244
Recognizing Creativity:
A Reply to Magyari-Beck
Teresa M. Amabile
I !r
n his provocative essay, Ma ari-Beck
applies a familiar theme from t e history
of science to the field of creativity studies:
scientists’ theories and methodologies are
necessarily influenced by the sociallculturall
historical context in which the scientists
work. Magyari-Beck refers to this context as
’basic cultural paradigms’ and, although ad-
mitting that such paradigms can stimulate
new ideas, he argues that they can also
severely limit thinking in a field. After briefly
presenting what he sees as the limiting cul-
tural paradigms underlying the work of some
major creativity researchers (Guilford, Kirton,
Amabile, Parnes, Osborn, & Stein), Magyari-
Beck concludes that each of these researchers’
approaches is marred by ‘prejudices’ that
by prejudice? arose from these paradigms. Unfortunately,
although it is true that all researchers are
limited to some degree by their environ-
mental context, Magyari-Beck’s analysis is
based more on unfounded assumptions than
on scholarly reasoning.
Magyari-Beck objects to the application of
‘traditional science’ to the study of creativity,
but this objection belies a misunderstanding
of science. Science involves the systematic
search for regularities and the explication of
those regularities. It is illogical to argue, as
Magyari-Beck does, that because creativity
involves novelty, the study of creativity can-
not include the search for regularities. Of
course, creative behavior is almost certainly
extremely complex, subject to multiple inter-
active influences and feedback processes.
Magyari-Beck is correct in asserting that such
dynamic, ‘organic systems’ are unlikely to be
illuminated by methods limited to simple
correlations and factor analyses. But the
complexity of a system does not render it
unamenable to scientific methods (including
methods built on simple statistical analyses
as starting points). The behavior of atomic
Volume 3 Number 4 December 1994
CREATNlTY A N D 1NNOVATlON MANAGEMENT
particles, though exceedingly complex, is not
unknowable. So it is, too, with the behavior
of humans when they produce the novel,
valuable results identified as creative.
It is the identification of creativity that
Magyari-Beck focuses on when he discusses
my own work. Although I would prefer that
the term ‘Amabile’s approach’ be reserved
for my componential theory of creativity and
my body of work addressing social-environ-
mental influences on creativity (e.g. Amabile,
1979; 1983a; 1983b; 1988), I accept that the
definition and assessment of creativity are
fundamental issues. Unfortunately, because
Magyari-Beck does not provide his own defi-
nition of creativity (or of the ‘creatological
approach’), it is difficult to know whether he
objects to the substance of the conceptual
definition that I (and many other theorists)
have adopted (‘a novel and appropriate re-
sponse to an open-ended task’). Magyari-
Beck’s primary objection appears to be to the
way in which my students, colleagues, and
I assess creativity in our studies - what we
have termed the consensual assessment tech-
nique (Amabile, 1982).
In the consensual assessment technique,
we ask experts, broadly defined as people
familiar with a domain (such as art or poetry)
to assess products that our subjects have
made in that domain (such as collages or
haiku poems). Experts are used because, con-
trary to the implication of Magyari-Beck’s
term ’democracy’, we do not believe that any
human’s judgment of a product is as worthy
as any other’s. These experts are told to use
their own subjective definitions of creativity
to independently rate the products relative to
one another on creativity. (Those ratings are
made on Likert-type scales; Magyari-Beck’s
use of the term ‘voting’ implies that our
experts make dichotomous creativehot-
creative judgments). Using between 3 and
0 Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1994.108 Cowley Rd, Oxford OX4 1JF
and 238 Main St, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA.
 RECOGNIZING CREATIVITY: A REPLY TO MAGYARI-BECK
14 experts, we have found high levels of
inter-judge reliability with the consensual
assessment technique across a number of
domains. Thus, we average judge ratings for
each product and proceed to use those mean
ratings as measures of creativity for address-
ing our substantive questions concerning
social environment, motivation, and cre-
ativity.
Magyari-Beck expresses the wish for a
closer connection between our conceptual
and operational definitions, and we agree.
Although some research has pointed to a link
(Amabile, 1982)’ more work is needed to
identlfy the extent to which judges’ ratings of
products as creative are dependent on assess-
ments of those products as novel and appro-
priate. However, I strenuously disagree with
Magyari-Beck’s main point that ’in Amabile’s
approach it is the experts who have to do the
job of the creativity scholar’. The experts are
merely allowing for the reliable identification
of products as creative. What operational
definition of creativity would Magyari-Beck
have us adopt? He implies that it should be
up to the creativity scholar to say which
sculptures or pieces of literature or math-
ematical theorems are the most creative - a
position that seems untenable unless we
adopt the simplest operational definition of
creativity as statistical infrequency.
Certainly, it is the job of the creativity
scholar to discover the connections between
the antecedents and the products of creativity.
Only with reliable and valid assessments can
we do our work, and those assessments are
best obtained from people who can recognize
novelty and appropriateness in a given
domain.
It is also true that judgments of today’s
experts in a field might well differ from judg-
ments of yesterday’s - or tomorrow’s. Like-
wise, it is true that any assessments of prod-
ucts or ideas at the frontiers of any domain
are likely to be unreliable. I would argue that,
ultimately, reliable identification of creativity
levels at the contemporary boundaries of any
domain is impossible. (Although we have
successfully applied the consensual assess-
ment technique to the work of professional
artists, we have not attempted to use it for
truly avant-garde work in any domain.)
However, these points do not mean that con-
sensual judgments of creativity ’fail’. They
0 Basil Blackwell Ltd. 1994
26
do mean that the social, historical, and cul-
tural context of creativity identification is
always important. This view, which is shared
by other creative theorists (such as Gardner
(1988) and Csikszentmihalyi (1988)), seems
philosophically aligned with Magyari-Beck’s
own arguments concerning the role of ’cul-
tural paradigms’.
Like Magyari-Beck, I believe that creativity
scholars must attempt to stretch beyond the
bounds of our current theoretical conceptions
and methodological frameworks. And, like
him, I agree that we need more rigorous
empirical research on creativity. However, it
is imperative that we delve beyond super-
ficial analysis to a careful, detailed exami-
nation of creativity in personal, social, and
historical context. It is also imperative that we
recognize which questions are amenable to
empirical analysis and which are primarily
philosophical.
References
Amabile, T.M. (1979). Effects of external evalu-
ation on artistic creativity. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 37, 221-233.
Amabile, T.M. (1982). Social psychology of cre-
ativity: A consensual assessment technique.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 43,
997-1013.
Amabile, T.M. (1983a). The social psychology of
creativity. New York: Springer-Verlag.
Amabile, T.M. (1983b). Social psychology of cre-
ativity: A componential conceptualization. Reliable and valid
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45, assessments needed
357-377.
Amabile, T.M. (1988). A model of organizational
innovation. In B.M. Staw and L.L. Cummings
(eds), Research in organizational behavior, Vol. 10.
Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1988). Society, culture, and
person: A systems view of creativity. In R.J.
Sternberg (ed.), The nature of creativity. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gardner, H. (1988). Creative lives and creative
works: A synthetic scientific approach. In R.J.
Sternberg (ed.), The nature of creativity. Cam-
From January 1 1995
bridge: Cambridge University Press. please send correspon-
dence to:
Professor Teresa Amabile
Professor of Business
Teresa Amabile is Professor of Psychology Administration
at Brandeis University, Massachusetts, Harvard Business School
USA. Soldiers Field Road
Boston, MA 02163, USA.
Volume 3 Number 4 December 1994