The Nature of Human Creativity

Robert J. Sternberg, Ph.D., is Professor of Human Development at Cornell and Honorary Professor of Psychology at the University of Heidelberg. Formerly he was IBM Professor of Psychology and Education at Yale. He has won both the William James and James McKeen Cattell Awards from the Association for Psychological Science as well as more than two dozen other major awards, and is a member of the National Academy of Education and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is past-president of the American Psychological Association and the Federation of Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences. He is among the most cited psychologists in the world, with roughly 139,000 citations and an h index of 182. James C. Kaufman, Ph.D., is a Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Connecticut. He is the author or editor of more than 40 books, including Creativity 101 (2nd Edition, 2016) and The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity (with Robert Sternberg; Cambridge, 2010). He has published more than 300 papers, including the 'Four-C Model of Creativity' (with Ron Beghetto) and the study that spawned the 'Sylvia Plath Effect'. He is a past president of Division 10 (Society for Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts) of the APA and is the president-elect of the American Creativity Association. James has won many awards, including Mensa's research award, the Torrance Award from the National Association for Gifted Children, and APA's Berlyne, Arnheim, and Farnsworth awards. He co-founded two major journals (Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts and Psychology of Popular Media Culture) and currently co-edits the International Journal of Creativity and Problem Solving.

'This superb collection of interdisciplinary essays contains 23 chapters, each written by an eminent scholar in the field of creativity … The vast differences between individual stories and experiences will appeal to graduate students and young researchers who may need confirmation that there are many ways to be a successful researcher and scientist, and seasoned scholars across a variety of disciplines may feel invigorated and refueled by recognizing themselves in the narrative and finding pieces of research questions connected to their own.' S. W. French, Choice

• Foreword Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi; Preface Robert J. Sternberg and James C. Kaufman; 1. Creativity and the labor of love Teresa M. Amabile; 2. The trouble with 'creativity' John Baer; 3. Do we choose our scholarly paths or do they choose us? My reflections on exploring the nature of creativity in educational settings Ronald A. Beghetto; 4. Bringing creativity down to earth: a long labour lost? Arthur Cropley; 5. In search of the creative personality Gregory J. Feist; 6. From fascination to research: progress and problems in creativity research Adrian Furnham; 7. Creativity: the view from big 'C' and the introduction of tiny c Howard Gardner and Emily Weinstein; 8. I never intended to become a research psychologist Beth A. Hennessey; 9. What creativity can be, and what creativity can do James C. Kaufman; 10. Creativity across the 7 C's Todd Lubart; 11. Creative thinking in the real world: processing in context Michael D. Mumford, Robert Martin, Samantha Elliott and Tristan McIntosh; 12. It all makes sense now that I think about it: a quarter century of studying creativity Jonathan A. Plucker; 13. Creative cognition at the individual and team level: what happens before and after idea generation Roni Reiter-Palmon; 14. The malleability of creativity: a career in helping students discover and nurture their creativity Joseph S. Renzulli; 15. Everyday creativity: challenges for self and world – six questions Ruth Richards and Terri Goslin-Jones; 16. Authentic creativity: mechanisms, definitions, and empirical efforts Mark A. Runco; 17. Pretend play and creativity: two templates for the future Sandra W. Russ; 18. An interdisciplinary study of group creativity R. Keith Sawyer; 19. Creativity is undefinable, controllable, and everywhere Paul J. Silvia; 20. Genius, creativity, and leadership: a half-century journey through science, history, mathematics, and psychology Dean Keith Simonton; 21. The triangle of creativity Robert J. Sternberg; 22. Creativity as a continuum Thomas B. Ward; 23. Reflections on a personal journey studying the psychology of creativity Robert W. Weisberg; Afterword: the big questions in the field of creativity: now and tomorrow Robert J. Sternberg and James C. Kaufman.