The intrinsic diversity of creativity research interview with prof todd lubart

Creativ e phenomena draw on cognitiv e, personality, emotional, motiv ational and social processes at once and creativ ity studies can be found at the intersection betw een different psy

The intrinsic div ersity of creativ ity research:

Interv iew with Prof Todd Lubart

By Vlad Glăveanu

EJOP Editor

Professor Todd Lubart’s past and present work on creativity is a perfect example of how dynamic and multi-faceted this area of psychology really is Creativ e phenomena draw on cognitiv e, personality, emotional, motiv ational and social processes at once and creativ ity studies can be found at the intersection betw een different psychological fields: cognitiv e, social and personality, organisational, dev elopmental, educational, indiv idual differences and so on I n this interv iew Professor Lubart discusses his creativ ity research projects and how they ev olv ed in a constant dialogue betw een personal interests and opportunities for research and collaboration Creativ ity is portrayed as a heterogeneous domain w here the most interesting breakthroughs happen ‘at the borders’ Here, those who make an i mpact are the ones ready to take risks and exploit the domain’s intrinsic diversity and the possibilities for creativ e thinking associated w ith it

Todd Lubart is Professor at the University Paris Descartes where he directs the activity

of the Laboratoire Adaptations Travail Individu (LATI) He earned his PhD from Yale University in 1994 under the supervision of Robert Sternberg and soon after that moved to the University of Paris Descartes where he became an Assistant Professor in

1995 and then Professor of Psychology in 2002 He was a member of the Institut Universitaire de France (2005-2010) His work on creativity is extensive and includes approximately 75 publications, articles, books and book chapters covering various aspects of the phenomenon: creative process, individual differences, role of cognition and emotion, environmental and cultural factors, etc Among his co-authored books, “Defying the crowd: Cultivating creativity in a culture of conformity” (1995, with R Sternberg), “Psychologie de la créativité” (2003) and the co- edited volume “Models of intelligence: International perspectives” (2003, with R Sternberg and J Lautrey) Professor Lubart was responsible for several research grants on creativity and co-organised several conferences or symposiums dedicated

to this topic His current work develops a multivariate approach to creativity

Address for correspondence: Prof Todd Lubart, Institut de Psychologie - Université René Descartes (Paris 5), 71 avenue Edouard Vaillant 92774 Boulogne-Billancourt E-mail: todd.l ubart@univ-paris5.fr

EJOP: Thank you for accepting our inv itation for an interv iew Your w ork for many years had focused on the topic of creativ ity and indiv idual differences, could you tell me how did you come to w ork in this particular area?

Todd Lubart: I started by studying v arious topics in psychology actually, first psycho-linguistics and then deductiv e logical reasoning and inductiv e reasoning, and then I started to look for a kind of problem solv ing topic to study more in-depth for my Masters degree or PhD, and had the opportunity to find creativ ity among the subjects offered And this particular topic w as kind of on my line of ev olv ing interests, but I w as also fascinated by it because I initially studied v isual art as my first discipline before I got inv olv ed in psychology And so during about sev en years I had done studies in v isual arts and considered going to an art school before I decided differently But then creativ ity made me go back to some of my prev ious interests since some of the things I w as studying inv olv ed people making draw ings and other similar products And in fact, w hen I actually started psychology, I w as more oriented tow ards a generalist approach, not an indiv idual differences one in particular But

w hen I got inv olved in that reasoning study, on inductiv e and deductiv e reasoning, I

w as in fact looking at people w ho dev iated from the general logical reasoning model And I got interested in w hat they w ere thinking and in the indiv idual differences associated w ith this How ev er in the end, w hen the moment came for

me to choose a Masters and PhD topic my decision also had to do w ith the chance

of hav ing creativ ity research proposed by the univ ersity

EJOP: So this kind of conv erged w ith your many interests, including your w ork in v isual arts and then reasoning But did you know from before about creativ ity or the idea just came then and there?

looked at the list of topics proposed that included many choices, different professors

to w ork w ith And at that moment I thought that creativ ity seemed to me to be the most interesting There w ere other choices that w ere not of zero interest but this w as the most appealing And then, w hen I came to w ork on it I saw it is ev en more fascinating because I am not a purely cognitiv e-oriented person, so I w as interested

in some social aspects, etc., and in creativ ity in fact you k ind of hav e a mix of cognitiv e and other types of factors, like emotional, social, motiv ational and so on

So that w as a good choice for me because it gav e me the chance to mov e around

w ithin the same topic

the w ay you came to think about creativ ity? I s it important for you and your w ork that you know both ‘sides’ of creativity, as practice and as a research topic?

would have been if things were different I also don’t think that I am consciously considering my v isual arts training w hen I am studying creativ ity but I w ould say that the basic point of departure for my w ork on creativ ity w as the artistic process So it

w as probably not a random choice And I w as mostly into activ ities such as draw ing and painting and that was where I’ve put more effort And I was in touch with some students in art and art graduates or professors w ho w ere judging the products, I w as also in some art w orkshops at the univ ersity w here the participants w ere these more adv anced art students and just after that I extended my interests to literature, to writing as for ms of creativ ity, and then to other things Notably now I am quite interested in design, w hich is a bit connected to the artistic stuff So art definitiv ely is

a connecting point but I do not sit and think about my prev ious personal experience

EJOP: I understand You approached a lot of aspects of creativ ity in your w ork, as you mentioned already: from the cognitiv e to the social, from organisational to dev elopmental and educational, the study of giftedness and so on And now you were talking a bit about a kind of ‘art nucleus’ What would you say are the red threads going through your w ork? Do you think in ter ms of an ov erarching project or

do you hav e all these different projects and are keeping them a bit separated?

Todd Lubart: I had shifting interests: so at one point I w as interested more in c ognitiv e factors and studying them, at another I w as in a more detailed personality tr aits phase, one moment I w as in a more social env ironment phase; but ultimately now I had an opportunity to think about this because here in France w e do a thing called

‘habilitation’ so it’s a moment when people are encouraged to put all their work together and make a master plan So I w as able to kind of put it together around the multiv ariate, multi-faceted approach to creativ ity in the sense that I w as all this time exploring the different facets of the phenomenon And I kind of had for each facet

a timeline, a kind of curv e of my activ ity on each of them And there w ere opportunities that presented themselv es that made me be more interested in one facet compared to another, w hen some collaborators w ere av ailable And so the

w hole picture is div erse, leading me to mov e in and out of interest for particular facets, each w ith its timeline of activ ity And currently I am preoccupied a little bit

more w ith trying to connect the factors or facets w ith the creativ e process, in adults

in different domains And this w ork has an aspect of identifying dimensions and w ays

of training w hat can be trained to enhance creativ ity in different domains I t is based

on identifying the profile of factors at play for one type of creativ ity or another And

w ith children w e hav e a project of assessing creativ e potential again in different domains We hav e dev eloped a new battery of creativ ity measures for children, called EPoC (Ev aluation of Potential for Creativ ity) So I am kind of in a phase that is very much assessment related

Todd Lubart: Yes, educational applicability or educational implications For children and adults depending on the profile of the person and comparing it w ith the kind of profile that is ideal for creativ e expression in their domain So this is the stage I am at

EJOP: Well it has been a kind of organic grow th of your interests I see But at the same time you now hav e this particular focus You also rev iewed sev eral creativ ity models in your work and you are obviously preoccupied with ‘modelling’ creativity, taking into account domain specificity I t is interesting that you mentioned the children and adults focus Talking about continuities in creativ e expression, do you see creativ ity in childhood and adulthood as tw o completely different things or are you concerned w ith the links betw een them?

Todd Lubart: Oh they are not tw o different things They are linked, connected, an d the basic model is the same, but the manifestation is a little different because in adults it gets more domain and expertise-linked And in children there is a domain specificity that can be detected from quite early on but the domains are broader, and so not as detailed and specific as in the case of adults But ultimately I hav e the same ideas about the factors inv olv ed, the process, etc

Todd Lubart: Yes, that’s it The nature of what is ‘entering’ for example from the environment and so on, and what is ‘coming out’, the kind of production they make, and also the w ay that others are reacting to the w ork is different for children and adults, but it is globally the same basic idea

EJOP: And in ter ms of research, w hat are the methods you usually employ to study creativ ity? Especially now that you said you are in an assessment phase

Todd Lubart: Well mostly w e ask people, children and adults, to produce w orks and

w hen they produce the w orks w e try to measure or observ e certain things in the process And then w e get a final production, w hich w e submit to a panel of judges, using consensual assessment, and w e relate the outcome of their ev aluation to other indiv idual differences v ariables that w e measure off-line, w hich concern personality

or cognition This is the basic technique But I should say that my indiv idual differences approach became ev en more focused w hen I came ov er to Paris, because at that moment I joined a research group w hich w as 100% w orking on indiv idual differences, w ith more elaborate models of how these differences are constructed and ev olv e and so on So through these contacts w ith people around

me I’ve got more and more focused on this aspect

culture along the years And it is interesting to notice how they sit together: on the one hand indiv idual differences and on the other cultural differences, the micro and the macro lev el

Todd Lubar t: Well individuals obviously reflect a lot from their cultural environment It’s true that the culture work is more at a macro level and I don’t exclusively work at an indiv idual lev el I n fact I initially started w orking on the topic of creativ ity and culture when I was interested in the social environment, I was in a ‘less individual’ phase, and at that time it w as v ery little written on that topic I t became quite popular afterw ards and so I w ould hav e probably left it at some point, after an initial entry, but then I had continuous solicitation for this, it w as a like a snow ball effect So I kept coming back to it, trying to get a little further on it And then obv iously w hen I came

ov er here in France I w as myself experiencing a new culture and w as also getting more in contact w ith v arious people in Europe and other places too that put me into the kind of situation that brings this cultural aspect back in, back to my mind

some point, at least for a w hile; it reminds me of the inv estment theory of creativ ity you proposed w ith Robert Sternberg Actually I w as curious to know if you still w ork on that idea or hav e integrated it somehow in your current research I know that the seeds of the multiv ariate approach w ere present in there

Todd Lubart: Yes in that model there is the multiv ariate approach w hich I obv iously continue to use for structuring my thinking about creativ ity Then there w as also the more specific inv estment concept and that is something in fact I am reflecting on at the moment: the connection betw een inv estment, economic thinking and the creativ e person as a decision-maker, choosing w here to go next There w ere a few

times w hen I w orked on this occasionally, so I did keep it aliv e and sporadically there

w ere requests to giv e an update on it And chance has it that I might go back to that idea since I am currently inv olv ed in a teaching situation w here economics and psychology are brought to gether, in a Masters programme So it just so happens that

in creativ ity there is alw ays this possibility of w orking on different areas at the same time And so it w orks out

Todd Lubar t: Yes, yes, right, because now I am suddenly in contact w ith a lot of economists and so there might be some new things to w ork on there

EJOP: So I understand that your professional trajectory had to do w ith an interaction betw een your interests and the opportunities you encountered: of teaching, of writing, of researching and so on After w orking so much on creativ ity, w hat do you find to be the most interesting parts of this w ork, and also the most challenging parts? What do you like best?

Todd Lubart: Oh, w ell, I like best w orking on dev eloping some theoretical ideas and trying to think of how w e can design an empirical study that could test these ideas And I also like the data analysis phase because it is actually a rather inv entiv e or exploratory phase, usually So I like these phases of research And then creativ ity is a topic that, compared to other topics of psychology, is not that much studied But there is a grow ing number of studies, kind of an exponential grow th of creativ ity studies And in any case, w ithin the field of creativ ity I w as alw ays interested in those topics that were the most ambiguous I don’t know for what reason but perhaps because they giv e the most leew ay, the most room for mov ing around, trying

w hatev er you like to try, compared to those topics w here, after a certain time and number of studies, you get into a mode of detailed testing and finding that last brick that is missing from the nice w all that w as built But that is not my cup of tea

EJOP: I n creativ ity studies there are bricks ev eryw here, but no final w all

Todd Lubar t: Yes, right I w ould say that in the scientific method there is an aspect that is quite technical and r ational and detail-oriented but there are also phases and topics where things are a little more ‘artistic’ And even in analysis, people say for example that exploratory factor analysis is a little bit of an artistic tool, compared

to other techniques w ere everyone w ill get to the exact same result I n factor analysis it is not completely sure that w ith the same dataset ev eryone gets the same result It’s a more exploratory, a little bit ‘artistic’, treatment of the data And those

w ere alw ays the kind of topics that I w as attracted to Luckily I also hav e a lot of

up on somebody w ho I might hav e met, w ho might hav e ideas I am not really much

of a lone w orker

EJOP: I n the end, do you hav e any w ords of adv ice for young scholars or students

w orking on creativ ity? Any concluding thoughts?

Todd Lubart: Well I think that for any topic, but I suppose you can apply this to creativity, that you obviously want to know what has been done but you don’t want

to get too stuck in the current thinking And that is true for any search f or a creativ e idea; one could apply it or should apply it ev en more to thinking about creativ ity So the idea w ould be to take the risk to go in a new direction, counter the current thinking, and try out new things Because in the w orst case you w asted your time or finally don’t get a result that was worthy to see the light of day but

Todd Lubar t: Yes Exactly