Developing Creativity in Psychological Science and Beyond
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Theoretical Framework: The Triangular Theory of Creativity
3. The Theory of Transactional and Transformational Creativity
3.1. Transactional Creativity
3.2. Transformational Creativity
3.3. Pretransformational Creativity
3.4. Proto-Transformational Creativity
3.5. Transformative Creativity
4. What’s to Be Done to Enhance Creativity, in Psychology and Other Disciplines?
- Hard work. One realizes that one must work hard, and that ability can make hard work more effective or more efficient but cannot substitute for it;
- Niche-picking. Niche-picking refers to one’s finding an area of research as well as teaching that appeals to one and that one can become passionate about. It is finding the right fit for one’s abilities and attitudes;
- Taste in scientific problems. Perhaps the most important attribute of psychological and other scientists who are eminent is that they have exquisite taste in scientific problems. They leave the smaller and less important problems to others. They focus on the problems that may truly enable them to make a world-meaningful creative contribution;
- Willingness to formulate an extended program of research. They find one or more problems that captivate them and then they devise a program of research, executed over time, that enables them successively better to understand the phenomena of interest to them. They are doing what they love to do, and, for the most part, let the work and their presentation of it market themselves;
- Willingness to set their own, often idiosyncratic paths. These scientists show themselves to be willing to defy the crowd. They do not follow well-trodden paths but rather create their own paths. They are not scientists who follow the current fashions. They seek to create the fashions of the future. Moreover, most of them create multiple idiosyncratic paths during the course of their careers. That is, they are willing to defy themselves as well as to defy the crowd in pursuit of making science and the world better;
- Willingness to surmount obstacles. Virtually all scientists encounter obstacles in their career paths. All have significant setbacks. They all need either to navigate around the obstacles they encounter or else directly crash through those obstacles;
- Intellectual curiosity. Conducting serious psychological research with the goal of making a difference to the field or even the world requires great intellectual curiosity because there is no one there to structure your research. Generally, you are on your own;
- Openness to new experiences. To be a trailblazer, one must be open to new experiences because one is not following a pre-existing trail but rather forging one’s own trail;
- Intellectual honesty. One must be intellectually honest because science is based on honesty. Presenting false results not only destroys one’s own career and integrity but also defrauds others who may follow up on the false results;
- Willingness to take intellectual risks. Forging one’s own path is always a risk because, as noted above, it may lead nowhere, or at least, nowhere good, or simply derail one from studying problems one is able to solve;
- Intellectual courage. Forging one’s own scientific path requires courage. Others generally are uncomfortable with people who depart from the going paradigm (Kuhn, 2012). Distinguished scientists are courageous in following a transformational path that others do not see to follow or do not wish even to approach;
- Collaborative skills. Regardless of who receives credit, almost all of science involves collaboration at some level. Even if no collaborators are involved, one will have to negotiate the publication process, which inevitably involves working with others, often not in an entirely pleasant way, as it is the rare paper that receives only positive reviews;
- Communication and persuasion skills. With creativity, coming up with an idea is not always the hardest part of the creative process. Often, the hardest part is persuading other people to accept one’s ideas. Hence, one must be willing to figure out strategies to communicate what one has found to other people in a compelling and persuasive way. Without such communication, the idea may well die on the vine;
- Tolerance of ambiguity. The eminent psychologists identified by Diener et al. (2014) all had long, tortuous roads to get to the point at which they were eminent for their ground-breaking work. Not one of them had a smooth, straight path. Most were confronting feelings of failure at some point during their career and some at multiple points. One must confront many ambiguities in one’s research—results that do not quite make sense, or theories that do not quite hang together;
- Self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is a belief in one’s ability to succeed in the tasks one needs to do. To be creative in psychology, one must believe in oneself, even in the face of failures, such as experiments that do not work out and rejected articles and grant proposals. (The author of this article dismally failed his first psychology exam in his first year of college, receiving a score of 3 out of 10.). One needs to keep up the belief in oneself, lest one lose not only the support of others, but also one’s own support;
- Know your strengths and weaknesses. No one is good at everything. A career as a research and teaching psychologist demands a very wide variety of skills, but no one can expect to excel in all of them. It is a good idea, therefore, to analyze one’s strengths so as to capitalize on them and at the same time, analyze one’s weaknesses so as to compensate for them or correct them;
- Above-average analytical intelligence. Although none of the scholars took an IQ test for inclusion in the list, it is clear that they all possessed above-average intelligence, almost however defined (Mackintosh, 2011; Sternberg, 2020; Wagner & Sternberg, 1984). The traditional view is that intelligence is relatively stable, but many theorists of intelligence believe it is at least modestly to moderately modifiable (Jaeggi et al., 2011; Peng et al., 2017; Sternberg et al., 2008). One maintains and enhances one’s intelligence by using it and loses it by leaving it scarcely used (Kohn & Schooler, 1978);
- Luck. Finally, there is luck. For whatever reason, or none at all, some people end up luckier than others. One must figure out how to make the most of the luck one has and, where possible, “make one’s own good luck” by doing things in a way that brings one favorable resources and, hopefully, positive attention.
- Stress the importance of creative attitudes in the development of creativity. Students often think of creativity as something inborn and fixed. In contrast, however, creativity can be developed through a change in how one thinks about one’s life and one’s work (Sternberg, 2000, 2018; Sternberg & Lubart, 1995; see also R. De Bono, 1999; E. De Bono, 2015; Glăveanu et al., 2019; James & Taylor, 2010; Kaufman, 2023; Lubart & Thornhill-Miller, 2019);
- Stress the modifiability of creative attitudes. Creative attitudes are modifiable, not fixed (Sternberg, 2018; Schank & Childers, 1988). They represent a decision anyone can make in their work and in their life. Encourage students to adopt their own creative attitudes;
- Provide role models of creative attitudes. Provide role models of creative attitudes, as is done in the Sternberg et al. (2016) book, but as can be found in any history of science, in general, and psychology, in particular. Some psychological scientists, such as Roger Sperry, Herbert Simon, and Daniel Kahneman, mentioned earlier, developed their creative attitudes to the point that they won the Nobel Prize;
- As a teacher or mentor, be a role model yourself. Students observe how teachers think. Role-model the creative attitudes that students should adopt;
- Stress the importance of transformationality. Too much creativity today is being used for neutral or even negative purposes. Stress the importance of using creativity to do positive things and make the world a better place.
- Climate change. Climate change is a phenomenon whose reality is accepted by virtually all (97%) of responsible climatologists and meteorologists (Cook, 2025; NASA, n.d.). Yet, many people refuse to believe in it, preferring to follow politicians, celebrities, and ideologists who deny or belittle its existence (Uteuova, 2024). Many leaders around the world are minimizing the effects of climate change, even after the Los Angeles fires of January 2025. They and others should learn from the fires, but they likely will not (Prose, 2025). How could psychologists use their knowledge of persuasion techniques to help responsible leaders persuade people of the catastrophic risks of climate change and thereby help create a better world?
- AI. More and more experts in the field of artificial intelligence are recognizing that the development of AI, for all its good intentions, may turn us humans into servants of AI rather than its masters (Dreyfus & Dreyfus, 1988; Goodyear, 2023; Roose, 2023). Nobel Prize winner Geoffrey Hinton has noted that for AI to flip to master from servant would require little more than a subroutine telling the AI to put its own interests ahead of those of its programmers, or humans in general (see Metz, 2023). Meanwhile, the use of generative AI is threatening the development of reading and writing skills in young people, who are turning to AI to do work they previously would have had to do themselves. Psychologists are desperately needed to work with computer scientists to ensure that AI does not spiral out of control even more than it already has;
- Weapons of mass destruction. Weapons of mass destruction are becoming more and more deadly and, at the same time, difficult to stop. Those are the goals, for example, with hypersonic missiles, which travel so fast that they are extremely difficult to intercept. The new weaponry, which already is being developed and used now by imperialist regimes, only encourages more new weaponry to counteract the newly existing weaponry. A cycle of competition for more deadly weaponry is created that already has spun out of control. How does one stop the cycle? Osgood (1962) devised a method to reduce international tensions, Graduated Reciprocation in Tension Reduction (GRIT). Perhaps psychologists of the future could work to apply it in today’s world.
5. Comparison to Another Theoretical Framework: 4 Cs
6. Conclusions
Funding
Data Availability Statement
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
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Highly Controllable Characteristics |
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Modestly or Moderately Controllable Characteristics |
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Sternberg, R.J. Developing Creativity in Psychological Science and Beyond. Educ. Sci. 2025, 15, 201. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci15020201
Sternberg RJ. Developing Creativity in Psychological Science and Beyond. Education Sciences. 2025; 15(2):201. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci15020201
Chicago/Turabian StyleSternberg, Robert J. 2025. "Developing Creativity in Psychological Science and Beyond" Education Sciences 15, no. 2: 201. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci15020201
APA StyleSternberg, R. J. (2025). Developing Creativity in Psychological Science and Beyond. Education Sciences, 15(2), 201. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci15020201