In Pursuit of Everyday Creativity

Teresa M. Amabile

Article | Journal of Creative Behavior

In Pursuit of Everyday Creativity

Abstract

Creativity researchers have long paid careful attention to individual creativity, beginning with studies of well-known geniuses and expanding to personality, biographical, cognitive, and social-psychological studies of individual creative behavior. Little is known, however, about the everyday psychological experience and associated creative behavior in the life and work of ordinary individuals. Yet evidence is mounting that such individuals can be responsible for important instances of creativity and innovation in the world: open innovation, user innovation, and citizen innovation. Research into this phenomenon could do much to advance the study and practice of creativity.

Keywords: Creativity; Behavior; Innovation and Invention;

Format: Print

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Citation:

Amabile, Teresa M. "In Pursuit of Everyday Creativity." Journal of Creative Behavior 51, no. 4 (December 2017): 335–337.

In recent years, progress has been made toward AI Creativity, which I define as the production of highly novel, yet appropriate, ideas, problem solutions, or other outputs by autonomous machines. I argue that organizational researchers of creativity and innovation should invest significant energy in studying artificial intelligence and computer-assisted human intelligence, the ways in which they might yield creative breakthroughs, and how those innovations might impact—and be impacted by—workers, consumers, organizations, and society.

Over time, the field of creativity research has seen a gradual shift away from an almost exclusive emphasis on the creative person towards a more balanced inquiry that centers both on individual difference issues and questions about the nature of creative products and the conditions that facilitate the creation of those products. The consensual assessment technique (CAT) allows for the assessment of the relative creativity of products and is based on the assumption that a panel of independent raters, persons who have not had the opportunity to confer with one another and who have not been trained by the researcher, are best able to make such judgments. Over 40 years of research have clearly established that product creativity can be reliably and validly assessed based on the consensus of experts. Although creativity in a product may be difficult to characterize in terms of specific features, it is something that people can recognize and agree upon when they see it.

There have been dozens of high-profile mass shootings in recent decades. This paper presents three main findings about the impact of mass shootings on gun policy. First, mass shootings evoke large policy responses. A single mass shooting leads to a 15% increase in the number of firearm bills introduced within a state in the year after a mass shooting. This effect increases with the extent of media coverage. Second, mass shootings account for a small portion of all gun deaths but have an outsized influence relative to other homicides. Third, when looking at bills that were actually enacted into law, the impact of mass shootings depends on the party in power. The annual number of laws that loosen gun restrictions doubles in the year following a mass shooting in states with Republican-controlled legislatures. We find no significant effect of mass shootings on laws enacted when there is a Democrat-controlled legislature, nor do we find a significant effect of mass shootings on the enactment of laws that tighten gun restrictions.

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In Pursuit of Everyday Creativity

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