Creativity (44 page)

Yet it is important to keep in mind that most breakthroughs are based on linking information that usually is not thought of as related. Integration, synthesis both across and within domains, is the norm rather than the exception. Madeleine L’Engle is inspired by molecular biology to write her stories; Ravi Shankar finds ways of harmonizing the music of India and Europe; and almost all scientists cross and recross the boundaries of physics, chemistry, and biology in the work that turns out to be creative.

Even when not directly integrated in one’s work, other domains contribute to the overall mental life of creative individuals to a degree that belies the stereotype of the sterile, narrowly trained specialist. Music enriches the life of many, and so do the arts and literature. Scientist Manfred Eigen plays in a chamber orchestra, politician Eugene McCarthy writes poetry. Ceramist Eva Zeisel in her seventies started researching and writing a history of race relations in New York City. Business leader Robert Galvin collects antique maritime maps and studies constitutional history.

This breadth, this interest that overflows the limits of a given domain, is one of the most important qualities that current schooling and socialization are in danger of stamping out. If nothing else, this
study should renew our determination that narrow specialization shall not prevail. It is not only bad for the soul but also reduces the likelihood of making creative contributions that will enrich the culture.

What the Field Contributes

Most of us deep down believe that a person who is creative will prevail regardless of the environment. The Romantic idealization of the solitary genius is so solidly lodged in our minds that to state the opposite—that even the greatest genius will not accomplish anything without the support of society and culture—borders on blasphemy.

But the reality appears to be different. Favorable convergences in time and place open up a brief window of opportunity for the person who, having the proper qualifications, happens to be in the right place at the right time. Benjamin Spock was one of the first pediatricians with psychoanalytic training, and therefore he was in a good position to write an authoritative and popular child-care book incorporating the latest Freudian ideas. A few years earlier the task would have been impossible; a few years later it would have been redundant. Ravi Shankar learned music from the musica
l group run by his family, Robert Galvin inherited his business, and practically all the women scientists in this cohort benefited from the opening up of laboratory jobs due to young male scientists being drafted to fight in World War II.

The point is not that external opportunities determine a person’s creativity. The claim is more modest, but still extremely important: No matter how gifted a person is, he or she has no chance to achieve anything creative unless the right conditions are provided by the field. And what might these conditions be?

In terms of what we have learned from this study, it is possible to single out seven major elements in the social milieu that help make creative contributions possible: training, expectations, resources, recognition, hope, opportunity, and reward. Some of these are direct responsibilities of the field, others depend on the broader social system. If our argument is correct, then creativity can be substantially increased by making sure that society provides these opportunities more widely.

Let us take these elements one at a time. Clearly, the availability of training is crucial for developing any kind of talent. If Michael Jordan
had been born in a country where basketball was not practiced, he would never have been able to refine his skills and would not have been recognized. A society that can match effectively opportunities for training with the potentials of children has an impact on the frequency of creative ideas its members produce.

Of course, training is expensive, and therefore hard choices must be made. Which domains should be taught, and how widely? Currently American public schools try to save costs by eliminating instruction in the arts, music, athletics, and all other areas that the public considers nonessential. On the whole, however, trying to save by cutting opportunities for learning is one of the most benighted solutions a society can adopt. Perhaps only Jonathan Swift’s solution to the Irish famine is more objectionable.

Expecting high performance is a necessary stimulus for outstanding achievement and hence for creativity. High expectations should start within the family, continue in the peer group, in the school, and in the community at large. Having high expectations is not a comfortable thing. Asian youth in the United States have internalized very high academic goals from their culture, and consequently have relatively low self-esteem, because it is so difficult for them to live up to expectations. Young African-Americans generally have lower academic goals, and hence their self-esteem tends to be higher.

Certain families have long traditions of artistic, scientific, or professional accomplishment that set high standards for the young person. Nobel Prizes ran in the families of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar and Eva Zeisel; Heinz Maier-Leibnitz followed in the footsteps of a distant ancestor. Of course, excessive or unrealistic expectations do more harm than good. In our study, parents and mentors usually conveyed their faith in the young creator’s abilities indirectly, almost taking excellence for granted, rather than nagging, pushing, or insisting.

Presumably it is best when not only the family and the school but also the entire community and society expect high performance of a young person. Ethnic traditions were often cited as having influenced the motivation to achieve. Jewish, Southern, and Mormon beliefs about one’s exceptional vocation were just some of the examples. In the mainstream U.S. society, excellence in academic domains is not expected. What we do expect more than perhaps any other society in history is that children should grow up happy and well adjusted.
But while Japanese parents, for instance, believe that their children can and should learn calculus, most American parents are content with minimal scholastic performance. It is difficult to see how young people are to take academic domains seriously if they sense their elders don’t really care.

Resources are crucial for creativity to develop, but their role is ambiguous. It is true that having access to the best examples of the past helps, and so does being able to afford the necessary materials. About thirty years ago, I remember reading about one of the emerging African nations that decided to institute a space research program. They selected some healthy young men as astronaut candidates. To get used to the gravitational forces involved in launching a space probe, a would-be astronaut would crouch inside a barrel, which his companions twirled around in circles at the e
nd of a rope. Clearly it is extremely difficult to contribute useful new ideas to space exploration if all one has is a barrel and a rope.

Yet too many resources also can have a deadening effect on creativity. When everything is comfortable and better than anywhere else, the desire for novelty turns to thrills and entertainment instead of trying to solve basic problems. When Florence exploded with creativity in the fifteenth century it was one of the richest cities in Europe, a center of learning and information. At the same time it was a city racked with internal political turmoil, threatened from the outside, literally fighting for its continued existence. What can we learn from these contradictory trends? Certainly
, if we wish to encourage creativity, we have to make sure that material and intellectual resources are widely available to all talented and interested members of society. Yet we should realize that a certain amount of hardship, of challenge, might have a positive effect on their motivation.

At some point in their careers, potentially creative young people have to be recognized by an older member of the field. If this does not happen, it is likely that motivation will erode with time, and the younger person will not get the training and the opportunities necessary to make a contribution. The mentor’s main role is to validate the identity of the younger person and to encourage him or her to continue working in the domain. The guidance of an older practitioner is important also because there are hundreds of ideas, contacts, and procedures that one will not read in book
s or hear in classes but
that are essential to learn if one hopes to attract the attention and the approval of one’s colleagues. Some of this information is substantive, some is more political, but all of it may be necessary if one’s ideas are to be noticed as creative.

In some fields, like science, math, or music, it is possible to measure extraordinary talent through standard tests. Thus testing has been an important feature of many successful cultures, from ancient China to the current United States. While impersonal recognition through testing might be an important step in some domains, it can only be the first one in the development of creative persons, for whom a close master-apprentice relationship is of great importance. In our study we found that a few individuals were taken in hand by competent adult practitioners very early in life, man
y were recognized during high school, and most of the remaining had an important mentor by the time they were of college age. Again, recognition by a mentor is not strictly necessary, but it must definitely contribute to the realization of creative potential.

Training, expectations, resources, and recognition are to no avail, however, if the young person has no hope of using his or her skills in a productive career. In our culture, a huge number of talented and motivated artists, musicians, dancers, athletes, and singers give up pursuing those domains because it is so difficult to make a living in them. In a study of American adolescents, we found that almost 10 percent of thirteen-year-olds wanted to be architects when they grew up. At a rough guess, this is probably a thousand times what the field of architecture can accommodate. It i
s not realistic to expect a great deal of talent to be attracted to a domain, no matter how important it is, if there is little chance of practicing it. The people who succeed in the smaller fields are like Vera Rubin, to whom not being an astronomer was “unthinkable.”

After hope, one also needs to have real opportunities to act in the domain. It has been said that the great musical creativity that blossomed in Germany in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was in large part due to the fact that each aristocratic court that ruled the many principalities had to have an orchestra to amuse itself and to show its superiority over the others. There was constant interest in and competition for new musical talent. A Bach, Handel, or Mozart had no difficulty in having his music performed and then evaluated by an eager crowd of connoisseurs. If there
are fewer creative classical
composers now, it is probably not due to a lack of talent but to a dearth of opportunities to display it.

The problem is especially severe in fields that require long and specialized training and then suddenly run out of opportunities. Many young physicians who have trained in some of the more high-tech and well-paying disciplines, such as anesthesiology or radiology, are finding themselves unemployed as insurers cut costs and force hospitals to release patients earlier than they used to do. There are growing numbers of excellently trained but unemployed mathematicians and physicists as well, and several disciplines, like marine biology, which appeal to a great number of young people,
continue to have relatively few openings.

It is true that there are many instances of creative individuals who seem to
make
their own opportunities. After all, Albert Einstein was a lowly clerk in the Swiss patent office when he wrote up his ideas about relativity. Next thing we know, he was being offered several professorships. No doubt other such cases exist. But even in the case of Einstein we might perhaps argue that his chances of being recognized would have been much fewer, or nonexistent, if physics had not achieved such prestige at the start of the century, thus inflating the demand for novelty. In any case, the
fact that some individuals prevail even when opportunities are few does not imply that there could not be even more creative achievers if the opportunities were greater.

Finally, rewards—both intrinsic and extrinsic—help the flowering of creativity. There is no question that at the beginning of the Renaissance an infusion of golden florins into ambitious projects attracted many young Florentines to the arts. Brunelleschi was a member of the first cohort of artists in the Quattrocento who would almost certainly not have taken up such a career even a generation earlier. He came from a respectable professional family that considered artists despicable craftsmen. But with the sudden infusion of money and prestige, it was possible for him as well as many other tal
ented young men of good families to envision careers in architecture, painting, or sculpture.

Probably very few creative persons are motivated by money. On the other hand, very few can be indifferent to it entirely. Money gives relief from worries, from drudgery, and makes more time available for one’s real work. It also enlarges the scope of opportunities:
One can buy necessary materials, hire help if needed, and travel to meet people from whom one can learn. Artists are supposed to be above financial concerns, but in reality they can use money just as much as anyone else: first, in order to buy supplies, and, second, to evaluate their own success.

It is enough to read the autobiography of the famed Renaissance goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini to realize how important money can be to an artist as a gauge of self-worth. In the four and a quarter centuries since Cellini died, money has become increasingly the main measure of a person’s success. The importance of honor, respect, or a good conscience keeps diminishing in comparison to the rewarding power of money. Presumably creative individuals respond to financial incentives to a lesser extent than most people, but they do so nevertheless.

Similarly, public recognition and acclaim are certainly not necessary to truly creative persons, yet they are not rejected either. Creative persons are often arrogant and egocentric, but they are also insecure and can benefit from approval. Being at the cutting edge isolates a person from his or her fellows, and it helps to feel appreciated. In one of the most high-powered research institutes in the country, where many a Nobel Prize was won, there used to be an associate director whose main job was to pay a daily visit to each scientist’s lab and marvel at his or her latest accomplishments—eve
n though he often had little idea what they were. This practice was based on the strong belief that a pat on the back does wonders for creative productivity, and apparently not without cause.