Components of Creativity

• Creativity is the ability to think in novel ways, broadly and from multiple angles.
• It involves breaking free from traditional thinking and seeing connections between different objects.
• It helps solve complex problems encountered in daily life.

Four Basic Components of Creativity (Guilford, 1967)

Fluency

• It is the ability to think quickly and generate a large number of ideas in a limited time.
• It includes four aspects:
  • Word Fluency: The ability to use words fluently.
  • Associational Fluency: The ability to quickly generate similar or related words.
  • Expressional Fluency: The ability to quickly arrange words into desired sentences
  • Ideational Fluency: The ability to generate ideas within a specific time, such as listing uses for a coffee cup in one minute.

Flexibility

• It is the ability to generate diverse answers and approaches.
• It has two dimensions:
  • Spontaneous Flexibility: The ability to independently think of various things.
  • Adaptive Flexibility: The ability to modify something into many different things, and to categorize all the ideas.

Originality

• It is the ability to think of novel and unique ideas that are uncommon.
• It is beneficial to oneself and society.
• It requires the courage to think and experiment with new ideas.
• It stems from applied imagination, which involves creating real-world results from original ideas.

Elaboration

• It is the ability to develop, embellish, or expand upon a main idea.
• It involves expressing detailed ideas that can be fully refined and improved.

Theories of Creativity from Different Psychological Perspectives

Psychoanalytic Theory

• It posits that creativity arises from unconscious conflicts between sexual drives and social responsibility.
• Newer psychoanalytic views place creativity in the preconscious mind.

Behaviorism Theory

• It views creativity as a learned behavior.
• It emphasizes the importance of reinforcement and stimulus-response associations.
• It highlights cognitive relationships, connecting one stimulus to others to generate new ideas.

Humanistic Theory

• It asserts that creativity is an innate human quality.
• Individuals who know themselves, are self-accepting, and can self-actualize are best able to tap into this ability.
• Full expression of creativity depends on conducive conditions, including psychological safety, mental stability, a playful mindset, and openness to new experiences.

AUTA Theory

• It proposes that everyone possesses creativity that can be further developed.
• Development involves:
  • Awareness: Recognizing the importance of creativity and acknowledging one's own creative potential.
  • Understanding: Comprehending various aspects of creativity.
  • Techniques: Knowing methods to develop creativity, both standard and personal techniques.
  • Actualization: Self-awareness, self-acceptance, efficient self-use, adaptability, steadfast thinking, and consideration for others.