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Summary
Our guest speaker delved deeper into a question that was posed at the beginning of the semester, whether creativity could be taught and also adding to it...if intelligence and creativity were the same. This subject, I feel was very interesting too all my classmates and myself. This was not a terribly new concept to me since I have had this come up in previous psychology classes that I have taken. I found his information extremely easy to follow and it made perfect sense to me. The studies that he has done in the past utilize the equipment and technology designed to look at diseases of the brain for a completely different purpose. I think that this could be and example of innovation! These studies that he does are focused on creativity not "genius" or intelligence. He made sure to distinguish between the two and emphasized that you do not need to be a genius in order to be creative and that everyone has at least a little creativity in them. I also like the point that he made that IQ tests are terribly accurate, this was something that I had always heard was false. I was also interested in the whole correlation (weak) between height and intelligence!! I also like that he touched on the crazy=creative thing because this is also something that I had always thought to be true. When I look at the individuals whom I always held to be the most creative (mostly writers), I saw a great deal of correlation between their mental states and creativity (Edgar Allen Poe, Sylvia Plath for example). I still don't know if I fully believe there isn't a link between the two because of my own personal experiences. Also, the link between age and creativity...for me this makes perfect sense as well as the regions of the brain that he feels are responsible for creativity. I was one of the people who thought that creativity couldn't be taught...and I still sort of believe this despite hearing that the parts of the brain can be excercised and (like a muscle) become stronger. Perhaps this is something that I need to witness first hand in order to fully understand/believe it. I really really enjoyed this presentation. This was the first discussion or presentation that I have been to where I felt like I understood 90% of what he was talking about. Thank you for giving us this opportunity.
Questions:
Future Studies:
I would really be interested in the synesthesia and creativity thing. I already have a big interest in synesthesia and from what I've read and the presentations that I've attended by people in the field, there are brain activity differences. I'd like to see how this relates specifically to creativity instead of intelligence and if the type of synesthesia affects the creativity. Also, if there were a way to test for creativity genetically I think the results of that would be very interesting or perhaps studies regarding families (which would probably tie into nature vs nurture) to see if creativity "runs" in some families and if that is genetically linked or just environmentally.