James C. Kaufman || The Psychology of Creativity

listening and enjoy the podcast. Now, I'm really excited to be speaking with my brother from another mother, James C. Kaufman. Doctor Kaufman is a professor of Educational psychology at the NIAG School of Education at the University of Connecticut. Before that, he was at California State University at San Bernardino, where he founded the Learning Research Institute. He received his PhD from Yale University and Cognitive Psychology in two thousand and one.

Kaufman is an international leader in the field of creativity, known for his research in such areas as everyday creativity, creativity assessment, creativity, fairness and creativity, and mental health. And just as a personal note to set up this podcast, James has been one of my most important mentors in my life and I'm deeply grateful for him for that, as well as for being on the show today. Thanks James for being here. It is my pleasure, Scott, absolute pleasure. Man.

We go way back. We go way back, don't we. I know it's a marker to me getting older, yes, and the old me too. But how many years of these friends? Which is awesome though. What has been a thrill to see you go from a grad student to one of the world experts and spokespeople for creativity, intelligence, giftedness. Thanks James. I mean I remember my first year in grad school. Robert Scherberg, my advisor. We're talking and he's

like another Kaufman. He's like, you know, I had a student James Kaufman who's a amazing and you remind me so much of him. You need to talk to him. And I called you. I asked if I could have a call with you, And in that very first call we've ever had with each other, you say, Hey, Scott, do you want to do a book? And we had like a book proposal plan for the psychology of creative

writing right after that phone call. I think it's because you know, we're both interested in writing and creative writing in particular and plays, and we had so many mutual interests. That was fun. That was a lot of fun. That was That was one of the more fun books I've done as an edited book, Me Too, Me Too? We should do like a reprint edition that of Cambridge stresses up for that. A college of creative writing this time

is personal. I like that. I like that. Well, now you do creative writing yourself, and you know a lot of guests I start off talking about their research or their thinking and ideas, but I want to start by asking, you know, tell us a little bit about your history in terms of play writing. Absolutely. I mean, the whole reason I got into creativity research in the first place

is that I wanted to be a creative writer. And when I was an undergrad, I had two dual mentors, one in psychology, which was the very much missed legendary John Horne, but equally in creative writing. I worked with keik Raguson Boyle, who's a novelist who's done over twenty novels, The Road to Wellville, Georg J. Curtin, and I was as research assistant and he would read my stories. And I was not good enough to be a creative writer, particularly not with fiction, but I went into plays, and

I wrote plays all throughout grad school. Was very very lucky, saw them performed all sorts of places, and then did a musical which just this past more than a year ago, was actually performed at Off Broadway Festival, and I got to see it and that got me writing again. And I've been finishing up a new play kind of a very very modified version of that called Aftertaste and Wellsville. I'm play called I know what it was, but you

should tell people. Oh, the musical was called Discovering Magenta. Yea, what is it about? It was about a mental health worker who falls in love with a catatonic patient and tries to help her escape the demons of her path. That's cool. So the reception of that inspired you to do this new version of it, is that right? I would say it got me thinking with that magical part of my brain that isn't actually a part of your brain,

and it got me having ideas again. And so first drastically, I mean it's virtually a different story, and then planning another one. And it's just kind of along with getting to get back to work with some theater people in terms of actually more about creativity. You know, has really kind of brought that part of me a little bit more to life. Again, that's wonderful news. Okay, so you were a playwright before you were a creativity researcher. Is that fair to say? Oh? Yeah, so what got you

interested in creativity research? So what was your introduction to that world? I began just as a grad student and cognitive psych having no idea what I wanted to do. Having no idea, I mean, I was basically getting my PhD because I wasn't good enough to try to make it as a creative writer. And it was better than working.

But after two years of floundering and not finding my passion, I was trying to figure out, like, okay, we had to do a second master's That was a big lit review piece, which I'm sure that you remember also, And I kept thinking, well, what do I want to do it on? And I came back to well, all my

life I'd been a creative writer. I mean I worked as a journalist in high school, writing sports for the local paper, wrote very unsuccessful fiction, wrote even more in successful poetry, and then plays and lyrics, and I thought I would do it on creative writers. And I met with my advisor, Bob Sternberg, who we share that, and he gave me a list okay here six books, and

I read those books, got hooked. Ended up going and reading like every journal I could find about creativity, and I was hooked, And throughout grad school did work on

creative writing creative writers. So throughout graduate school I began doing work on creative writers kind of stumbled into the Sylvia Plath effect, which was this kind of odd little study that female poets are more likely than any other type of creative writer, or E meant creative woman to suffer from mental illness, which at one point got an absurd amount of press that it did not warrant, and generally just began fall in love with every aspect of creativity.

It's not like you weren't exposed to psychology at all. To that point. Your father and mother and mother are kind of legends in the field of intelligence testing. It was a very interesting childhood. So my parents did they give you when you were younger? He demoed items. They both demote items. I mean, so my parents are are Alan and Adine Kaufman, and they've done all the Kaufman tests, and I think probably the coolest part was. I mean, I went to you know, APA meetings as a kid.

My dad taught me factor analysis using baseball statistics when I was in high school, and my mom would edit my stories back when I was writing stories, going through word for word, you know. And in this level of I mean basically exposure to both the information but also the passion, and also people who spent a lot of time helping out my work and shaping my voice and ideas.

I mean, I was treated like an adult in many ways, and it was kind of an amazing advantage, probably a very unfair one, but it meant that once I found that ding in psychology that I actually loved, I was able to bring a lot of other stuff to it. That's great. Yeah, I mean, the intelligence field is clearly different than the creativity field. But so what were your parents' reaction when you said, Hey, I'm studying creativity now. Oh?

They were thrilled. They've always been beyond supportive. I mean when I went to Yale and work with Bob Stenbert, he was a big critic of my parents' work, and they had no problem whatsoever. They were thrilled about it. It's funny. One story I remember from childhood that kind of foreshadowed some of this stuff I do. Is my dad was showing me an item where it was meant to be a simple counting on it, and there were four very big boxes on a table that had the

number one hundred on them. There were five small boxes that have the number ten, and then there were six pencils. And what you were supposed to do would say, oh, four hundred plus fifty plus six is four hundred and fifty six. There are four hundred and fifty six pencils on the table. I looked at it, and I said, there are six pencils on the table plus nine boxes. But we don't know where to know those boxes. And

my dad realized it wasn't a good item. But I also realized that there's a whole lot of the stuff that can go into test performance, and that often people who maybe more creative or of course pains in the ass get penalized. They do tend to go together. They do tend to go together. As much as we complain about negative views and perceptions and leafs about creativity, I'm a bit I mean root in reality, I was a

pain in the ass still am. Well, you know, what you're creative, I try, So what does that unpack that for me? What is the pain in the ass aspect of creativity that you're referring to, and can it be operationalized and measured? I think that. I mean, I'm not talking necessarily about the creativity mental illness link, which I

think is largely overstated. I mean, there are some overlapping concepts, but I think it's said creative people, you know, they tend to be curious, They tend to want to try things. They tend to not be satisfied by the pat answer is designed to get kids to be quiet. They tend to be the ones who are more look at the

challenge authority or be provocative. And you know, there are sometimes when that's a wonderful thing and it's clearly somebody being creative and exploring in there are times when it's annoying because sometimes you don't want to have to explain why you're asking somebody to do something or why you need a childhood let's say, be quiet for ten minutes. So it goes both with it does? It definitely does.

And I mean you've talked before about why context matters for creativity and talk a little bit about that theory about why you know there are times to be creative in the air times not to create. Don't you have a theory about this? I do with Ron bi Ghetto, we kind of developed this concept of creative medic cognition, where some of it is very standard metacognitive stuff. In other words, do you know what you're good at and

bad at in creativity? But the other part, which I find even more interesting is do you know when to be creative and when to keep it to yourself? Can you tell the situations that this may not be the best time to express my creativity, or this may be a time when the teacher wants to communicate this particular bit of information, and me asking questions or tossing out ideas, maybe I should hold back and write them down and

remember them for a different time. Or maybe this is a person who won't appreciate my ideas, and that I think that a lot of the negative feelings that some people may have about creative kids or creative workers, even if they don't know they have them, maybe less about people who are creative and more about people who are creative at the wrong times and in the wrong ways. I mean, if you're a teacher and you have thirty

thirty five kids to tend to. You might be willing to spend more time on the creative, interesting kid, but you can't spend ten times the amount of time and a kid who's always asking questions, a kid who is challenging and questioning what you're saying. From a pure level, that's wonderful. From a realistic level, it's effort, it's time, and people often like taking the path of least resistance and not wanting to spend extra time on their job, that's for sure. Well, how does this relate to the

American idol effect or the idol effect? The American idol effect? And most of the empirical work I've done on this stuff is in essence, looking are people accurate at judging their creativity? They're metacreativity, they're metacreativity and in general not particularly they can do it. So the studies have been

rightly inconsistent. To be honest, We've done some studies where we found, wow, you know, these kids are no more likely than chance to understand their own creativity, and other ones where they're not accurate but at least show some insight over you know rating their own performance. I feel like we need to do the next step of just in depth. Well, okay, what are the personality traits, what are the cognitive patterns of strengths, what types of creativity?

And when we know some of this? But I feel like before we can make any real yes, these people can understand their creativity. These people need to work on it. We need more research. But I think it's so important because creativity is time and resources. And if you're creative and you don't know what your best or most creative thing or project is, then you spend time on the wrong stuff, and you abandon things that maybe shouldn't be abandoned, and you go down rabbit holes that maybe you're the

only one who cares about. That's all true. You have me thinking though about this research you've done on the link between creativity and mental illness. I want to discuss is it ever beneficial to be deluded, you know, to like think that you are immensely creative when you're not, because that delusion in itself may make you more creative. I don't think the delusion would make you more creative. I think it might make you persist more, which can

be a good thing. I also think if you think you're more creative than you are and it makes you happy and you're not hurting anybody, there's nothing wrong with that. I think that people don't like to recognize that most things are just hard work. I think it's why the studies on creativity that often make the news are the kind of Look. If you inhale cinnamon, you'll be more creative. If you work in a room that only has purple walls, you'll be more creative. If you have a messy desk,

you'll be more creative. Whether or not that's true. You're not creative because of the messy desk. You're not creative because you have depression or anxiety. It's just correlated if you want to be more creative. I mean, the biggest thing is the boring stuff, so to speak, which is, you know, if you want to be a writer, then you read, read, read, you write right right, you revise, you revise, you revise, and nobody wants to hear that. You know. That's a good point. So then what is

the link between creativity and mental illness? If there is one, I think it's been greatly overstated. I think that there's overlap. So Shelley Carson has kind of this beautiful shared vulnerabilities model where she talks about some very specific things like sensory leakage or novelty seeking or latent dishimbition. But I think that people who are creative geniuses, are they more or less likely mentally ill. I don't necessarily think so.

I think that people who are creative geniuses and who are mentally ill can build on that and expressed into

amazing things, but it's not becaust or mentally ill. I think that, if anything, if the mental illness is full blown and something where that's the dominant issue in their life, that would make it harder to be creative, because the same reason why it's hard to be creative when you were splitting headache, that it's something that your mind is focused on, and if you're sticking into a deep depression,

that takes cognitive resources and it's hard. I think on the everyday level, I mean, I think that creative people can be quirky. I think that they can be eccentric. I think that that can often be similar or be associated with things like lower level anxiety or things like slight skits to be hypomania. But my biggest concern about all this is that there is no causal wink. And so if somebody wants to be creative and they in any way feel that would be beneficial to be bipolar schizophrenic,

it's not that it doesn't. It's not something that we can be sought out that. I'm not trying to put any yp of stigma on mental health. I just wouldn't want somebody either to mimic unhealthy behaviors thinking this is how you become a creative artist. That you know, I want to feel like an artist, and so I'm going to torture myself or drink too much. This doesn't work

that way. And there's also all this wonderful work on creativity and positive mental health results that you know, engaging an art can help distract and make negative moods go away. Marie Fox Giard's work on post traumatic growth and creativity is amazing, and I think there's so much amazing, wonderful good stuff that comes out of creativity. I mean, one of the things that probably is most exciting that I'm working on right now is this whole creativity and social

justice concept. Oh, that's interesting. If we look for example, So the earlier stuff I've done has been on if we look at admissions, college admissions, gifted admission, the measures that are currently you, whether it's IQ tests, SAT tests, teacher recommendations, potentially they can show a great deal of bias.

This is not to say necessarily that IQ tests are biased becausts certain groups score lower than another, but that if we think of human cognition or the cognitive abilities that we need to succeed, IQ tests measure certain of these ability. Creativity, which is one such ability, as we know very well from our paper together, isn't really much on IQ tests. It's a little bit, but very very little.

It's not on SATs. And yet if you look at it, study after study is found that there are no differences, or if there are there tiny and sometimes they're a reverse way for creativity by ethnicity. That's interesting. You've done some good work on that on ethnic and racial different says on IQ tests versus creativity tests. What's the difference

between the two kinds of tests? What do you see differences in So consistently Caucasians and Asian Americans receive higher scores on most measures of IQ or academic achievement, and there are many, many, many reasons that this might be the case if you look at creativity. So, first off, most performance measures show no differences between Caucasians, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, et cetera. This just no difference.

If you look at self beliefs, African Americans are often higher than Caucasians. What this means is that, hey, we are choosing to use only the measures that show differences and we're not using the measures that don't show differences. That is bias. In addition, a lot of potential reasons of why certain groups do better or worse revolve around things like stereotype threat, where you don't want to confirm a negative belief in somebody else about your abilities. This

creates anxiety, cognitive load, and you do worse. If creativity could be a way of framing different tasks and of making it clear that look, this task, yes, it does involve cognitive ability, it also involves creativity, and if you look at the work, there are no differences and sometimes there are even opposite what the IQ tests show. This could be a way of reducing stereotype threat. Reducing these sources of test anxiety, which on so many levels would

increase fairness, increase equity. Then this is the stuff that I am getting this very very excited and passionate about. And I'm working with a couple of different colleagues and scholars to kind of just explore these intersection more. That's really exciting. Jameson how much of you talk to the College Board? I mean you worked the College board, didn't. You can tell me about that. ETS. They're alternate siblings. I mean, ETS does one thing. I think it does

it fine, but it's the whole. I have a whole Lucky Charms theory, which is that if you use something, many tests are developed the way that lucky charms advertise themselves. So you know part of this nutritious breakfast. Did you see the commercials and as a ball lucky charms, there's some bacon, a scrambled egg, and orange glass of juice, a glass of milk as a whole like buf fet some toast. But in real life we just have the lucky charms. So the s at for what they are.

If they were part of this nutritious breakfast, fine, I still don't love them, but fine, but they're used as the only thing or that in high school GPA, which has its own issues, and as a result, this thing that, okay, if you're talking about it is one piece of a larger puzzle. I can accept it. It becomes the entire puzzle. And that's my biggest problem. I mean, I did not love working at educational Testing service. I did not particularly

fit in. But for what they do, they do it as well as anybody else is going to do that who is still a business and focused on making money and has no instinctual reason to want change. It's the same thing for a lot of IQ tests. IQ tests are still primarily the same as they've been, not the newer ones. So there are the tests my parents developed. There are tests, for example by Jack Naglieri, and these tests are innovative and they've reduced differences. Tell me about that,

I do like your parents new tests. Can you tell me a little more about them, like, what's innovative about them? For your listeners? They don't know that, Oh yes, absolutely so. The standard IQ tests, the Exler tests are basically rooted in the idea of g or this general cognition, which is that all of cognitibility is in essence, this one day. This is a controversialish idea. And right now the works of tests ostensibly use crystallized and fluid which is so

crystallized intelligence is your required knowledge vocabulary? Can you do a math problem? Who is the second President of the United States? Fluid intelligence is solving a new problem. So this is a logic puzzle. This could be Okay, here's your brand new iPhone? Can you figure out how to use it? Can you figure out well, I used to use the example of programming your VCR, but that would now be crystallized. Can you figure out how to use

the latest version of Netflix or whatever? That's fluid. There's also within the larger which called the CHC framework, and one of the developers with John Horne, my undergraduate mentor, and see if crystallized intelligence is this acquired knowledge. Fluid intelligence is this novel problem solving. There's also this visual spatial ability. There's short term memory. There is long term memory, which doesn't mean what you were doing thirty years ago,

but more a little more recently than that. And the newest KBC used both the CHC theory and also the past model of planning attention simultaneous sequential. Okay, what that does without trying to borel listeners too much. It allows for an awful lot more information than is available on most like Q tests. I mean, what's some of the additional information that is provided on your parents at Q tests?

Sometimes it's how they do something. So for example, there's a subtest called spaces in places where you've shown pictures of and Frank or Santa Claus or George Washington or the Brooklyn Bridge or whatever not that, and you're asked to what is this and it's the same basic source of knowledge, but there's almost no differences by ethnicity, okay. Or a lot of it is to do more and more stuff nonverbally or to teach the child how to do something and then test them as opposed to just

testing them so it looks like can they learn? Can they adapt? It's also one thing that my dad is also known for. It is the idea of intelligent testing, which is you don't just look at one score, you look at a pattern, you look at what you observed testing the person. And it's this idea which actually is comparable to a lot of stuff that I care about also in that a test is a tool to hammer. It's not a deity you listen to and that right now, the Saks use that way. The Jerry is a use

that way. They're used not as a tool, but as as deity. I mean, you know, when I get applicants for people to work with me, it's the stupidest thing. We have to average a certain GRE score for our school. But that means I have people sing to coming to wanted to work with me, who may have published four or five articles, whether GR score isn't quite as high, so they actually prefer the student who's done less, but

as a higher GRE score, which is absurd. That's not using the GRE as a tool, it's using it as a boss as a deity. No, that's right. And your father's idea of intelligence testing has been really influential on my own thinking, and I wish all school psychologists were aware of it. I don't think even the majority in their training learn about the intelligent testing approach, and I don't know why not. I mean a lot of people are anti IQ, and there are some reasons better than others.

But the problem is that it's throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It's you know, IQ tests have these problems, so we're not going to use them all or learning anything about them, or we're just going to learn how to do the exler instead of well what can we learn or do better to make them be better? No? Absolutely,

Well thanks for explaining that. You know, there's something that's probably not as well known and it's not common knowledge, you know, so it's good information that you provided here. I've noticed that you've used the term, you know, like to have creativity. I mean, some people would come back to you and say, well, isn't everyone creative? And how would you respond to that person? Because you hear that a lot. You hear everyone is creative, you just have

to unleash it or something. I don't know, you know, you hear this stuff all the time. What's your thinking on that. One of the theories that also with Ron the Ghetto that we did was the idea of the four C. It looks at creativity is this developmental trajectory where you start with mini C or personal creativity, And that's anytime you try something new and get this insider make a metaphor. And so maybe you are trying to build a bookcase, or you're working, you know, you're modifying

a recipe. So it's nothing big, and maybe it's something that other people have already discovered it, but it's creative to you kind of like reruns and then little see or everyday creativity is when other people start agreeing, Yeah, that's creative. That's really good. And I like to think

of as a county fair creativity. You know, you go to the county fairs and look, there's somebody who's figured out how to deep fry a hostess ding dong, and there's somebody who made a birdhouse out of beer cans, and there's somebody who's you know, made a functioning sword out of paper mache, and you know, like, it's not creativity and it'll change the world. But it's creativity that people can enjoy, can you use and yeah, that's really cool.

And then if you keep plugging away, there's the idea of pro seed or expert creativity, and it's being a professional at your creative work. And that's I mean, it's when you know, done your put in all your time and you're an expert on something and you know probably you can make a living off of it, and it's work that is considered to be outstanding. You know that

it's and it can be again, any field. It could be a doctor who can creatively diagnose people, a lawyer who can creatively come up with a new argument for something. It can be I mean, it's more obvious to see in the arts, but it can be anywhere. And then finally, big C is this legendary creativity of Mozart and Beethoven and all that. And so if you ask can everybody be creative? Absolutely? The thing that people will often mix up is everybody can be a creative genius. Can everyone

be a crave genius? Probably not? Okay, Now I think everybody can a mini C. I think most people can be little Ce. Why not? Why not? I conceptualize big C. It is a type of creativity that lasts on for generation. There's a lot of reasons why things last and why things don't last. Sometimes it's luck, sometimes because something's that good. Sometimes it's because you know, somebody just found a cheaper

way of doing something and they got the credit. I mean, I'm sure that two hundred years from now people will assume Bill Gateson bent to the Internet. And I think it demands something in terms of commitment, effort, persistence, and ability and the right personality and approach. It requires so much, and I guess part of me is also a realist, you know that I don't like throwing out the word genius, you know, like I feel like if everybody's a genius,

then nobod's a genius. I think that being a creative genius is also kind of overrated. I mean, to be honest, I have no idea what I could be ridically accomplished. But I like to enjoy my life. So I like, you know, having two very very active boys and spending time with him sometimes all the time, spending time with my wife. I like having friends, I like having interests. I mean the kind of you know, I mean, Gardner often calls it like the the Devil's bargain or the

Faucian bargain. I'd rather enjoy life, you know. I mean, you can do everything right to want to be a genius and still not. And to me, I worry that too much focus on the desperate desire to become a creative genius, to be immortal, to you know, be brilliant. It comes at a cost, and not everybody can do it, and everybody wants to do it, and I worry that so much of the focus on how to be a

creative genius may not be necessarily the best focus. I mean, it should be there, but I think that a lot of this stuff more on kind of how to make creativity work for you? You You know, Yeah, fair enough? Oh, thank you for expressing that opinion. For what it's worth. I think your theory, your amusement park theory, is a genie theory. So for as far as I'm concerned, you're a genius, a creative genius. All would disagree with you,

but thank you. What do you say I started with many would disagree that I went most well, I don't think that. I think that's part of the problem is that I don't think a lot of people are aware of that theory. And you're not a self promoter. You know. I've known you for a really long time, and you're quite a modest individual who does really good work, and you probably could use to promote your theories a little

bit more. I was really blown away by your amusement park theory and the work you've done on domain specificity of creativity, like can you be a genius in more than one field? You know, there was one question can you be a genius? And then there's even a toubly hard question, which is can you be a genius in more than one field, or even a creative expert in or even a creative expert? So can you tell my listeners a little bit about the amusement park theory? And yeah,

just just talk about it. Of course, this was developed with John Behar, who was one of my early mentors and is still a very dear friend. We use the analogy of going to an amusement park. So let's say that you wake up and you decide I want to go to an amusement park. So the very first thing is that there's some basic stuff that no matter where you want to go, you have to have. You have to have money. Amusement parks aren't free. You have to have access to a wide unless you live next door

to an amusement park. You have to have the desire to want to go to an amusement park. And we equate this to if you want to be creative, there are certain basic things you have to be in an environment where creativity is at least tolerated, even if it's not nurtured. You have to have the very basic cogniti abilities to be able to articulate and express creativity. You have to have the basic motivation to want to be creative. If you don't want to be creative, you probably won't

be creative. And that doesn't matter what kind of creative. So once okay, you've decided an amusement park you want to go, then next thing is, okay, well what type of amusement park? I mean, there are some amusement parks that are mostly water based, you know, water slides and splashing, and then there are amusement parks that are more hardcore roller coasters that just scare the crap out of you.

And then there are amusement parks that are tied to a theme or a cartoon, so you know, whether it's Disneyland or Lego Land or other things that I would probably hate. Sesame place, and that's just a sesme place. We've probably had very different Sesame Place experience. I'll let you bring my boys there next time, okay, or your point taking. It's similarly with creativity. There are these broad areas.

We call them general thematic areas, but these very very broad you know, visual art, creative writing, more business, maybe it's more science or technology. I mean, the exact number of you know how many broad domains. I mean, there's this stuff that I been trying on successfully to figure out for the last ten years. But it's kind of, you know, broadly, I want to do something involving that.

So maybe you haven't figured out what you want to do, but you know, whatever it is, it's to involve the spoken word, or it'll involve music, or it will involve binging something out. And the next step then is domains. So let's say, okay, you've decided that you want to go to a cartoon or theme based park, and you consider all of it and you decide, okay, I want to go to sesame place, and that represents the next

level of decision or progress. And similarly, so maybe you know that you want it to be in the written word, and so you said all on that you know it's going to be. I want to be a creative writer. Now, once you're in sesame place, there's a lot to do. Then there's the little kiddie rides, there's going and meeting big Bird, there's going on the larger rides. There is getting food, there's chasing around your kids. There are still

all these decisions. And then similarly, of course, so you want to be a creative writer, okay, great, you want to be a poet, you want to write short stories, you want to write blogs, personal essays. Even within poetry, you want to do high KuPS, you want to do free verse sonnets. All these nuances or these kind of micro domains, and even at the micro domain level, there are different things associated with being creative in that domain. So even if you're comparing a poet versus a fiction writer,

they should be very similar. They are very similar in many areas, but there are still nu once. There are still personality differences or different patterns of cognitive strengths, or perhaps different motivations or thinking styles. There are still all

these different things. And so the reason why I think the topic of domains is important it comes down to the fact that every year, if people come to my office and say I'm not creative, and people think they're not creative because they're not creative in the larger thematic areas that society says is creative. So they can't play music or write music, they can't paint or draw, they

can't write creatively. But then these same people will have this amazing idea for a psychology experiment, or they'll have this amazing idea for how to develop a course curriculum that's creative. And so one of the biggest things to me that's an important kind of takeaway, is it creativity is so many different things that it's so many different

potential manifestations. I mean, it's the same way that you can be creative by you know, zooming the field forward and revolutionizing you know, how we clean our teeth, or you can do a very slight incrementation on modifying flaws. They're both creative, right, And we tend to just write off so much stuff is not being creative, you know,

we say, oh, well, many see creativity. It's just something that you're thinking or that you've expressed but isn't super new, Or it's something that other people have already done better that's not creative. Or oh, you're creative at fix the computers. That's not really creative. That's just you know, being able to fiddle with things. Or oh, you're really creative at being able to come up with cost effective ways of doing things instead of coming up with the brilliant idea

in the first place. That's not creative. But all these things are creative, and we ignore it, we don't focus on it, we don't appreciate it, and you end up with most people assuming they're not creative or not really creative, and then you don't try, then you don't persist. And there's so much amazing stuff that comes out of creativity. I mean not just thinking of it as something to achieve or accomplish, but as what it does you, whether it's being used as something to help produce stress or

help save time, or help advance in your career. I mean, there's so many different things that so many people miss out on. I love that. So you don't have to be a genius to fear life to be worthwhile. Let's be fact. Let's be clear about that. And it's probably why I don't like the whole creative genius focus is that there is that implication if you're not a genius,

then forget it. Yeah, but I mean, you know what, one of the pieces of art in my house, hanging in the guest bathroom was painted by a nine year old girl who isn't like a family member. She was daughter of a friend. And you know what, it's really good.

It's not big c it's not pro seed but it's a little c it gives you meaning, yeah, yeah, that's a pleasure, it gives enjoyment, it gives that's wonderful your idea of there being different IQ thresholds for different thresholds for different characteristics for depending on the field and even the micro field. You know, I've applied that amount of

work to reconceptualizing gifted education and mission criteria. It's a shame that gifted and talented programs don't think more about in that way because and I'm sure you'd agree that if they did think about it more in that way, you know that like different requirements are different, you know, minimum things, then it wouldn't be such like a general giftedness idea, like you're either a globally gifted person or you're a globally unngifted person. So I think there are

some dark roots of that. There are some very for example, a lot of gifted programs, not all, but a lot. I mean, there's a reason why giftedness took off in the South, in the cities. It was often I mean sometimes it was used for wonderful reasons, and sometimes it was used as a way to keep segregation. And so they wanted to use the measures that would show the

most differences, and they had other agendas. And that's not the reason why things still happen that way, but when their roots of the field are a little tied to it, it's tarred. It's the other reason, though, why I think

good measurement is so important. There are many reasons why IQ test is so valued, and some of it may be less pleasant reasons, but some of it is that, for better or worse, we know what an IQ test is, we know what the scores mean, and yet creativity measurement, I mean, we have lots of stuff, but has long ways to go. And it's why. I mean, like, you know, trying to figure out new ways of measuring creativity isn't

necessarily the most sexy part of the field. But I feel like if we want gifted admission, school admissions anywhere to value it more, they have to feel like they can do it in a way that's cost effective and makes sense. And you know, and I'm not saying that these measures aren't already to a degree out there, but they can get better and there can be more of them. I mean, test companiesmercial test companies often have less have had less of a vested interest because there is less

of a market and people often don't like change. I mean, that's hopefully changing a little bit and we're making steps, but why time some more boring parts are so important? Absolutely, and I just want to thank you for the work that you've done for the field and being so forward thinking about this stuff, and for all your support of my own career, and if you're graciousness chatting with me today, Thank you so much, James. It has been an absolute pleasure. Scott,

thank you. Thanks for listening to The Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott barrk Kaufman. I hope you found this episode just as thought for booking and interesting as I did. If you'd like to read the show notes for this episode or hear past episodes, you can visit the Psychology Podcast dot com.