THE CREATIVITY CONCEPT - 3

This is the third post regarding the evolution of the creativity concept, a project of Mindshake.

After a first approach from the psychological research perspective, last week I introduced the systemic perspective of creativity, which today will be augmented by the Creativity Model of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a Hungarian-American psychologist and recognised creativity researcher.

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THE EVOLUTION OF THE CREATIVITY CONCEPT

Part 3: the systemic Creativity Model of Csikszentmihalyi

According to Csikszentmihalyi, creativity arises from the interaction of three elements, which together form a system: 1. a culture that includes symbolic rules, 2. the individual who brings something new into a symbolic domain, and 3. a field of experts who acknowledge and confirm this innovation. The result is the transformation of a symbolic domain of culture: “What we call creativity always involves a change in a symbolic system, a change that in turn will affect the thoughts and feelings of the members of the culture“ (Csikszentmihalyi 2004: 316). Thus, if thoughts, knowledge, values, emotions, or actions of people in a cultural community are not changed, according to Csikszentmihalyi it is not a creative achievement. In this context, this psychologist refers to a culture as a system of connected domains. Each culture consists of different domains and also differs in its hierarchical recognition. This changes over time.

By DOMAIN, Csikszentmihalyi understands a special subject such as Food would be, and which could be further subdivided into the domains of Traditional Food, Street Food, Gourmet, etc. Each domain is rooted in a culture in which symbolic knowledge is shared by a particular group. According to Csikszentmihalyi, the domain is a necessary component of creativity, since one can not create new variants without referring to existing ones. “New” arises only on the basis or in comparison to “old”, only the deviation of rules and tradition makes originality apparent. 

Another component of creativity, according to Csikszentmihalyi (2003), is the FIELD, for which he counts all persons who supervise access to the domain. In terms of Food, the field would consist of chefs, restaurant owners, specialist journalists and other critics in the culinary field. It is this field that decides which new food concept or recipe is recognised as innovative and worth commenting, recommending and being remembered. 

The INDIVIDUAL, the third component of Csikszentmihalyi’s creative system, is therefore only creative when s/he develops a new idea or a new product from the symbols of an existing domain, and when this new development is selected from the corresponding field and added to the domain. The definition that derives from this approach is the following: Creativity enables a system (human, group, organisation, society) to create something that alters an existing domain or even establishes a new one.

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Next week I will explain which kinds of systemic blockages of creativity exist, and in two weeks I will share the conclusions of Csikszentmihalyi’s systemic creativity perspective. Stay tuned!

Source: Tschimmel, K. (2019). The evolution of the Creativity Concept: from a psychological to a systemic approach. In The Creativity Virus. Porto: Ed. Mindshake.

Bibliographical references of this text are:

CSIKSZENTMIHALYI, M. (2003). Kreativit?t. Wie Sie das Unm?gliche schaffen und Ihre Grenzen überwinden. 6th Ed. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta [orig. Creativity. Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, 1996]. 

CSIKSZENTMIHALYI, M. (2004). “Implications of a Systems Perspective for the Study of Creativity”. In Sternberg, R. J. (Ed.). Handbook of Creativity. Cambridge University Press. pp. 313-335. [1st Ed. 1999].