How Creatives Define Creativity: Definitions Reflect Different Types of Creativity

The studies reported here investigate whether artists who face strong external constraints in their creative work differ in their conceptions of creativity from artists who are free in their choice of topics and materials, time schedule, and so on. Sixty-four artists from different domains within the pictorial arts gave free definitions of creativity and rated the salience of product and person attributes for their personal definitions of creativity. Forty-seven psychology students were included as a control group. Content analyses of the free definitions and quantitative analyses of the salience ratings both showed systematic differences between the "free" artists (e.g., painters or sculptors), the artists in more constrained professions (e.g., architects or designers), and the students of psychology. The only aspect that all groups agreed on was that a creative person should have many ideas. We found differences, for example, regarding the importance of function for a creative product, or regarding the importance of the ability to solve problems for a creative person. Also, psychology students tended to emphasize positive feelings evoked by creative activities, whereas both groups of artists often referred to creativity as hard work.