1. Positioning the MTCA
The MTCA is a theory based in differential psychology, the field
Cronbach (
1957) describes as the psychology of individual differences. The aim of differential psychology is to determine the nature, magnitude, causes, and consequences of psychological differences between individuals in the general population. So, with the MTCA we address how and why people differ in real-world creativity, where the major challenge is measuring creative ability. Please note that we focus on creative ability, not the creative process (for different accounts of the creative process see e.g.,
Gabora 2017;
Hélie and Sun 2010;
Kozbelt et al. 2010;
Nijstad and Stroebe 2006;
Schmidhuber 2010; for a thorough analysis of the study of individual differences versus processes see
Cronbach 1957). So, the MTCA does not answer questions, such as, “How does the creative act take place?” and “What happens in the brain during creative problem solving?”. Instead, we focus on questions such as “What are the components of creative ability?”; “How can creative ability be measured?”; “Are individual differences in creative ability stable over time?”; and “Can creative ability be trained?”. We show that the MTCA provides clear answers to each of these questions about creative ability.
Because the MTCA is concerned with individual differences in creative ability, it is positioned in the Person perspective of creativity. The Person perspective represents one of the four general approaches to creativity research and focuses on which characteristics make a person creative (
Rhodes 1961). With MTCA, we argue that intelligence and expertise are the essential person characteristics that distinguish between people scoring high or low on creative ability. The MTCA is also concerned with the Product perspective of creativity, focusing on the extent to which ideas, acts, and output are judged, often by relevant experts and stakeholders, to be creative (
Amabile 1982;
Montag et al. 2012;
Simonton 2003c). Real-world creative products or outcomes are the most important criteria that the MTCA strives to predict. These creative outcomes may range from personal and everyday creative outcomes to eminent creative contributions (
Boden 2004). For instance, they may refer to a sudden insight in how to solve a Sudoku (mini-c creativity); a new vegetable dish that your toddler enjoys eating (little-c creativity); a newly developed creativity test (Pro-c creativity); or a renowned paradigm-changing scientific theory (Big-C creativity). As such the MTCA addresses creative ability and potential at all levels, from mini-c to Big-C (
Kaufman and Beghetto 2009).
The Process perspective, concerned with the cognitive processes that take place when someone is being creative, is not central to the MTCA. The MTCA only addresses research positioned in the Process perspective inasmuch as it says something about creative abilities. For example, we argue that many cognitive processes are involved in being creative and therefore cognitive ability is related to creative ability (e.g.,
Kozbelt et al. 2010;
Simonton 2003b;
Mumford and McIntosh 2017). Similarly, we only address the Press perspective, which investigates the circumstances or states that influence the expression of creative ability, to the extent that it informs us about creative abilities. For instance, environmental stressors, such as noise and cognitive load, make it harder for people to be creative because they hinder the execution of cognitive abilities (
Byron et al. 2010;
De Dreu et al. 2012). So, the MTCA does not deny that creative processes exist (it actually assumes their existence), nor that there are important situational constraints and triggers that influence how creativity emerges. However, the MTCA simply is not a theory about the creative process or environment, but about individual differences in creative ability (cf.
Cronbach 1957; see e.g.,
[1] for a model in which both individuals and environmental factors interact to express creative achievements).
The MTCA is based on two key assumptions. The first assumption is that in order to be creative we use a wide variety of cognitive functions: functions that are generally assessed in intelligence tests. The second assumption is that creativity relies on the novel combination of existing knowledge and skills, i.e., expertise. Combined, these assumptions lay the groundwork for the MTCA, where intelligence and expertise are essential to understanding why people differ in creative ability. Below, we explore these assumptions further and conclude with a quasi formula for a minimal theory of creative ability.
Assumption 1.
Creative ability requires many different cognitive abilities.
The MTCA is based on the common assumption that we use a wide variety of our cognitive abilities to be creative (and probably tap all our cognitive functions across different tasks and settings). Whatever the challenge is, we use many cognitive abilities, such as those assessed in intelligence tests. For instance, we may use our perceptual abilities, conduct convergent and divergent thinking, search our memory for analogies, make use of our knowledge base, focus our attention, acquire new knowledge, etc. (e.g.,
Amabile and Pratt 2016;
Beaty et al. 2014;
Benedek et al. 2014;
Kuncel et al. 2004;
Newell and Simon 1972;
Nijstad and Stroebe 2006;
Sternberg et al. 2019).
We consider this assumption rather uncontroversial because most theories of creativity are consistent—or at least not inconsistent—with the idea that many cognitive functions are needed to be creative. For example, process theories of creativity are consistent when they describe the creative process in terms of consecutive stages (e.g., problem identification, idea generation, idea evaluation; see e.g.,
Basadur et al. 1982;
Mumford and McIntosh 2017;
Perry-Smith and Mannucci 2017;
Wallas 1926) or some sort of cycle (e.g., including repetition and recursion) where different executive functions play a role (for overview see
Kaufman and Glaveanu 2019;
Kozbelt et al. 2010). This also applies to
Amabile’s (
1982) componential model and other componential theories that incorporate several creativity-relevant cognitive processes (e.g., breaking cognitive and perceptual sets, remembering accurately). We think typical cognitive process theories such as the Geneplore model (
Finke et al. 1992) or
Hélie and Sun’s (
2010) Explicit–Implicit Interaction theory are also consistent with this assumption as they involve many cognitive functions. For instance, according to the Geneplore (generate–explore) model, people first retrieve existing elements from memory, form simple associations among these elements, and integrate, and transform them. The new ideas that result from these generative processes are then explored for their implications, checked against criteria and constraints and, if needed, refined (
Finke et al. 1992).
Furthermore, theories on creativity that stress the importance of one cognitive function, such as associative thinking (
Mednick 1962) or incubation (
Sio and Ormerod 2009;
Wallas 1926), are not inconsistent with our assumption as long as they acknowledge that other cognitive processes play a role in creativity as well. Inconsistency arises when a theory assumes that only one specific function is essential. This occurs when creative ability is reduced to divergent thinking ability only, for instance, as some psychometric theories of creativity propose (see
Kozbelt et al. 2010).
Assumption 2.
Creative ability requires expertise.
We further assume that people apply their cognitive functions to analyze, combine, and integrate existing knowledge and skills to be creative (
Simonton 2003b). This is why being creative in any domain also requires expertise in the domain at hand. Thus, the MTCA is based on the assumption that creativity always requires expertise (
[2] 2011b;
[3] 2011b;
Plucker and Beghetto 2004). As with the “many cognitive abilities” assumption, we are certainly not the first, nor the only researchers to make this claim. A number of creativity theories recognize that creativity manifests in specific domains. For example,
Baer and Kaufman (
2005) use an amusement park metaphor to describe how domain specific creative abilities (e.g., writing sonnets) are related to broader and broader abilities (e.g., poetry writing, creative writing), where each level has its own requirements in terms of domain specific knowledge (e.g., word meanings) and skills (e.g., spelling, grammar, rhyming). Domain specificity also follows from
Amabile’s (
1982) componential model, where people use domain relevant skills to be creative and their motivation to be creative may be very specific to tasks within particular domains. Another example stems from Darwinian creativity models that argue that creativity involves a process of random generation and selective retention and elaboration of ideas (e.g.,
Campbell 1960;
Simonton 1999b; but see
Gabora 2017 for an alternative evolutionary model). According to these models, people’s brains produce (quasi)random variations of existing ideas that are part of a creator’s knowledge base, and the greater the knowledge base, the more potential new combinations that are truly creative are possible.
Other theories that discuss the domain specificity of creative output are, for example,
Boden’s (
2004) H-creativity or Big-C creativity (
Kaufman and Beghetto 2009), which typically emerges by applying domain specific knowledge acquired over at least a decade. This is supported by archival evidence (e.g.,
Simonton 1991). For instance,
Hayes (
1989) discovered that for eminent composers at least 8 years of musical study were required before they wrote a masterwork, and the vast majority required at least 10 years. From the perspective of expertise development, practicing skills, engaging in activities, and enriching the knowledge base in a particular domain provide the necessary building blocks for creative work in that domain (
Beghetto and Kaufman 2007;
Ericsson et al. 1993;
Simonton 2008;
[4] 2018).
Although Big-C creative achievements in a particular field often require 10 years of expertise development in that field, there are notable exceptions. For instance, break-through inventions may open up new territory for accelerated discovery, sometimes resulting in entirely new domains. For instance, celestial objects and phenomena were suddenly observable with Galileo’s refinement of the telescope thereby explosively advancing the field of astronomy (
Simonton 2012); and because microscopic organisms and cells could suddenly be explored with Van Leeuwenhoek’s single-lensed microscope, an entirely new domain, microbiology, came into being (
Simonton 2012). However, even then, people build on their expertise (e.g., knowledge, scientific observation and reporting skills) to make discoveries and build and advance a domain.