 20. Creativity and Genius  427
Creativity
Creativity  involves the generation of cre -
ative ideas. Although researchers have long 
debated what makes an idea creative, recent 
discussion suggests three essential criteria: 
originality, utility, and surprise (Simonton, 
2018). Originality  signifies that the idea has 
a very low initial probability; utility  indi -
cates that the idea proves useful (i.e., effec -
tive, appropriate, adaptive, or meaningful, 
depending on the task demands); and sur -
prise  means that the idea is not an obvious 
derivation from prior knowledge but rather 
adds something new to that knowledge or 
expertise. All three criteria are necessary, 
but no single criterion or pair of criteria is 
sufficient. A useless idea cannot be creative, 
no matter how original, for example. Unfor -
tunately, the definition of creativity is com -
plicated by the fact that creative ideas are as -
sessed at two contrasting levels (Simonton, 
2013b). On the one hand, personal  creativ -
ity involves the creator’s own assessment of 
an idea’s originality, utility, and surprise—  a 
purely psychological phenomenon. On the 
other hand, consensual  creativity entails 
how the idea is evaluated by others, whether 
coworkers, supervisors, colleagues, con -
noisseurs, audiences, critics, scholars, or 
historians—  assessments that introduce in -
terpersonal, disciplinary, and sociocultural 
factors operating outside the creator’s psy -
chology. Personal creativity is sometimes 
called “little-  c” creativity, whereas consen -
sual creativity is called “Big-C” creativity, 
with the latter then associated with creative 
genius (Simonton, 2013b).
Another complication in understand -
ing creativity is that researchers have ad -
opted more than one way to investigate the 
emergence of creative ideas. These different 
ways essentially represent contrary levels of 
psychological analysis. Three viewpoints, 
in particular, are paramount (Simonton, 
2003):
1. Creativity can be viewed as a mental 
process  (or collection of processes) that re -
sults in the production of ideas simultane -
ously original, useful, and surprising. This 
is the perspective favored by cognitive psy -
chologists who study problem solving and in -
sight using either laboratory experiments or computer simulations (Simonton & Damian, 
2013).
2. Creativity can be seen as a character -
istic of a product,  such as a discovery, in -
vention, poem, painting, or composition, 
which contains one or more creative ideas. 
The higher the creativity of those ideas and 
the richer the concentration of those ideas, 
the more creative the product. The study of 
creative products is the primary occupation 
of psychologists in experimental aesthetics 
(Tinio, 2019), albeit occasionally psycholo -
gists have also attempted to comprehend sci -
entific products.
3. Creativity is a trait or personality pro -
file that characterizes a person ; that is, it is 
some quality or capacity that some individu -
als have more than others, and still others 
may not even have at all. [bodyni]For in -
stance, creativity may consist of some special 
combination of such individual-  difference 
factors as intelligence, ambition, determina -
tion, independence, openness, and original -
ity. Needless to say, this is the perspective 
adopted by personality psychologists who 
wish to identify that set of personal attri -
butes that distinguish creative individuals 
from people who display little if any creativ -
ity (Feist, 2019).
These are the process, product, and per -
son perspectives on creativity (cf. Damian & 
Simonton, 2015a). These three perspectives 
are not totally independent. At the very least, 
we might hope that creative products are 
generated by creative persons using creative 
processes. It is for this reason that investiga -
tors often combine two or three perspectives 
in a single inquiry. For example, researchers 
might gauge individual differences in cre -
ativity in terms of their comparative output 
of creative products, then attempt to predict 
that variation using cognitive and person -
ality variables (e.g., Grosul & Feist, 2014; 
Feist, 1993; Kell & Lubinski, 2014). None -
theless, most investigators tend to concen -
trate on just one of the three perspectives, 
the remaining two becoming secondary at 
best. This is true for the bulk of the person -
ality research, which usually concentrates 
on the creative person, assigning noticeably 
less attention to the process and product as -
pects (Simonton, 2003).