ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the literature, indicating salient features and highlights important issues in creativity investigation. It addresses the following questions: What is creativity? What are the systematic approaches to its study? What are the important areas of research? How is creativity assessed? Can creativity be developed? Finally, why the growing concern with creativity? Some researchers, most notably J. P. Guilford, view creativity as inherent in all persons, qualitatively similar at all levels, and therefore their concern is with quantitative differences relative to general population norms. Many investigators have attempted to formulate criteria within their definitions of creativity. Imaginative creation like daydreaming was asserted to be a continuation and substitute for childhood play. The roots of humanism stem largely from the positive aspects of psychoanalytic approaches. The statistical techniques of factor analysis are frequently used to identify traits, and factorial approaches are used to isolate separate intellective factors.
