(9) Creativity and Cultural Evolution

Question 1

Unifying Creativity and Cultural Evolution

Answer 1

Creativity has a theory of variation, but no theory of transmission.

Cultural evolution has a theory of selection, but minimal theory of variation.

Question 2

Divergent Thinking (and critiques)

Answer 2

Creativity measured based on the generation of novel ideas.

Critiques:
- Generation is not sufficient. They need to be adopted to have impact.
- Things that are the most creative won’t be adopted by consumers.
- Ignores culture, functions, implementations, and the phases of creative process.

Question 3

Gatekeepers

Answer 3

Entities that prevent creators from releasing their creations en-masse. They have a significant impact on the adoptability of creative products.

ie. publishers, scientific journals, regulators.

Question 4

Creativity vs. Innovation

Answer 4

Creativity – Individual, Psychology
Innovation – Group, Organization, Culture

[Innovation is institutionalized. People are embedded in institutions as they do their creative work.]

Question 5

Brown’s Creativity (4 Tenants)

Answer 5

• Every creator works in a domain.
• Their education is about learning the key creative products of their domain.
• Their work is inspired by the works of others in their field.
• Most creativity is an incremental modification of existing products. (Cumulative Culture!)

Question 6

Incremental Changes…

Answer 6

Permit a balance between tradition and innovation. Thus, they are highly adoptable.

Question 7

Creativity vs. Emulation

Answer 7

Creativity is grounded in copying and modifying, they build off of what came before.

In most cases of creativity, we are not copying the process, but the end product.

So creativity is emulation, not imitation.

Question 8

Creativity and Blending

Answer 8

Also called recombination or hybridization. Blending is a major mechanism of creativity that can combine features from across domains/cultures/both!

Question 9

Mechanisms of Creativity

Answer 9

• Modification = exploratory creativity
• Blending = combinatorial creativity
• Radical innovation = transformative creativity

Question 10

Phases of Creative Work

Answer 10

1. Conception (generation of ideas, variation)
2. Idea development (exploration, selection)
3. Production
4. Completion

Question 11

P-Creativity vs. H-Creativity

Answer 11

P-Creativity: psychological creativity, individual inventor experience
H-Creativity: historical creativity, out in greater society, adopted and transmitted

Question 12

What is innovation constrained by?

Answer 12

• Low motivation
• Neophobia
• Functional fixedness
• Pedagogy

Question 13

Pedagogy is…

Answer 13

A double-edged sword.
- Education is an enabler of creativity.
- It is also an inhibitor of creativity, as it is difficult to separate yourself from what you’ve already learned.

Question 14

Goal Emulation

Answer 14

Reproducing a model’s output using a different method.

Question 15

Innovation requires…

Answer 15

Novelty and Usefulness

Question 16

Adoptability

Answer 16

Creative ideas must be adopted to have an impact. Thus, they must be learnable by others.

Question 17

Mini-C vs. Pro-C Creativity

Answer 17

Mini-C: stumbling upon a connection during your personal living process
Pro-C: not a genius, but you operate in the domain for a living

Question 18

Rate of Innovation

Answer 18

• Accelerates in difficult or variable environments.
• Slows down in more stable or benign environments.
• Larger population = higher rates of innovation.