MOD - Inspiration as Transmission of Creative Insight

College Of William And Mary, Williamsburg VA

Investigators

Abstract

Scientists, inventors, writers, and other creators have attested to the importance of inspiration in the creative process. In contrast, creativity researchers have generally dismissed the concept of inspiration, arguing that ascription of creative insight to the intervention of a supernatural source ("muse") is outmoded myth. However, it is possible to reconcile creators' accounts of inspiration with contemporary science. Specifically, consistent with creators' accounts, inspiration is posited to be an effect of creative insight, not its cause; inspiration is posited to be a motivational state that is aroused in response to a creative insight and that compels the individual to translate the creative insight into a creative product. This perspective exposes an important gap in the research literature. Creativity researchers have made considerable progress in identifying the cognitive, neurological, and contextual origins of creative insight (thus debunking the notion of Muse) but have largely ignored the state of inspiration that promotes the translation of creative insights into creative products. This oversight is striking, because the failure to translate creative ideas into tangible products is likely to be among the most important obstacles to innovation. This project involves three primary goals. The first goal is to develop methods for the assessment of inspiration and to provide evidence of their validity. Several methods of assessment are being developed, including self-report questionnaires and objective indicators derived, for instance, from digital video of nonverbal behaviors and from electronic monitoring of the creative process. The second goal is to demonstrate that inspiration is a robust predictor of creativity and other socially valued outcomes, including work productivity and efficiency. Several types of creative activity are examined, including invention, scientific writing, and the writing of poetry. In each case, creativity is assessed objectively (e.g., receipt of patents) or through a peer-review process. The third goal is to establish the functional significance of inspiration by integrating it with contemporary theories of personality and human motivation. For instance, the personality traits that predict the creativity of an initial insight are expected to be fundamentally different from the traits that predict the tendency to become inspired to actualize the insight. In addition, mysterious aspects of the subjective experience of inspiration, such as the feeling that one is functioning as the mouthpiece of a power beyond oneself, are expected to be explained by the involvement of implicit (unconscious) processes. This project will have important impacts beyond advancing the motivation, inspiration, and creativity research literatures. For instance, the findings will be widely disseminated in the form of research articles, book chapters, and conference presentations; tools for the assessment of inspiration, known to be predictive of creativity, productivity, and efficiency, will be available for use in the workplace and in educational settings; and policy makers and others concerned with societal adaptation to changing physical and sociopolitical environments will be equipped with well-validated models of the processes through which innovative and transformative ideas are translated into concrete products and solutions.