Developmental Trends and Influences on Creativity

Advance Organizer

Introduction

Everyone has the potential to be creative, but not everyone fulfills that potential. Many people probably either do not have the experiences to fulfill their potential or do not exercise their creative talents. It is too easy to go through each day relying more on routine and assumption than on mindful and creative actions. The world could be a very different place—a more entertaining, productive, and efficient place—if we each used our full potential. Guilford (1975) put it this way: “If by any approach we could lift the population’s problem solving skills by a small amount on the average, the summative effect would be incalculable” (p. 53).

Our potential depends a great deal on our genotype, our genetic inheritance. Our phenotype, or manifest talents, are the result of both nature (biology and genes) and nurture (experience). Thus biological factors contribute specifically to creative potential, and experience determines where within the range set by biological potentials the individual performs. Behavioral geneticists refer to this arrangement as a range of reaction (this is discussed more in Chapter 3). The present chapter discusses both nature and nurture, but the focus is on development. It describes typical developmental trends and trajectories (e.g., stages of development that characterize many individuals and relate to creative behavior) as well as influences on the developmental process. Special attention is given to the family, for it is a very significant developmental influence on creative potentials.

Potentials may be fulfilled during childhood, but it would be most accurate (though close to oxymoronic) to say that they are partially fulfilled. Many experiences are likely only after childhood; creative potential covers the lifespan. For this reason this chapter covers more than the family. In fact, creative expression shifts several times as the individual moves through childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. As we will see in this chapter, these shifts may involve maturational processes, which are defined as changes that reflect the unfolding of genetic potentials, or they may reflect changes in motivation or shifts in the environment that alter the support for creative efforts. It is useful to examine changes in creativity that occur through the lifespan; there are some fairly universal trends.

Clearly, it is best to describe creative development as the fulfillment of creative potentials. This allows both nature and nurture, and it implies that experiences, within or outside the family, can do only so much. Each of us has creative talents, but not everyone can be Einstein. Each of us has potentials to fulfill, but the range of potentials varies from individual to individual. That range, again, is the contribution of biology, genes, and nature. This biological contribution is very apparent in the trends and stages of development.

Trends and Stages of Development

Many theories of development describe stages. These are discontinuity theories, the discontinuities being the stages (Kohlberg 1987; Piaget 1970, 1976). Some theories of creativity also describe development as discontinuous. For the present purposes the most useful discontinuity theory is that which focuses on changes in conventionality. This theory was developed in studies of the development of moral reasoning (Kohlberg 1987) but has proven to be useful in work on art (Rosenblatt & Winner 1988), divergent thinking (Runco & Charles 1993), language (Gardner 1982), and various other areas with connections to creativity. Obviously it hinges on the concept of conventions—but what is a convention?

Broadly speaking, a convention involves normative or typical behavior. It is, for example, typical to wear shoes to school, and, therefore, accurate to say that it is conventional to wear footwear to school. Conventions may be formal or informal. Formal conventions take the form of rules (e.g., in a home or game), laws, traditions, and morals. These might be viewed as explicit conventions because they are articulated and shared. Informal conventions are apparent in conventional tendencies such as fashion and fads. These often influence what people do, and because many people do them (e.g., cut their hair a particular way), they are conventions. These might be considered implicit conventions, however, because sometimes we know what other people are doing but we do not really talk about it or formalize it. In fact, it is tempting to tie this idea of informal conventions to the concept of zeitgeist (the “spirit of the times”)—both occur without laws and articulated rules—but I will leave that for the chapter devoted to history and creativity.

Conventions define culture. They also direct thinking toward normative behavior, which means that they constrain thinking and can easily inhibit creativity. Conventions are, after all, indicative of something about which there is a consensus; creativity, on the other hand, requires originality, self-expression (not group expression), and unconventional thought or action. Conventions can be quite useful, but they can also mislead the individual, at least if accepted without being closely evaluated.

Kohlberg’s (1987) theory of development describes young children in a preconventional stage. It is preconventional in that the children have yet to develop the thinking that allows them to understand and use conventions. Not only are they unaware of what is conventional (and therefore unable to conform to those conventions and the related expectations), but they also are incapable of thinking in a conventional fashion. Eventually the child (or preadolescent) enters the conventional stage. The youth now knows many conventions, often knows what is expected by others, and gives great weight to conventional and therefore typical normative behaviors. They often take this to the extreme. Such hyperconventionality is the easiest to see in the preadolescent’s or adolescent’s sensitivity to “what my friends are doing.” Peer pressure is seemingly all-important in the conventional stage of development. With the right experiences the individual will develop postconventional thinking and at that point use conventions only as one source of information. The postconventional individual also thinks for him- or herself.

Certain kinds of creativity require postconventional capacities. This is especially true of creative products and discoveries that contribute to a formal field of study. A creative scientist, for example, is probably aware of existing scientific theories (and thus aware of what is conventional in his or her field), but also breaks away or extends the field by thinking in a postconventional and independent fashion. Even...