Creativity is often misunderstood as being too ephemeral and subjective for legitimate investigation. Used colloquially to represent innovative, “out-of-the-box” thinking, creativity is one of the most coveted skills in the present century. Rooted in our evolutionary past, creative thought and action facilitated early adaptations. Therefore, creativity, as conceptualized by researchers, comprises original and task-appropriate or useful behaviors. If an action is original but not useful, it is not creative (think of a monkey placed in front of a keyboard that produces completely novel but garbled text), and vice versa.
Creativity can be considered to be universal, in that all human beings have the capacity for creative thought. The Four C model presents a developmental trajectory of creativity, beginning with mini-c (tiny innovations that help you learn about novelty, like creating a secret handshake) and little-c (everyday creativity like making a new dish from leftovers). Thereafter, some progress to Pro-c (attaining professional recognition and expertise in a creative field), and, finally, a few geniuses make it to the Big-C category (reserved for those displaying eminence in their domains). For instance, some individuals turned to creative activities to make sense of the pandemic and how to cope with national lockdowns.
However, the manifestation of creativity is likely to be mediated by various contextual factors including, but not limited to, culture. In addition to novelty and usefulness, creative acts need to be perceived as such, via social consensus. In other words, gatekeepers across creative domains determine what is and what is not creative. For instance, consider scientific creativity: gatekeepers here would be peer reviewers, editors, colleagues, collaborators, and the like. In artistic creativity, gatekeepers could be art critics, museum curators, professional contemporaries, and other individuals who have the authority to give a stamp of approval to the creative product (and its underlying process). Such social consensus and tolerance for creativity is likely to vary across cultures, owing to the fact that creative endeavors are often counter-normative, representing deviance.
Culture influences creativity in four ways: its definition, the process or means by which it occurs, the domains it is likely to influence, and the degree to which it is nurtured. Creativity has also been studied in relation to individualism and collectivism (you can read more about these cultural dimensions here). Cultures, or people with individualistic cultural orientations, focus on the self above others, whereas collectivistic cultures and individuals value one’s social group and community over themselves. In the context of creativity, it has been proposed that Eastern cultures value the usefulness of ideas more than originality, the latter being valued by Western cultures. This may be because of the importance placed on nurturing individual talents in individualistic cultures, whereas collectivistic ones tend to discourage standing apart from the group.
Implicit conceptions of creativity also differ across cultures: perceptions by Chinese (Eastern) participants align with aspects like social contributions of creativity, whereas those by American (Western) participants tend to focus on personal successes that can be achieved via creative acts. More broadly, research has also identified an implicit bias against creative solutions, valuing practicality above originality; that said, whether this implicit bias is mediated by culture is yet to be investigated.
In addition, power distance is another dimension along which creativity differs across cultural orientations. Low power distance is associated with cultures where hierarchical norms are lenient; they are flatter societies so to speak, with more egalitarian social structures. In contrast, cultures with high power distance accept and expect a stringent social order with inequality among persons in positions of authority. Creativity is more likely to be fostered in the former than in the latter, owing to repercussions associated with norm violation—cultures that do not adhere to strict hierarchies are more likely to allow deviation (in this case original ideas) from any actor regardless of social position. Therefore, it is likely that individuals from high power distance cultures (some Eastern cultures) may place a higher value on the task-appropriateness of creative ideas, rather than originality, to emphasize the acceptability of novel ideas.
Another cultural dimension of relevance is uncertainty avoidance, also related to the individual-level characteristic of ambiguity tolerance. Cultures and individuals who tend to avoid uncertainty may be less willing to take risks and less comfortable with unstructured situations. In contrast, low uncertainty avoidance has been related to higher original thinking and engagement in creative pursuits.
In the most creative countries, a trend of above-average individualism, average uncertainty avoidance (except Denmark), and slightly below-average power distance (except New Zealand and Denmark) is observed. Indicative of the cultural precedents of creativity, these trends help contextualize the creative process. This can further contribute to advancing global creativity.
Often, creative solutions disrupt the status quo. Some cultures (national or otherwise) tend to be more comfortable with such disruptions as compared to others. Analogically, organizations within creative industries like advertising or design may encourage originality, as opposed to more conventional fields, like finance, where creative accounting could end up being inappropriate, if not illegal. Therefore, whether contexts are conducive for the emergence of creative ideation depends on the composition of the group where such ideas will be presented and discussed. After all, an idea cannot be creative until someone says it is.
Hansika Kapoor
First Featured in: Psychology Today (29/10/2021)
