Can You Tell Creativity Fact from Fiction?

Take this researcher-developed quiz to find out.

Listed below are a dozen statements about the nature and practice of creativity. Can you tell which ones are false and which ones are true—that is, which ones are supported by scientific evidence, and which ones are not?

1. Creative accomplishments are usually the result of a sudden inspiration.

2. Creativity tends to be a solitary activity.

3. Creative ideas are typically based on remembered information that is combined in new ways.

4. Children are more creative than adults.

5. When stuck on a problem, it is helpful to continue working on it after taking a break.

6. People get more creative ideas under the influence of alcohol or marijuana.

7. Achieving a creative breakthrough in a domain (i.e. publishing a successful novel) typically requires at least 10 years of deliberate practice and work.

8. Creative thinking mostly happens in the right hemisphere of the brain.

9. One is most creative when with total freedom in one’s actions.

10. The first idea someone has is often not the best one.

11. Long-term schooling has a negative impact on the creativity of children.

12. Positive moods help people get creative ideas.

Here’s the answer key—how did you do?

1-False; 2-False; 3-True; 4-False; 5-True; 6-False; 7-True; 8-False; 9-False; 10-True; 11-False; 12-True.

These statements were among a number of claims about creativity presented to more than a thousand people by University of Connecticut professor James Kaufman and his collaborators. The results of their inquiry, published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences in 2021, “revealed persistent, widespread biases in the public conception of creativity,” the researchers wrote.

Why does this matter? If many of us are misinformed about creativity, it’s likely that creativity will not be taught or practiced effectively. Reviewing people’s answers to the creativity myths and facts questionnaire they put together, Kaufman and his coauthors identified five common beliefs that may be preventing many of us from being as creative as we could be. 

Belief #1: Creativity is a transcendent mystery. In fact, research demonstrates that creativity is the “extraordinary result of ordinary processes,” such as memory and attention (in the words of psychologists Robert Sternberg and Todd Lubart).

Belief #2: Creativity is a rare capacity expressed mainly through the arts. In fact, creativity is very common and found in every kind of human activity. We can be emotionally creative, for example (the subject of a future Science of Creativity post).

Belief #3: Creativity is uncontrollable, the product of spontaneous inspiration. In fact, research increasingly highlights the strategic and controllable aspects of creative cognition.

Belief #4: Creativity is the product of a naive and childlike way of approaching the world. In fact, research has repeatedly documented the crucial role of persistence and expertise in the development of creativity. (Kaufman et al. note: “Evidence highlights the importance of education for the development of cognitive abilities and of extensive training to acquire domain-specific skills necessary for making important creative contributions to a field.”)

Belief #5: Creativity is best practiced in a setting free of rules and constraints. In fact, research has found that creativity is usually an ingenious and resourceful response to situational constraints (e.g., making dinner with what’s already in your cupboard). 

In many of our minds, the image that has come to be associated with creativity is one of a shaggy-haired, wild-eyed genius, childlike in his uninhibited acts of inspired creation. But scientific research on creativity paints a very different picture.

There we see reflected back at us a vision of everyday creators, who make new things by drawing on human capacities that have been patiently cultivated and practiced—a vision of people a lot like you and me.

Which of the creativity myths and facts do you believe, or reject?