Mark Runco

1. Creativity: Old theories,
new findings
Mark Runco, PhD
University of Georgia, Athens, USA

2.  Creative studies, scientific but uniquely so
◦ Subject matter varies from culture to culture,
era to era, domain to domain, person to
person, situation to situation
Creativity is no rock

3. Rhodes (1960) Annual Review (2004)
 Person  Behavioral
 Process  Cognitive
 Product
 Clinical
 Place (or press)
 Developmental
 Educational
 Persuasion(2000)  Historical
 Potential (2008)  Social
 Organizational
 etc
Perspectives (old)

4. Hierarchical Framework for the Study of Creativity
Creative Potential Creative Performance
Person Products
Personality Traits, Idiosyncrasies, & Inventions, Patents, Publications
Characteristics Ideas
Process Persuasion
Cognitive Systems
Social Individual-Field-Domain
Historical
Interactions
Press Person X Environment (PxE)
Distal State X Trait
Evolution
Zeitgeist
Culture
Immediate
Places & Environments

5. Product approach
Thomas
Edison

6. Thomas Edison
 "Because ideas have to be original only with regard to their
adaptation to the problem at hand, I am always extremely
interested in how others have used them....I readily absorb
ideas from every source, frequently starting where the last
person left off." "Genius is one per cent inspiration and
ninety-nine per cent perspiration. Accordingly, a 'genius' is
often merely a talented person who has done all of his or
her homework."
(Source: http://www.thomasedison.com/edquote.htm)

7. Ideas as products?
 Divergent thinking
 Fluency, flexibility, originality of ideas
 List things that move on wheels
 How are a potato and carrot alike?
 List uses for a shoe

8. Person approach

9. Process

10. The Creative Process (Wallas, 1926)
 1. Preparation
 2. Incubation
 3. Illumination
 4. Verification
 (Recursion)

11. Associative Theory (Mednick, 1962)
Creativity = “remote associates”
Creativity Test = RAT
 Examples from the RAT (American):
 money:river:blood::
 cookies:sixteen:heart::
 out:dog:cat::
 standard DT (these 2 from Wallach)
 1. List all of the things you can think of that are square.
 2. List all of the things you can think of that move on wheels

13. Places

14. Places

15. Old Theories
 Domain specificity
 Verbal, Mathematical, Musical, Spatial, Bodily, Inter-
and Intrapersonal, Naturalistic

16. Nature & Nurture
 “Hereditary Genius”
 Cultural, SES differences
 Very recently, genetic basis of creativity

17. Split Brain
 Left (language & logic) and right (simultaneous and
holistic)
 Prefrontal (higher order judgment) and networks