The “Classical” view assumes that creativity is a product of the divine or the unknowable. It results from inspiration; a flash of “brilliance” provided by God, or a Muse. Those taking this approach to creativity believe that the creator is merely a vessel or conduit for creativity. Consequently, they have little control over the timing or contents of the creative act.

The “Romantic” view assumes that creativity results from special cognitive processes or personality traits possessed by creative individuals. These traits include motivation, persistence in the face of obstacles, and the ability to engage in divergent thinking and/or form remote associations. Though all people possess these processes and traits to a certain degree, creative individuals possess them to a greater extent than “normal” individuals.

The “Cognitive” view of creativity assumes that creativity results from normal cognitive processes (e.g., memory retrieval, conceptual combination, analogy) operating on normal knowledge structures (e.g., concepts, schemas). In fact, the Cognitive view argues that creativity is essential for our ability to function effectively in our environment.

When I became a professor, I, too, lectured on creativity and organized my lecture in the same fashion as Dr. Ward. I didn’t really question the labels he had given each approach to creativity. After all, he is a creativity expert and one of the founders of the creative cognition approach to the study of creativity. It wasn’t until I had created homework assignments based on this lecture and received some bizarre responses from my students that I realized that these labels were not standard in the field.

As is typical for college classrooms, there are always a few students who skip class. The bizarre responses to the creativity homework assignment typically came from the students who had missed the creativity lecture. In trying to complete the assignment, they Googled the terms “Romantic View” and “Cognitive View” or tried to find the information on Wickipedia. Typically, they found nothing outside of what I posted in my lecture notes. It was this phenomenon that let me know that this particular characterization of the various creativity approaches was a creation of my advisor. However, it wasn’t until my recent reading of Weiner’s book “Creativity and Beyond” that I realized the potential source of this characterization.

In his book, Weiner discusses the evolution of the concept of “creativity”.

He states that early in our history, creativity was believed to be divine. Only Gods could truly create. Humans could only mimic the work of the divine and when they did so, they accomplished creative acts through divine intervention. This was especially evident in the Greek and Roman belief in the Muses – the goddesses of invention. The period in Western history in which the Greeks and Romans made great advances in art, literature, philosophy, politics, and so much more is often referred to as the “Classical”period. I assume this is the reason that Ward characterized the belief of creativity resulting from divine inspiration the “classical view” of creativity.

Similarly, the “Romantic” period in Western history (Romanticism) refers to a period of time in the early 19th century when people began to focus on the emotional and sentimental side of humanity. It was a period in which people embraced emotion before rationality. As Weiner points out, this was manifested in a tendency to view creativity as an “emanation or outpouring of emotional energy rather than as a reflection of ordered development.” This view of creativity differed from that of the classical view in that creativity now resided in the individual rather than in the divine. As a result, it was believed that differences in creative ability were based in individual differences. Art was no longer considered to be a skill but a domain of special creativity and those who excelled at the arts or other creative domains were considered “creative geniuses.”

I am just hypothesizing about the source of Ward’s labels for the creativity approaches just discussed. I have yet to ask him directly whether my hypotheses are correct (maybe I will when I see him at the Psychonomics conference this November). However, I know that Ward’s label of the Cognitive View of creativity is based on the idea that creativity results from normal cognitive processes and knowledge structures.