This is my first post on a psychology article, but what caught my attention was a subtle trend in the article to put a positive value judgment on creativity, for example, defining creativity as something that "usefully changes" how we think.

I was watching Titanic, and Kate Winslet was talking about how Picasso's art was like looking into a dream, or something, and Billy Zane said that Picasso would never amount to anything.

My point is (which is why it's relevant that I'm new to this), but if psychology is a science, why must we bring a value judgment into it? Why not just say that Picasso is creative, even though Kate Winslet and Billy Zane may disagree about how "useful" this creativity is?

The article says that creative people "just think more effectively - and persistently." My brother is a dentist. Sometimes applying learned knowledge in a non-novel way is the most effective.

I guess it is tricky because creativity by definition is good, but that does not seem scientific to me, and it seems like circular reasoning. The article itself admits that you must be willing to fail, take risks, and "break rules" to build creative muscle. It seems I could make the same value judgments against creativity--people who break rules and do not trust established ways of solving problems are not always doing themselves a favor.

Anyways, I feel this article could have been equally informative without placing a positive value judgment on creativity (or novelty, defining that if it's non-useful novelty it is conveniently not creative) and making people feel like they need to be more creative. I say, if people are generally less creative, there is nothing wrong with their way of thinking, necessarily, at least not based on what I read in this article, and they may not need to flex their creative muscle.

After posting that comment above, I looked into it and I found out about a trend in psychology called positive psychology.

I am not sure how I feel about positive psychology as a science, but it definitely has a scientific psychological basis and it takes the punch out of my previous comment when I was not understanding why a scientist would make value judgments like that.

That is all!

Dear Ben2501,

Your questions about the implicit positive value placed on creativity raise some interesting issues. Our response turned into our next post. Check it out!