Taking a new approach to this long-debated issue, it looks at how a design research-based science of learning (with its practical models and related design research) can provide insights and integrated models of how human beings actually function and grow in the social dynamics of educati...