Discovery-Oriented Behavior and the Originality of Creative Products: A Study with Artists

Abstract

In order to examine the significance of the "problem-formulation" stage of creative activity, 31 advanced art students were observed in a quasi-naturalistic setting of an art school while carrying out an assignment to produce a still-life drawing. Observations of "discovery-oriented" behavior were recorded for each subject from the time he began organizing the still-life objects until he completed the actual drawing. The finished art work was independently evaluated by an expert panel on three dimensions: overall value, originality, and craftsmanship. A positive relationship was found between discovery-oriented behavior at the problem-formulation stage and the originality (but not the craftsmanship) of the creative product. The study affirms the theoretical and empirical importance of the problem-formulation stage of the creative process and suggests a method for observing and analyzing behavior at this stage. Despite much recent research on creativity, perhaps the most critical aspect of the problem has eluded systematic inquiry: the process of creative production itself. Although the literature contains numerous self-reports by people engaged in creative tasks (Arnheim 1948; Guitar 1964; Ruitenbeek 1965; Tomas 1964) or interviews with creative individuals regarding their psychological states while at work (Barron 1969; Halasz 1966), and despite the fact that the importance of understanding the creative process rather than merely recording the characteristics of creative people has also long been recognized (Ghiselin 1959; Taylor 1959), the difficulties involved in obtaining reliable observations of such elusive phenomena