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Brought to you by The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
By Robert J. Sternberg and Wendy M. Williams
Creativity is as much an attitude toward life as a matter of ability. We routinely witness creativity in young children, but it is hard to find in older children and adults because their creative potential has been suppressed by a society that encourages intellectual conformity. We begin to suppress children's natural creativity when we expect them to color within the lines in their coloring books.
Balancing Analytic, Synthetic, and Practical Abilities
Creative work requires applying and balancing three abilities that can all be developed.
- Synthetic ability is what we typically think of as creativity. It is the ability to generate novel and interesting ideas. Often the person we call creative is a particularly good synthetic thinker who makes connections between things that other people don't recognize spontaneously.
- Analytic ability is typically considered to be critical thinking ability. A person with this skill analyzes and evaluates ideas. Everyone, even the most creative person you know, has better and worse ideas. Without well-developed analytic ability, the creative thinker is as likely to pursue bad ideas as to pursue good ones. The creative individual uses analytic ability to work out the implications of a creative idea and to test it.
- Practical ability is the ability to translate theory into practice and abstract ideas into practical accomplishments. An implication of the investment theory of creativity is that good ideas do not sell themselves. The creative person uses practical ability to convince other people that an idea is worthy. For example, every organization has a set of ideas that dictate how things, or at least some things, should be done. To propose a new procedure you must sell it by convincing others that it is better than the old one. Practical ability is also used to recognize ideas that have a potential audience.
Creativity requires a balance among synthetic, analytic, and practical abilities. The person who is only synthetic may come up with innovative ideas, but cannot recognize or sell them. The person who is only analytic may be an excellent critic of other people's ideas, but is not likely to generate creative ideas. The person who is only practical may be an excellent salesperson, but is as likely to sell ideas or products of little or no value as to sell genuinely creative ideas.
Encourage and develop creativity by teaching students to find a balance among synthetic, analytic, and practical thinking.
Copyright © 1996 by ASCD. All rights reserved.
Source: Sternberg, R. & Williams, W. (1996). "Introduction: Theory of Creativity". in How to Develop Student Creativity. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
About the Authors
Robert J. Sternberg is IBM Professor of Psychology and Education at Yale University. He is coauthor of Defying the Crowd: Cultivating Creativity in a Culture of Conformity and editor of The Nature of Creativity. Sternberg can be reached at the Department of Psychology, Yale University, Box 208205, New Haven, CT 06520-8205. Phone: (203) 432-4633. Fax: (203) 432-8317.
Wendy M. Williams is research scientist in the Department of Psychology at Yale University. She is author of The Reluctant Reader. Williams can be reached at the Department of Psychology, Yale University, Box 208205, New Haven, CT 06520-8205
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