Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast with doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, where we give you insights into the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity. Each episode will feature a new guest who
Speaker 1: will stimulate your mind and give you a greater understanding
Speaker 1: of yourself, others, and the world we live in. Hopefully
Speaker 1: we'll also provide a glimpse into human possibility. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening and enjoy the podcast. Now, I'm really excited to
Speaker 1: be speaking with my brother from another mother, James C. Kaufman.
Speaker 1: Doctor Kaufman is a professor of Educational psychology at the
Speaker 1: NIAG School of Education at the University of Connecticut. Before that,
Speaker 1: he was at California State University at San Bernardino, where
Speaker 1: he founded the Learning Research Institute. He received his PhD
Speaker 1: from Yale University and Cognitive Psychology in two thousand and one.
Speaker 1: Kaufman is an international leader in the field of creativity,
Speaker 1: known for his research in such areas as everyday creativity,
Speaker 1: creativity assessment, creativity, fairness and creativity, and mental health. And
Speaker 1: just as a personal note to set up this podcast,
Speaker 1: James has been one of my most important mentors in
Speaker 1: my life and I'm deeply grateful for him for that,
Speaker 1: as well as for being on the show today. Thanks
Speaker 1: James for being here. It is my pleasure, Scott, absolute pleasure. Man.
Speaker 1: We go way back. We go way back, don't we.
Speaker 1: I know it's a marker to me getting older, yes,
Speaker 1: and the old me too. But how many years of
Speaker 1: these friends? Which is awesome though. What has been a
Speaker 1: thrill to see you go from a grad student to
Speaker 1: one of the world experts and spokespeople for creativity, intelligence, giftedness.
Speaker 1: Thanks James. I mean I remember my first year in
Speaker 1: grad school. Robert Scherberg, my advisor. We're talking and he's
Speaker 1: like another Kaufman. He's like, you know, I had a
Speaker 1: student James Kaufman who's a amazing and you remind me
Speaker 1: so much of him. You need to talk to him.
Speaker 1: And I called you. I asked if I could have
Speaker 1: a call with you, And in that very first call
Speaker 1: we've ever had with each other, you say, Hey, Scott,
Speaker 1: do you want to do a book? And we had
Speaker 1: like a book proposal plan for the psychology of creative
Speaker 1: writing right after that phone call. I think it's because
Speaker 1: you know, we're both interested in writing and creative writing
Speaker 1: in particular and plays, and we had so many mutual interests.
Speaker 1: That was fun. That was a lot of fun. That
Speaker 1: was That was one of the more fun books I've
Speaker 1: done as an edited book, Me Too, Me Too? We
Speaker 1: should do like a reprint edition that of Cambridge stresses
Speaker 1: up for that. A college of creative writing this time
Speaker 1: is personal. I like that. I like that. Well, now
Speaker 1: you do creative writing yourself, and you know a lot
Speaker 1: of guests I start off talking about their research or
Speaker 1: their thinking and ideas, but I want to start by asking,
Speaker 1: you know, tell us a little bit about your history
Speaker 1: in terms of play writing. Absolutely. I mean, the whole
Speaker 1: reason I got into creativity research in the first place
Speaker 1: is that I wanted to be a creative writer. And
Speaker 1: when I was an undergrad, I had two dual mentors,
Speaker 1: one in psychology, which was the very much missed legendary
Speaker 1: John Horne, but equally in creative writing. I worked with
Speaker 1: keik Raguson Boyle, who's a novelist who's done over twenty novels,
Speaker 1: The Road to Wellville, Georg J. Curtin, and I was
Speaker 1: as research assistant and he would read my stories. And
Speaker 1: I was not good enough to be a creative writer,
Speaker 1: particularly not with fiction, but I went into plays, and
Speaker 1: I wrote plays all throughout grad school. Was very very lucky,
Speaker 1: saw them performed all sorts of places, and then did
Speaker 1: a musical which just this past more than a year ago,
Speaker 1: was actually performed at Off Broadway Festival, and I got
Speaker 1: to see it and that got me writing again. And
Speaker 1: I've been finishing up a new play kind of a
Speaker 1: very very modified version of that called Aftertaste and Wellsville.
Speaker 1: I'm play called I know what it was, but you
Speaker 1: should tell people. Oh, the musical was called Discovering Magenta. Yea,
Speaker 1: what is it about? It was about a mental health
Speaker 1: worker who falls in love with a catatonic patient and
Speaker 1: tries to help her escape the demons of her path.
Speaker 1: That's cool. So the reception of that inspired you to
Speaker 1: do this new version of it, is that right? I
Speaker 1: would say it got me thinking with that magical part
Speaker 1: of my brain that isn't actually a part of your brain,
Speaker 1: and it got me having ideas again. And so first drastically,
Speaker 1: I mean it's virtually a different story, and then planning
Speaker 1: another one. And it's just kind of along with getting
Speaker 1: to get back to work with some theater people in
Speaker 1: terms of actually more about creativity. You know, has really
Speaker 1: kind of brought that part of me a little bit
Speaker 1: more to life. Again, that's wonderful news. Okay, so you
Speaker 1: were a playwright before you were a creativity researcher. Is
Speaker 1: that fair to say? Oh? Yeah, so what got you
Speaker 1: interested in creativity research? So what was your introduction to
Speaker 1: that world? I began just as a grad student and
Speaker 1: cognitive psych having no idea what I wanted to do.
Speaker 1: Having no idea, I mean, I was basically getting my
Speaker 1: PhD because I wasn't good enough to try to make
Speaker 1: it as a creative writer. And it was better than working.
Speaker 1: But after two years of floundering and not finding my passion,
Speaker 1: I was trying to figure out, like, okay, we had
Speaker 1: to do a second master's That was a big lit
Speaker 1: review piece, which I'm sure that you remember also, And
Speaker 1: I kept thinking, well, what do I want to do
Speaker 1: it on? And I came back to well, all my
Speaker 1: life I'd been a creative writer. I mean I worked
Speaker 1: as a journalist in high school, writing sports for the
Speaker 1: local paper, wrote very unsuccessful fiction, wrote even more in
Speaker 1: successful poetry, and then plays and lyrics, and I thought
Speaker 1: I would do it on creative writers. And I met
Speaker 1: with my advisor, Bob Sternberg, who we share that, and
Speaker 1: he gave me a list okay here six books, and
Speaker 1: I read those books, got hooked. Ended up going and
Speaker 1: reading like every journal I could find about creativity, and
Speaker 1: I was hooked, And throughout grad school did work on
Speaker 1: creative writing creative writers. So throughout graduate school I began
Speaker 1: doing work on creative writers kind of stumbled into the
Speaker 1: Sylvia Plath effect, which was this kind of odd little
Speaker 1: study that female poets are more likely than any other
Speaker 1: type of creative writer, or E meant creative woman to
Speaker 1: suffer from mental illness, which at one point got an
Speaker 1: absurd amount of press that it did not warrant, and
Speaker 1: generally just began fall in love with every aspect of creativity.
Speaker 1: It's not like you weren't exposed to psychology at all.
Speaker 1: To that point. Your father and mother and mother are
Speaker 1: kind of legends in the field of intelligence testing. It
Speaker 1: was a very interesting childhood. So my parents did they
Speaker 1: give you when you were younger? He demoed items. They
Speaker 1: both demote items. I mean, so my parents are are
Speaker 1: Alan and Adine Kaufman, and they've done all the Kaufman tests,
Speaker 1: and I think probably the coolest part was. I mean,
Speaker 1: I went to you know, APA meetings as a kid.
Speaker 1: My dad taught me factor analysis using baseball statistics when
Speaker 1: I was in high school, and my mom would edit
Speaker 1: my stories back when I was writing stories, going through
Speaker 1: word for word, you know. And in this level of
Speaker 1: I mean basically exposure to both the information but also
Speaker 1: the passion, and also people who spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time helping out my work and shaping my voice and ideas.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was treated like an adult in many ways,
Speaker 1: and it was kind of an amazing advantage, probably a
Speaker 1: very unfair one, but it meant that once I found
Speaker 1: that ding in psychology that I actually loved, I was
Speaker 1: able to bring a lot of other stuff to it.
Speaker 1: That's great. Yeah, I mean, the intelligence field is clearly
Speaker 1: different than the creativity field. But so what were your parents'
Speaker 1: reaction when you said, Hey, I'm studying creativity now. Oh?
Speaker 1: They were thrilled. They've always been beyond supportive. I mean
Speaker 1: when I went to Yale and work with Bob Stenbert,
Speaker 1: he was a big critic of my parents' work, and
Speaker 1: they had no problem whatsoever. They were thrilled about it.
Speaker 1: It's funny. One story I remember from childhood that kind
Speaker 1: of foreshadowed some of this stuff I do. Is my
Speaker 1: dad was showing me an item where it was meant
Speaker 1: to be a simple counting on it, and there were
Speaker 1: four very big boxes on a table that had the
Speaker 1: number one hundred on them. There were five small boxes
Speaker 1: that have the number ten, and then there were six pencils.
Speaker 1: And what you were supposed to do would say, oh,
Speaker 1: four hundred plus fifty plus six is four hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty six. There are four hundred and fifty six pencils
Speaker 1: on the table. I looked at it, and I said,
Speaker 1: there are six pencils on the table plus nine boxes.
Speaker 1: But we don't know where to know those boxes. And
Speaker 1: my dad realized it wasn't a good item. But I
Speaker 1: also realized that there's a whole lot of the stuff
Speaker 1: that can go into test performance, and that often people
Speaker 1: who maybe more creative or of course pains in the
Speaker 1: ass get penalized. They do tend to go together. They
Speaker 1: do tend to go together. As much as we complain
Speaker 1: about negative views and perceptions and leafs about creativity, I'm
Speaker 1: a bit I mean root in reality, I was a
Speaker 1: pain in the ass still am. Well, you know, what
Speaker 1: you're creative, I try, So what does that unpack that
Speaker 1: for me? What is the pain in the ass aspect
Speaker 1: of creativity that you're referring to, and can it be
Speaker 1: operationalized and measured? I think that. I mean, I'm not
Speaker 1: talking necessarily about the creativity mental illness link, which I
Speaker 1: think is largely overstated. I mean, there are some overlapping concepts,
Speaker 1: but I think it's said creative people, you know, they
Speaker 1: tend to be curious, They tend to want to try things.
Speaker 1: They tend to not be satisfied by the pat answer
Speaker 1: is designed to get kids to be quiet. They tend
Speaker 1: to be the ones who are more look at the
Speaker 1: challenge authority or be provocative. And you know, there are
Speaker 1: sometimes when that's a wonderful thing and it's clearly somebody
Speaker 1: being creative and exploring in there are times when it's
Speaker 1: annoying because sometimes you don't want to have to explain
Speaker 1: why you're asking somebody to do something or why you
Speaker 1: need a childhood let's say, be quiet for ten minutes.
Speaker 1: So it goes both with it does? It definitely does.
Speaker 1: And I mean you've talked before about why context matters
Speaker 1: for creativity and talk a little bit about that theory
Speaker 1: about why you know there are times to be creative
Speaker 1: in the air times not to create. Don't you have
Speaker 1: a theory about this? I do with Ron bi Ghetto,
Speaker 1: we kind of developed this concept of creative medic cognition,
Speaker 1: where some of it is very standard metacognitive stuff. In
Speaker 1: other words, do you know what you're good at and
Speaker 1: bad at in creativity? But the other part, which I
Speaker 1: find even more interesting is do you know when to
Speaker 1: be creative and when to keep it to yourself? Can
Speaker 1: you tell the situations that this may not be the
Speaker 1: best time to express my creativity, or this may be
Speaker 1: a time when the teacher wants to communicate this particular
Speaker 1: bit of information, and me asking questions or tossing out ideas,
Speaker 1: maybe I should hold back and write them down and
Speaker 1: remember them for a different time. Or maybe this is
Speaker 1: a person who won't appreciate my ideas, and that I
Speaker 1: think that a lot of the negative feelings that some
Speaker 1: people may have about creative kids or creative workers, even
Speaker 1: if they don't know they have them, maybe less about
Speaker 1: people who are creative and more about people who are
Speaker 1: creative at the wrong times and in the wrong ways.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're a teacher and you have thirty
Speaker 1: thirty five kids to tend to. You might be willing
Speaker 1: to spend more time on the creative, interesting kid, but
Speaker 1: you can't spend ten times the amount of time and
Speaker 1: a kid who's always asking questions, a kid who is
Speaker 1: challenging and questioning what you're saying. From a pure level,
Speaker 1: that's wonderful. From a realistic level, it's effort, it's time,
Speaker 1: and people often like taking the path of least resistance
Speaker 1: and not wanting to spend extra time on their job,
Speaker 1: that's for sure. Well, how does this relate to the
Speaker 1: American idol effect or the idol effect? The American idol effect?
Speaker 1: And most of the empirical work I've done on this
Speaker 1: stuff is in essence, looking are people accurate at judging
Speaker 1: their creativity? They're metacreativity, they're metacreativity and in general not
Speaker 1: particularly they can do it. So the studies have been
Speaker 1: rightly inconsistent. To be honest, We've done some studies where
Speaker 1: we found, wow, you know, these kids are no more
Speaker 1: likely than chance to understand their own creativity, and other
Speaker 1: ones where they're not accurate but at least show some
Speaker 1: insight over you know rating their own performance. I feel
Speaker 1: like we need to do the next step of just
Speaker 1: in depth. Well, okay, what are the personality traits, what
Speaker 1: are the cognitive patterns of strengths, what types of creativity?
Speaker 1: And when we know some of this? But I feel
Speaker 1: like before we can make any real yes, these people
Speaker 1: can understand their creativity. These people need to work on it.
Speaker 1: We need more research. But I think it's so important
Speaker 1: because creativity is time and resources. And if you're creative
Speaker 1: and you don't know what your best or most creative
Speaker 1: thing or project is, then you spend time on the
Speaker 1: wrong stuff, and you abandon things that maybe shouldn't be abandoned,
Speaker 1: and you go down rabbit holes that maybe you're the
Speaker 1: only one who cares about. That's all true. You have
Speaker 1: me thinking though about this research you've done on the
Speaker 1: link between creativity and mental illness. I want to discuss
Speaker 1: is it ever beneficial to be deluded, you know, to
Speaker 1: like think that you are immensely creative when you're not,
Speaker 1: because that delusion in itself may make you more creative.
Speaker 1: I don't think the delusion would make you more creative.
Speaker 1: I think it might make you persist more, which can
Speaker 1: be a good thing. I also think if you think
Speaker 1: you're more creative than you are and it makes you
Speaker 1: happy and you're not hurting anybody, there's nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 1: I think that people don't like to recognize that most
Speaker 1: things are just hard work. I think it's why the
Speaker 1: studies on creativity that often make the news are the
Speaker 1: kind of Look. If you inhale cinnamon, you'll be more creative.
Speaker 1: If you work in a room that only has purple walls,
Speaker 1: you'll be more creative. If you have a messy desk,
Speaker 1: you'll be more creative. Whether or not that's true. You're
Speaker 1: not creative because of the messy desk. You're not creative
Speaker 1: because you have depression or anxiety. It's just correlated if
Speaker 1: you want to be more creative. I mean, the biggest
Speaker 1: thing is the boring stuff, so to speak, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, if you want to be a writer, then
Speaker 1: you read, read, read, you write right right, you revise,
Speaker 1: you revise, you revise, and nobody wants to hear that.
Speaker 1: You know. That's a good point. So then what is
Speaker 1: the link between creativity and mental illness? If there is one,
Speaker 1: I think it's been greatly overstated. I think that there's overlap.
Speaker 1: So Shelley Carson has kind of this beautiful shared vulnerabilities
Speaker 1: model where she talks about some very specific things like
Speaker 1: sensory leakage or novelty seeking or latent dishimbition. But I
Speaker 1: think that people who are creative geniuses, are they more
Speaker 1: or less likely mentally ill. I don't necessarily think so.
Speaker 1: I think that people who are creative geniuses and who
Speaker 1: are mentally ill can build on that and expressed into
Speaker 1: amazing things, but it's not becaust or mentally ill. I
Speaker 1: think that, if anything, if the mental illness is full
Speaker 1: blown and something where that's the dominant issue in their life,
Speaker 1: that would make it harder to be creative, because the
Speaker 1: same reason why it's hard to be creative when you
Speaker 1: were splitting headache, that it's something that your mind is
Speaker 1: focused on, and if you're sticking into a deep depression,
Speaker 1: that takes cognitive resources and it's hard. I think on
Speaker 1: the everyday level, I mean, I think that creative people
Speaker 1: can be quirky. I think that they can be eccentric.
Speaker 1: I think that that can often be similar or be
Speaker 1: associated with things like lower level anxiety or things like
Speaker 1: slight skits to be hypomania. But my biggest concern about
Speaker 1: all this is that there is no causal wink. And
Speaker 1: so if somebody wants to be creative and they in
Speaker 1: any way feel that would be beneficial to be bipolar schizophrenic,
Speaker 1: it's not that it doesn't. It's not something that we
Speaker 1: can be sought out that. I'm not trying to put
Speaker 1: any yp of stigma on mental health. I just wouldn't
Speaker 1: want somebody either to mimic unhealthy behaviors thinking this is
Speaker 1: how you become a creative artist. That you know, I
Speaker 1: want to feel like an artist, and so I'm going
Speaker 1: to torture myself or drink too much. This doesn't work
Speaker 1: that way. And there's also all this wonderful work on
Speaker 1: creativity and positive mental health results that you know, engaging
Speaker 1: an art can help distract and make negative moods go away.
Speaker 1: Marie Fox Giard's work on post traumatic growth and creativity
Speaker 1: is amazing, and I think there's so much amazing, wonderful
Speaker 1: good stuff that comes out of creativity. I mean, one
Speaker 1: of the things that probably is most exciting that I'm
Speaker 1: working on right now is this whole creativity and social
Speaker 1: justice concept. Oh, that's interesting. If we look for example,
Speaker 1: So the earlier stuff I've done has been on if
Speaker 1: we look at admissions, college admissions, gifted admission, the measures
Speaker 1: that are currently you, whether it's IQ tests, SAT tests,
Speaker 1: teacher recommendations, potentially they can show a great deal of bias.
Speaker 1: This is not to say necessarily that IQ tests are
Speaker 1: biased becausts certain groups score lower than another, but that
Speaker 1: if we think of human cognition or the cognitive abilities
Speaker 1: that we need to succeed, IQ tests measure certain of
Speaker 1: these ability. Creativity, which is one such ability, as we
Speaker 1: know very well from our paper together, isn't really much
Speaker 1: on IQ tests. It's a little bit, but very very little.
Speaker 1: It's not on SATs. And yet if you look at it,
Speaker 1: study after study is found that there are no differences,
Speaker 1: or if there are there tiny and sometimes they're a
Speaker 1: reverse way for creativity by ethnicity. That's interesting. You've done
Speaker 1: some good work on that on ethnic and racial different
Speaker 1: says on IQ tests versus creativity tests. What's the difference
Speaker 1: between the two kinds of tests? What do you see
Speaker 1: differences in So consistently Caucasians and Asian Americans receive higher
Speaker 1: scores on most measures of IQ or academic achievement, and
Speaker 1: there are many, many, many reasons that this might be
Speaker 1: the case if you look at creativity. So, first off,
Speaker 1: most performance measures show no differences between Caucasians, African Americans,
Speaker 1: Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, et cetera. This just no difference.
Speaker 1: If you look at self beliefs, African Americans are often
Speaker 1: higher than Caucasians. What this means is that, hey, we
Speaker 1: are choosing to use only the measures that show differences
Speaker 1: and we're not using the measures that don't show differences.
Speaker 1: That is bias. In addition, a lot of potential reasons
Speaker 1: of why certain groups do better or worse revolve around
Speaker 1: things like stereotype threat, where you don't want to confirm
Speaker 1: a negative belief in somebody else about your abilities. This
Speaker 1: creates anxiety, cognitive load, and you do worse. If creativity
Speaker 1: could be a way of framing different tasks and of
Speaker 1: making it clear that look, this task, yes, it does
Speaker 1: involve cognitive ability, it also involves creativity, and if you
Speaker 1: look at the work, there are no differences and sometimes
Speaker 1: there are even opposite what the IQ tests show. This
Speaker 1: could be a way of reducing stereotype threat. Reducing these
Speaker 1: sources of test anxiety, which on so many levels would
Speaker 1: increase fairness, increase equity. Then this is the stuff that
Speaker 1: I am getting this very very excited and passionate about.
Speaker 1: And I'm working with a couple of different colleagues and
Speaker 1: scholars to kind of just explore these intersection more. That's
Speaker 1: really exciting. Jameson how much of you talk to the
Speaker 1: College Board? I mean you worked the College board, didn't.
Speaker 1: You can tell me about that. ETS. They're alternate siblings.
Speaker 1: I mean, ETS does one thing. I think it does
Speaker 1: it fine, but it's the whole. I have a whole
Speaker 1: Lucky Charms theory, which is that if you use something,
Speaker 1: many tests are developed the way that lucky charms advertise themselves.
Speaker 1: So you know part of this nutritious breakfast. Did you
Speaker 1: see the commercials and as a ball lucky charms, there's
Speaker 1: some bacon, a scrambled egg, and orange glass of juice,
Speaker 1: a glass of milk as a whole like buf fet
Speaker 1: some toast. But in real life we just have the
Speaker 1: lucky charms. So the s at for what they are.
Speaker 1: If they were part of this nutritious breakfast, fine, I
Speaker 1: still don't love them, but fine, but they're used as
Speaker 1: the only thing or that in high school GPA, which
Speaker 1: has its own issues, and as a result, this thing that, okay,
Speaker 1: if you're talking about it is one piece of a
Speaker 1: larger puzzle. I can accept it. It becomes the entire puzzle.
Speaker 1: And that's my biggest problem. I mean, I did not
Speaker 1: love working at educational Testing service. I did not particularly
Speaker 1: fit in. But for what they do, they do it
Speaker 1: as well as anybody else is going to do that
Speaker 1: who is still a business and focused on making money
Speaker 1: and has no instinctual reason to want change. It's the
Speaker 1: same thing for a lot of IQ tests. IQ tests
Speaker 1: are still primarily the same as they've been, not the
Speaker 1: newer ones. So there are the tests my parents developed.
Speaker 1: There are tests, for example by Jack Naglieri, and these
Speaker 1: tests are innovative and they've reduced differences. Tell me about that,
Speaker 1: I do like your parents new tests. Can you tell
Speaker 1: me a little more about them, like, what's innovative about them?
Speaker 1: For your listeners? They don't know that, Oh yes, absolutely so.
Speaker 1: The standard IQ tests, the Exler tests are basically rooted
Speaker 1: in the idea of g or this general cognition, which
Speaker 1: is that all of cognitibility is in essence, this one day.
Speaker 1: This is a controversialish idea. And right now the works
Speaker 1: of tests ostensibly use crystallized and fluid which is so
Speaker 1: crystallized intelligence is your required knowledge vocabulary? Can you do
Speaker 1: a math problem? Who is the second President of the
Speaker 1: United States? Fluid intelligence is solving a new problem. So
Speaker 1: this is a logic puzzle. This could be Okay, here's
Speaker 1: your brand new iPhone? Can you figure out how to
Speaker 1: use it? Can you figure out well, I used to
Speaker 1: use the example of programming your VCR, but that would
Speaker 1: now be crystallized. Can you figure out how to use
Speaker 1: the latest version of Netflix or whatever? That's fluid. There's
Speaker 1: also within the larger which called the CHC framework, and
Speaker 1: one of the developers with John Horne, my undergraduate mentor,
Speaker 1: and see if crystallized intelligence is this acquired knowledge. Fluid
Speaker 1: intelligence is this novel problem solving. There's also this visual
Speaker 1: spatial ability. There's short term memory. There is long term memory,
Speaker 1: which doesn't mean what you were doing thirty years ago,
Speaker 1: but more a little more recently than that. And the
Speaker 1: newest KBC used both the CHC theory and also the
Speaker 1: past model of planning attention simultaneous sequential. Okay, what that
Speaker 1: does without trying to borel listeners too much. It allows
Speaker 1: for an awful lot more information than is available on
Speaker 1: most like Q tests. I mean, what's some of the
Speaker 1: additional information that is provided on your parents at Q tests?
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's how they do something. So for example, there's
Speaker 1: a subtest called spaces in places where you've shown pictures
Speaker 1: of and Frank or Santa Claus or George Washington or
Speaker 1: the Brooklyn Bridge or whatever not that, and you're asked
Speaker 1: to what is this and it's the same basic source
Speaker 1: of knowledge, but there's almost no differences by ethnicity, okay.
Speaker 1: Or a lot of it is to do more and
Speaker 1: more stuff nonverbally or to teach the child how to
Speaker 1: do something and then test them as opposed to just
Speaker 1: testing them so it looks like can they learn? Can
Speaker 1: they adapt? It's also one thing that my dad is
Speaker 1: also known for. It is the idea of intelligent testing,
Speaker 1: which is you don't just look at one score, you
Speaker 1: look at a pattern, you look at what you observed
Speaker 1: testing the person. And it's this idea which actually is
Speaker 1: comparable to a lot of stuff that I care about
Speaker 1: also in that a test is a tool to hammer.
Speaker 1: It's not a deity you listen to and that right now,
Speaker 1: the Saks use that way. The Jerry is a use
Speaker 1: that way. They're used not as a tool, but as
Speaker 1: as deity. I mean, you know, when I get applicants
Speaker 1: for people to work with me, it's the stupidest thing.
Speaker 1: We have to average a certain GRE score for our school.
Speaker 1: But that means I have people sing to coming to
Speaker 1: wanted to work with me, who may have published four
Speaker 1: or five articles, whether GR score isn't quite as high,
Speaker 1: so they actually prefer the student who's done less, but
Speaker 1: as a higher GRE score, which is absurd. That's not
Speaker 1: using the GRE as a tool, it's using it as
Speaker 1: a boss as a deity. No, that's right. And your
Speaker 1: father's idea of intelligence testing has been really influential on
Speaker 1: my own thinking, and I wish all school psychologists were
Speaker 1: aware of it. I don't think even the majority in
Speaker 1: their training learn about the intelligent testing approach, and I
Speaker 1: don't know why not. I mean a lot of people
Speaker 1: are anti IQ, and there are some reasons better than others.
Speaker 1: But the problem is that it's throwing the baby out
Speaker 1: with the bathwater. It's you know, IQ tests have these problems,
Speaker 1: so we're not going to use them all or learning
Speaker 1: anything about them, or we're just going to learn how
Speaker 1: to do the exler instead of well what can we
Speaker 1: learn or do better to make them be better? No? Absolutely,
Speaker 1: Well thanks for explaining that. You know, there's something that's
Speaker 1: probably not as well known and it's not common knowledge,
Speaker 1: you know, so it's good information that you provided here.
Speaker 1: I've noticed that you've used the term, you know, like
Speaker 1: to have creativity. I mean, some people would come back
Speaker 1: to you and say, well, isn't everyone creative? And how
Speaker 1: would you respond to that person? Because you hear that
Speaker 1: a lot. You hear everyone is creative, you just have
Speaker 1: to unleash it or something. I don't know, you know,
Speaker 1: you hear this stuff all the time. What's your thinking
Speaker 1: on that. One of the theories that also with Ron
Speaker 1: the Ghetto that we did was the idea of the
Speaker 1: four C. It looks at creativity is this developmental trajectory
Speaker 1: where you start with mini C or personal creativity, And
Speaker 1: that's anytime you try something new and get this insider
Speaker 1: make a metaphor. And so maybe you are trying to
Speaker 1: build a bookcase, or you're working, you know, you're modifying
Speaker 1: a recipe. So it's nothing big, and maybe it's something
Speaker 1: that other people have already discovered it, but it's creative
Speaker 1: to you kind of like reruns and then little see
Speaker 1: or everyday creativity is when other people start agreeing, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's creative. That's really good. And I like to think
Speaker 1: of as a county fair creativity. You know, you go
Speaker 1: to the county fairs and look, there's somebody who's figured
Speaker 1: out how to deep fry a hostess ding dong, and
Speaker 1: there's somebody who made a birdhouse out of beer cans,
Speaker 1: and there's somebody who's you know, made a functioning sword
Speaker 1: out of paper mache, and you know, like, it's not
Speaker 1: creativity and it'll change the world. But it's creativity that
Speaker 1: people can enjoy, can you use and yeah, that's really cool.
Speaker 1: And then if you keep plugging away, there's the idea
Speaker 1: of pro seed or expert creativity, and it's being a
Speaker 1: professional at your creative work. And that's I mean, it's
Speaker 1: when you know, done your put in all your time
Speaker 1: and you're an expert on something and you know probably
Speaker 1: you can make a living off of it, and it's
Speaker 1: work that is considered to be outstanding. You know that
Speaker 1: it's and it can be again, any field. It could
Speaker 1: be a doctor who can creatively diagnose people, a lawyer
Speaker 1: who can creatively come up with a new argument for something.
Speaker 1: It can be I mean, it's more obvious to see
Speaker 1: in the arts, but it can be anywhere. And then finally,
Speaker 1: big C is this legendary creativity of Mozart and Beethoven
Speaker 1: and all that. And so if you ask can everybody
Speaker 1: be creative? Absolutely? The thing that people will often mix
Speaker 1: up is everybody can be a creative genius. Can everyone
Speaker 1: be a crave genius? Probably not? Okay, Now I think
Speaker 1: everybody can a mini C. I think most people can
Speaker 1: be little Ce. Why not? Why not? I conceptualize big C.
Speaker 1: It is a type of creativity that lasts on for generation.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of reasons why things last and why
Speaker 1: things don't last. Sometimes it's luck, sometimes because something's that good.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's because you know, somebody just found a cheaper
Speaker 1: way of doing something and they got the credit. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that two hundred years from now people will
Speaker 1: assume Bill Gateson bent to the Internet. And I think
Speaker 1: it demands something in terms of commitment, effort, persistence, and
Speaker 1: ability and the right personality and approach. It requires so much,
Speaker 1: and I guess part of me is also a realist,
Speaker 1: you know that I don't like throwing out the word genius,
Speaker 1: you know, like I feel like if everybody's a genius,
Speaker 1: then nobod's a genius. I think that being a creative
Speaker 1: genius is also kind of overrated. I mean, to be honest,
Speaker 1: I have no idea what I could be ridically accomplished.
Speaker 1: But I like to enjoy my life. So I like,
Speaker 1: you know, having two very very active boys and spending
Speaker 1: time with him sometimes all the time, spending time with
Speaker 1: my wife. I like having friends, I like having interests.
Speaker 1: I mean the kind of you know, I mean, Gardner
Speaker 1: often calls it like the the Devil's bargain or the
Speaker 1: Faucian bargain. I'd rather enjoy life, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: you can do everything right to want to be a
Speaker 1: genius and still not. And to me, I worry that
Speaker 1: too much focus on the desperate desire to become a
Speaker 1: creative genius, to be immortal, to you know, be brilliant.
Speaker 1: It comes at a cost, and not everybody can do it,
Speaker 1: and everybody wants to do it, and I worry that
Speaker 1: so much of the focus on how to be a
Speaker 1: creative genius may not be necessarily the best focus. I mean,
Speaker 1: it should be there, but I think that a lot
Speaker 1: of this stuff more on kind of how to make
Speaker 1: creativity work for you? You You know, Yeah, fair enough? Oh,
Speaker 1: thank you for expressing that opinion. For what it's worth.
Speaker 1: I think your theory, your amusement park theory, is a
Speaker 1: genie theory. So for as far as I'm concerned, you're
Speaker 1: a genius, a creative genius. All would disagree with you,
Speaker 1: but thank you. What do you say I started with
Speaker 1: many would disagree that I went most well, I don't
Speaker 1: think that. I think that's part of the problem is
Speaker 1: that I don't think a lot of people are aware
Speaker 1: of that theory. And you're not a self promoter. You know.
Speaker 1: I've known you for a really long time, and you're
Speaker 1: quite a modest individual who does really good work, and
Speaker 1: you probably could use to promote your theories a little
Speaker 1: bit more. I was really blown away by your amusement
Speaker 1: park theory and the work you've done on domain specificity
Speaker 1: of creativity, like can you be a genius in more
Speaker 1: than one field? You know, there was one question can
Speaker 1: you be a genius? And then there's even a toubly
Speaker 1: hard question, which is can you be a genius in
Speaker 1: more than one field, or even a creative expert in
Speaker 1: or even a creative expert? So can you tell my
Speaker 1: listeners a little bit about the amusement park theory? And yeah,
Speaker 1: just just talk about it. Of course, this was developed
Speaker 1: with John Behar, who was one of my early mentors
Speaker 1: and is still a very dear friend. We use the
Speaker 1: analogy of going to an amusement park. So let's say
Speaker 1: that you wake up and you decide I want to
Speaker 1: go to an amusement park. So the very first thing
Speaker 1: is that there's some basic stuff that no matter where
Speaker 1: you want to go, you have to have. You have
Speaker 1: to have money. Amusement parks aren't free. You have to
Speaker 1: have access to a wide unless you live next door
Speaker 1: to an amusement park. You have to have the desire
Speaker 1: to want to go to an amusement park. And we
Speaker 1: equate this to if you want to be creative, there
Speaker 1: are certain basic things you have to be in an
Speaker 1: environment where creativity is at least tolerated, even if it's
Speaker 1: not nurtured. You have to have the very basic cogniti
Speaker 1: abilities to be able to articulate and express creativity. You
Speaker 1: have to have the basic motivation to want to be creative.
Speaker 1: If you don't want to be creative, you probably won't
Speaker 1: be creative. And that doesn't matter what kind of creative.
Speaker 1: So once okay, you've decided an amusement park you want
Speaker 1: to go, then next thing is, okay, well what type
Speaker 1: of amusement park? I mean, there are some amusement parks
Speaker 1: that are mostly water based, you know, water slides and splashing,
Speaker 1: and then there are amusement parks that are more hardcore
Speaker 1: roller coasters that just scare the crap out of you.
Speaker 1: And then there are amusement parks that are tied to
Speaker 1: a theme or a cartoon, so you know, whether it's
Speaker 1: Disneyland or Lego Land or other things that I would
Speaker 1: probably hate. Sesame place, and that's just a sesme place.
Speaker 1: We've probably had very different Sesame Place experience. I'll let
Speaker 1: you bring my boys there next time, okay, or your
Speaker 1: point taking. It's similarly with creativity. There are these broad areas.
Speaker 1: We call them general thematic areas, but these very very
Speaker 1: broad you know, visual art, creative writing, more business, maybe
Speaker 1: it's more science or technology. I mean, the exact number
Speaker 1: of you know how many broad domains. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: this stuff that I been trying on successfully to figure
Speaker 1: out for the last ten years. But it's kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, broadly, I want to do something involving that.
Speaker 1: So maybe you haven't figured out what you want to do,
Speaker 1: but you know, whatever it is, it's to involve the
Speaker 1: spoken word, or it'll involve music, or it will involve
Speaker 1: binging something out. And the next step then is domains.
Speaker 1: So let's say, okay, you've decided that you want to
Speaker 1: go to a cartoon or theme based park, and you
Speaker 1: consider all of it and you decide, okay, I want
Speaker 1: to go to sesame place, and that represents the next
Speaker 1: level of decision or progress. And similarly, so maybe you
Speaker 1: know that you want it to be in the written word,
Speaker 1: and so you said all on that you know it's
Speaker 1: going to be. I want to be a creative writer. Now,
Speaker 1: once you're in sesame place, there's a lot to do.
Speaker 1: Then there's the little kiddie rides, there's going and meeting
Speaker 1: big Bird, there's going on the larger rides. There is
Speaker 1: getting food, there's chasing around your kids. There are still
Speaker 1: all these decisions. And then similarly, of course, so you
Speaker 1: want to be a creative writer, okay, great, you want
Speaker 1: to be a poet, you want to write short stories,
Speaker 1: you want to write blogs, personal essays. Even within poetry,
Speaker 1: you want to do high KuPS, you want to do
Speaker 1: free verse sonnets. All these nuances or these kind of
Speaker 1: micro domains, and even at the micro domain level, there
Speaker 1: are different things associated with being creative in that domain.
Speaker 1: So even if you're comparing a poet versus a fiction writer,
Speaker 1: they should be very similar. They are very similar in
Speaker 1: many areas, but there are still nu once. There are
Speaker 1: still personality differences or different patterns of cognitive strengths, or
Speaker 1: perhaps different motivations or thinking styles. There are still all
Speaker 1: these different things. And so the reason why I think
Speaker 1: the topic of domains is important it comes down to
Speaker 1: the fact that every year, if people come to my
Speaker 1: office and say I'm not creative, and people think they're
Speaker 1: not creative because they're not creative in the larger thematic
Speaker 1: areas that society says is creative. So they can't play
Speaker 1: music or write music, they can't paint or draw, they
Speaker 1: can't write creatively. But then these same people will have
Speaker 1: this amazing idea for a psychology experiment, or they'll have
Speaker 1: this amazing idea for how to develop a course curriculum
Speaker 1: that's creative. And so one of the biggest things to
Speaker 1: me that's an important kind of takeaway, is it creativity
Speaker 1: is so many different things that it's so many different
Speaker 1: potential manifestations. I mean, it's the same way that you
Speaker 1: can be creative by you know, zooming the field forward
Speaker 1: and revolutionizing you know, how we clean our teeth, or
Speaker 1: you can do a very slight incrementation on modifying flaws.
Speaker 1: They're both creative, right, And we tend to just write
Speaker 1: off so much stuff is not being creative, you know,
Speaker 1: we say, oh, well, many see creativity. It's just something
Speaker 1: that you're thinking or that you've expressed but isn't super new,
Speaker 1: Or it's something that other people have already done better
Speaker 1: that's not creative. Or oh, you're creative at fix the computers.
Speaker 1: That's not really creative. That's just you know, being able
Speaker 1: to fiddle with things. Or oh, you're really creative at
Speaker 1: being able to come up with cost effective ways of
Speaker 1: doing things instead of coming up with the brilliant idea
Speaker 1: in the first place. That's not creative. But all these
Speaker 1: things are creative, and we ignore it, we don't focus
Speaker 1: on it, we don't appreciate it, and you end up
Speaker 1: with most people assuming they're not creative or not really creative,
Speaker 1: and then you don't try, then you don't persist. And
Speaker 1: there's so much amazing stuff that comes out of creativity.
Speaker 1: I mean not just thinking of it as something to
Speaker 1: achieve or accomplish, but as what it does you, whether
Speaker 1: it's being used as something to help produce stress or
Speaker 1: help save time, or help advance in your career. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's so many different things that so many people miss
Speaker 1: out on. I love that. So you don't have to
Speaker 1: be a genius to fear life to be worthwhile. Let's
Speaker 1: be fact. Let's be clear about that. And it's probably
Speaker 1: why I don't like the whole creative genius focus is
Speaker 1: that there is that implication if you're not a genius,
Speaker 1: then forget it. Yeah, but I mean, you know what,
Speaker 1: one of the pieces of art in my house, hanging
Speaker 1: in the guest bathroom was painted by a nine year
Speaker 1: old girl who isn't like a family member. She was
Speaker 1: daughter of a friend. And you know what, it's really good.
Speaker 1: It's not big c it's not pro seed but it's
Speaker 1: a little c it gives you meaning, yeah, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a pleasure, it gives enjoyment, it gives that's wonderful your
Speaker 1: idea of there being different IQ thresholds for different thresholds
Speaker 1: for different characteristics for depending on the field and even
Speaker 1: the micro field. You know, I've applied that amount of
Speaker 1: work to reconceptualizing gifted education and mission criteria. It's a
Speaker 1: shame that gifted and talented programs don't think more about
Speaker 1: in that way because and I'm sure you'd agree that
Speaker 1: if they did think about it more in that way,
Speaker 1: you know that like different requirements are different, you know,
Speaker 1: minimum things, then it wouldn't be such like a general
Speaker 1: giftedness idea, like you're either a globally gifted person or
Speaker 1: you're a globally unngifted person. So I think there are
Speaker 1: some dark roots of that. There are some very for example,
Speaker 1: a lot of gifted programs, not all, but a lot.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a reason why giftedness took off in
Speaker 1: the South, in the cities. It was often I mean
Speaker 1: sometimes it was used for wonderful reasons, and sometimes it
Speaker 1: was used as a way to keep segregation. And so
Speaker 1: they wanted to use the measures that would show the
Speaker 1: most differences, and they had other agendas. And that's not
Speaker 1: the reason why things still happen that way, but when
Speaker 1: their roots of the field are a little tied to it,
Speaker 1: it's tarred. It's the other reason, though, why I think
Speaker 1: good measurement is so important. There are many reasons why
Speaker 1: IQ test is so valued, and some of it may
Speaker 1: be less pleasant reasons, but some of it is that,
Speaker 1: for better or worse, we know what an IQ test is,
Speaker 1: we know what the scores mean, and yet creativity measurement,
Speaker 1: I mean, we have lots of stuff, but has long
Speaker 1: ways to go. And it's why. I mean, like, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to figure out new ways of measuring creativity isn't
Speaker 1: necessarily the most sexy part of the field. But I
Speaker 1: feel like if we want gifted admission, school admissions anywhere
Speaker 1: to value it more, they have to feel like they
Speaker 1: can do it in a way that's cost effective and
Speaker 1: makes sense. And you know, and I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: these measures aren't already to a degree out there, but
Speaker 1: they can get better and there can be more of them.
Speaker 1: I mean, test companiesmercial test companies often have less have
Speaker 1: had less of a vested interest because there is less
Speaker 1: of a market and people often don't like change. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's hopefully changing a little bit and we're making steps,
Speaker 1: but why time some more boring parts are so important? Absolutely,
Speaker 1: and I just want to thank you for the work
Speaker 1: that you've done for the field and being so forward
Speaker 1: thinking about this stuff, and for all your support of
Speaker 1: my own career, and if you're graciousness chatting with me today,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, James. It has been an absolute pleasure. Scott,
Speaker 1: thank you. Thanks for listening to The Psychology Podcast with
Speaker 1: doctor Scott barrk Kaufman. I hope you found this episode
Speaker 1: just as thought for booking and interesting as I did.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to read the show notes for this
Speaker 1: episode or hear past episodes, you can visit the Psychology
Speaker 1: Podcast dot com.