Emergences: Towards a Cognitive-Affective Model for Creativity in the Arts

Abstract

In this chapter, I focus on the production of metaphors in the creative arts, because while the judgement of appropriateness is subjective to the individual artist, and the judgement of novelty still dependent on their knowledge of their field, one can assume that experienced artists are qualified and able to judge such outputs. The judgement of experienced practitioners has been referred to as the 'gold standard' in the consensual assessment technique for measuring creativity in relation to poetry and visual art. In terms of metaphor production, the initial generation of metaphor tends to happen by insight. It is apparently spontaneous and unconscious, with the work of selecting between metaphors, and improving on them, occurring after they come into consciousness and subject to attentional and analytic thought processes. This chapter will outline a possible model to account for the initial subconscious phase of metaphor generation, drawing on the current theories and evidence from cognitive science and neuroscience, in order to understand both the cognitive aspects of insight in metaphor generation, while also accounting for the emotional aspects of the process of making creative art, and the associated reward experienced by the artist in making the artefact. Because I am a practicing poet, most of my examples will be drawn from that discipline. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)