New Study Reveals Similar Creative Process For Artists, Engineers And Scientists

A new study on creative similarities between fine arts and STEM

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Intuitively, it seems different creative processes are involved in composing a sonnet and designing a circuit board. But a study published this month in the journalThinking, Skills and Creativity suggests creative processes are more general across domains and disciplines. While poets and engineers may create two very different kinds of work with very different intentions and outcomes, the process they use to get there appears quite similar. 

“We've understood for a long time that there are differences in how creativity manifests itself in art and how it manifests in other disciplines like engineering or science,” says creativity and innovation researcher David Cropley who co-authored the study. “The new bit of finding is that those differences are actually pretty small and small enough that I would argue they don't really make a heck of a lot of difference.”

In 2020, the World Economic Forum (WEF) called creativity “the one skill that will future-proof you for the jobs market.” In an interview with Andria Zafirakou, The WEF cited the Global Teacher Prize winner as saying, “Creativity should be embedded into absolutely every aspect of our curriculums. At all ages.” 

The study’s findings support Zafirakou and WEF’s recommendations. Education needs to foster creativity and, according to Cropley, “Create an environment where children feel safe to take some risks and not embarrass themselves, where they don't get punished for a wrong answer, but they're encouraged to try new things and be open to new ideas.” Instead of asking what’s two plus two, a teacher or parent might ask how many different ways can children get to the answer? Then encourage children to say that, while it could be two plus two, it could also be three plus one, or seven minus three or the square root of two. “There are situations where you can ask open-ended questions that encourage the idea of many possible answers.”

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The study

In the survey-based study that included a series of psychological tasks, the subjects were 2277 German undergraduate students (1052 females and 1225 males) between 17 and 37 years of age. The students enrolled in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) courses totaled 2147. The remaining 130 students were enrolled in fine arts/graphics, textile design, performing arts/stage art/direction, theatre, music, sculpting, and painting courses. 

The study measured Personality, an individual’s self-assessment of creative self-efficacy; Process, or generating ideas via divergent thinking to solve a particular problem like how to improve public transit; and Product where subjects had to rate a solution for its originality, feasibility, and effectiveness.

The results showed slight differences in personality and creative processes. “We found that in relation to personality and thinking styles, there's really not that big a difference between artists and engineers.” But once you drill down into how those in different STEM micro-domains evaluate their own work, divergence starts to emerge. “Certain kinds of engineers place particular emphasis on effectiveness, whereas other disciplines place more emphasis on novelty as the key to creativity,” says Cropley. The study did not look at the differences across the arts.

Challenges in creativity studies 

For all our shortcomings, art and science are two enterprises that have defined human exceptionalism. And yet creativity is one of the most difficult areas to investigate using the scientific method; turning the observer onto itself and then applying an analytic and highly critical process to a cognitive faculty that is largely dependent on freewheeling inspiration and flow. 

Is creativity about problem-solving?

Cropley designs his studies based on what he considers a universal characteristic of creativity: creativity is about problem-solving. A former engineer, Cropley’s collaboration with psychologists in the study of creativity has spanned over 20 years. For him, a major part of creativity is making sure that what you’re creating is effective. This popular, functional definition of creativity extends beyond the process and includes how a work is received. Cropley also takes a definitive position on a centuries-old philosophical debate about aesthetics: is something creative (is something art) if no one ever sees it? According to Cropley the answer is yes, because something counts as problem-solving if it allows you to express yourself, even if no one else ever sees it. 

Embedded in the assumption of many standard creativity tests is a definition of creativity that does not include problem-solving in the traditional sense. Common creativity tests present you with an object, like a rubber band, and ask how many uses you can think of for the rubber band. You then list all the possible uses. This kind of question is exclusionary for Cropley and other creatives in STEM because “that's kind of back to front. It's looking at a solution and trying to identify problems.” Cropley points out that engineers don't go to work each day, put a brick on the table and ask, what can we do with this brick? That’s not how the creative process works for creatives in STEM. “It's the other way around. We start with the problem and try to come up with many possible solutions.” 

Does identity influence creativity?

Another challenge to studying creativity is whether the mere act of subjects self-identifying as artists versus scientists or engineers on creativity tests changes how subjects self-report about their creative process in a way that doesn’t necessarily reflect real-world creative practices. Cropley acknowledges that he can’t rule out some version of the stereotype threat, where a person is asked to self-identify and then becomes consciously or unconsciously influenced by the idea of conforming to a stereotype. Cropley hopes that with such a large sample size, these kinds of biases and effects are filtered out.

Big-C versus everyday creativity

Creativity researchers James Kaufman and Ronald Beghetto developed a widely used model of creativity called the Four C Model, in which creativity is broken down into four categories. Mini-c creativity is interpretive and occurs when you’re learning something new and meaningful. Little-c creativity is an everyday expression of creativity like inventing a new recipe. Pro-c creativity is creativity expressed by professionals when they demonstrate expertise in their fields. Big-C creativity is a category reserved for the world’s great artists and innovators and the world’s greatest works. 

Cropley reined in the scope of his study to exclude big-C creativity. But he also challenges the notion that artists create big-C works without concerning themselves with how their work is received. “The artist doesn't paint a picture in the hope that people will hate it,” Cropley shrugs. “A writer writes a novel, of course, not just to embody a new idea, but because they want people to read it, and experience it, and respond favorably.” A pragmatic definition of creativity may inadvertently tilt this type of study and the subsequent recommendations in a way that excludes the value of creativity-for-its-own-sake. Form over function is the kind of creativity routinely observed in children or the kind described by so many artists who claim no attachment to results. Or perhaps a background in engineering, where the worth of what you create is determined by its utility to others, allows for a certain degree of honesty. A definition of creativity that includes how a work is received may more accurately represent the less lofty, but very real, very human, very socially motivated definition of creativity that no doubt drives many big-C creatives.

The reliability of self-reporting

As a general rule in science, survey-based studies are considered a less precise means of measurement. How we think about a process, how we think about ourselves, and how we think about ourselves in relation to that process, and then how we self-report on all of it, are all factors that make us unreliable narrators about our subjective experience in a way that may influence a scientific study. These challenges have pulled at the threads of so-called “soft science” during the replication crisis. And yet there are few other tools at the disposal of those who want to observe and measure a subjective experience of a psychological process like creativity; an experience and process that often distorts or dissipates under analytic scrutiny.

Why aren’t we more creative about how we investigate creativity?

If creativity is “the one skill that will future-proof you for the jobs market,” if creativity is about problem-solving, and if the replication crisis has specifically called out “soft sciences” like psychology, one of the only sciences that truly investigates this important skill, then one of the most urgent problems for creatives in STEM is to develop a new set of criteria and measurement to investigate creativity. Ultimately, we may need better tools to explore some of the greatest features of our humanity. And this may require a big-C, genius-level creative breakthrough.

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