Chapter 7: Excellence, Aesthetics, Creativity, & Genius

Question 1

Basis of excellence

Answer 1

Learning and intensive practice

Question 2

Development of excellence

Answer 2

1. Knowledge base
2. Commitment
3. Practice
   - amount: 4 hrs/day
   - consistency: every day
   - deliberate: effortful, done with intention, focused
4. 10-year rule: It takes 10 years of deliberate, consistent practice to achieve excellence

Question 3

Resonance performance model

Answer 3

Dream leads to preparation, prep leads to obstacles, obstacles lead to revisiting the dream, cycle repeats.
Hooking back into excitement/motivation to keep going and continue pursuing the dream. Excellence is a byproduct of being “all-in”, excellence arises naturally from this level of engagement

Question 4

Passion

Answer 4

1. Harmonious: positive passion, assoc. w/ intrinsic motivation, autonomous choice, increased well-being
   Examples: playing an instrument, working at a job you enjoy, sports
2. Obsessive: negative passion, no longer autonomously chosen, can decrease well-being, assoc. w/ guilt and shame, may be overly time consuming/cutting into social time, may require lots of $$$.
   Examples: internet addiction, gambling, gaming, porn

Question 5

Grit

Answer 5

Having the persistence and passion to see a dream/goal through.
Requires perseverance to overcome obstacles and stay focused. More associated with academic success than IQ!
Persistence may be more important for achieving excellence than passion alone.

Question 6

Types of creativity

Answer 6

1. Big C: Major creative accomplishment that transforms culture and the way that people operate. Often associated with “geniuses”.
2. Little c: Novel solutions to everyday problems, daily creativity, unique solutions.

Question 7

Goal disengagement

Answer 7

Being able to disengage from goals that are no longer achievable. Giving up on that goal and getting a new, more attainable goal would be associated with greater well-being.
It is good to persist in the face of difficulty, but up to a realistic point. If you persist at a goal too long, it may no longer be achievable. Persistence in the face of an unattainable goal can decrease well-being.

Question 8

Researching creativity

Answer 8

Difficult to quantify, but recognizable by many people.
Four traditions:
1. Person
2. Process
3. Press
4. Product

Question 9

Guilford’s alternative uses task (researching creativity)

Answer 9

List as many possible uses for a common household item (such as a brick, a paperclip, a newspaper). Scoring components:

1. Fluency: the sheer number of ideas
2. Originality: the statistical infrequency of response
3. Flexibility: the degree of difference in the responses (categories)
4. Elaboration: the amount of detail in the response
   - most people agree on these 4 qualities

Question 10

The creative person

Answer 10

1. May/may not have large knowledge base
2. Commitment
3. Practice
4. Openness to Experience: Flexible thinking, tolerance for ambiguity, independent, intrinsically motivated, willing to restructure problems

Question 11

The creative process

Answer 11

Convergent thinking: converging on one idea that will be most useful.
Divergent thinking: finding all possible solutions before narrowing in on the one that will be most useful.
- Both styles of thought likely needed for creativity
Role of unconscious: taking a break from working on a problem can help you process it better and bring a new perspective to the problem/more creativity.
Wallas’ 4 stages of creativity:
1. Preparation leads to
2. Incubation, which leads to
3. Illumination (insight), which leads to
4. Verification, which circles back to preparation.

Question 12

Creative environments

Answer 12

1. Families: tends to be some hardship, dysfunctional relationships, but parents supportive of achieving goals, combo seems to lend itself to creativity
2. Work Settings: big open spaces, colors, things to keep people engaged and stimulate creativity
3. Geographic Locations/ Historical Periods: Renaissance in Italy, Freud/Adler/Jung meeting in Austria, industrial revolution in USA

Question 13

Confluence approach

Answer 13

Model of creativity which attempts to bring together different perspectives from diff psych fields. Includes the 6 following factors:

1. Environment
2. Intellectual abilities
3. Knowledge
4. Personality traits
5. Motivational styles
6. Thinking styles

Question 14

Enhancing creativity

Answer 14

Positive Emotions? Mixed results, more research needed.
Relaxation 
Mindfulness (Langer)
Following passion 
Taking breaks 
Exercising
Broaden perspective 
Random acts of culture

Question 15

Creativity & genius

Answer 15

Similarities:
1. Commitment to expertise
2. Motivation & Effort
3. Absorption
Differences:
1. Loners: degree of passion leads to sacrificing relationships
2. Arrogant: know-it-alls, can further alienate people
3. Ruthless: not focused on relationships, may use people for gain and then move on towards their goal
- Detrimental to relationships and well-being
Myth of Madness: bipolar disorder is not linked to higher levels of creativity.
Genius has a greater relationship with big-C creativity, not really associated with little-c creativity.

Question 16

Aesthetic experience

Answer 16

1. What is it? Appreciating beauty and grandeur in the environment/around you
2. Why is it important? Associated w/ well being, deprivation of it is associated w/ decreased well-being
3. Where does it come from? Appears to be fairly innate/universal in its appeal for people, dating back to beginnings of human history, music has an innate appeal, we tend to like what is familiar to us
   - Influence of both nature and nurture
   - can find beauty in science/math

Question 17

Attributes of aesthetics

Answer 17

1. Pleasure - positive memories, the use of the senses to engage with it! Leads to…
2. Absorption - fully present in the moment/experience. Leads to…
3. Challenge - artistic perspective, encourages different ways of thinking. Example: beginning of rap music, challenged ideas about the status quo, has now become more mainstream. (Will & Grace) Challenge leads to…
4. Intrinsic Motivation - people are curious and desire to seek out novel/interesting things, arises even in infancy, children seek out contrast (hairline) and prefer beautiful things

Question 18

Aesthetics and well-being

Answer 18

• music can enhance health and psychological well-being
• artistic expression associated with increased well-being, can enhance stress reduction
• dance can improve well-being and enhance a sense of meaning

Question 19

Diessner et al. 2006 study summary (beauty log intervention)

Answer 19

Undergraduate students completed beauty logs for 12 weeks. They wrote about experiences with natural, artistic, and moral beauty.
H1: Engaging with beauty increased participant’s trait hope!
H2: Non-sig correlation between total dispositional hope score and total beauty score. Significant correlations between trait hope agency and moral beauty, trait hope agency and overall engaging with beauty scores (EBS), and trait hope and moral beauty.
H3: Participants experienced a significant increase in their moral beauty engagement, but not in natural or artistic beauty engagement.
Conclusion: When students engage in moral beauty, they tend to want to:
1. Improve themselves morally
2. Increase their prosocial behavior
Cognition about moral judgments & actions -> moral emotions (elicited by moral beauty) -> performance of moral actions!