The Wiley Handbook of Genius (Simonton/The Wiley) || The Systems Model of Creativity and Its Applications

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The Systems Model of Creativityand Its Applications

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

A Brief History of the Concept of Creativity

Early stages

One of the most characteristic and universal traits of human beings has always been

the desire to inquire about the causes of events. From an evolutionary point of view,

this feature has been invaluable to our species, as it has led to innumerable discoveries

that have generally given a reproductive advantage to those individuals who, because

of their genetic makeup or because of early experience, have been endowed with it.

The old saw, “curiosity killed the cat,” when applied to our species should be changed

to “curiosity saved the species.” The few percentage points that differentiate human

DNA from that of the great apes notwithstanding, our kind has created – generation

after generation – systems of tools, symbols, values, and lifestyles that divide it sharply

from other life forms. For example, in practically every culture, mythical stories have

slowly evolved to explain how the world was created, why people differed from other

animals, why we died, and what happened to us afterwards.

Unusual or unexpected events were initially explained in terms of intercession on

the part of supernatural beings, anthropomorphic gods who punished men by striking

them with disease and famines, or rewarding them with successful hunts and plentiful

harvests. Even as late as 3,000 years ago, in the most advanced culture of Europe,

poets such as Homer described history largely in terms of the squabbles between the

Olympian gods. The great Trojan War started because the jealous wife of Zeus wanted

to punish the son of the Trojan king who inadvertently had scorned her by giving the

top prize for beauty to Aphrodite. Then, all the other gods entered the fray after

Apollo blasted the Greek army besieging Troy with his plague-bearing arrows; some

of the Olympians helped the Trojans, some the Greeks.

But the gods caused more than wars. Various Muses told the artists how to write

exquisite poems and make beautiful statues, or paintings. The gods also owned the

secrets of technology, and only by stealing them could humans, such as the poor

Prometheus, learn how to use fire or forge metals. And Prometheus paid for his discov-

eries by being chained to a peak in the Caucasus mountains by the irate gods; there, a

squadron of god-trained vultures kept tearing out his liver, immediately snatched away

The Wiley Handbook of Genius, First Edition. Edited by Dean Keith Simonton.© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

534 Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

as it miraculously grew back again, on and on for eternity. Not a story to encourage

technological innovation on the part of young people.

It is true that, even by Homer’s time, people did not claim that the gods accom-

plished all these feats by themselves. Either because they were lazy or because they

lacked interest, they delegated much of their great tasks to the execution of mere mor-

tals. And with the passing of centuries, men (and occasionally, women) got more and

more credit, relative to gods, for what was happening in the world. In fact, the Greeks

eventually concluded that it was possible for men to achieve some sort of immortality

because of their actions. A brave warrior, an illustrious statesman, or even a great poet

could aspire to have their feats remembered generation after generation, and as long

as their achievements were still in the memory of their descendants, they were not

really, entirely stone dead.

As time passed, creative acts were increasingly attributed to human agency, rather

than to supernatural intervention. But at least metaphorically, the connection still

remained. When, in the Renaissance, the art critic and historian, Giorgio Vasari, called

Michelangelo the divine Michelangelo (Vasari, 1550/1959), his readers knew that

Vasari was not blaspheming, but praising the artist as having attributes so far above

the human norm that one could not understand his accomplishments by comparing

them with those of other humans.

Now, about 500 years after Vasari wrote, we still tend to believe that only a person

of supernormal ability could have made the wonderful sculptures, buildings, poems,

paintings, computers, and nuclear devices we admire so much. The “creative” indi-

vidual is no longer thought of as being helped by gods, exactly, but more as being the

lucky heir of some unknown strand of DNA that made them in some respects super-

human. And thus it has dawned on many people, especially economists and business

writers, that creativity is the next major resource that could be extracted for achieving a

competitive edge in the marketplace; hence, bookstore shelves are groaning under the

multitude of volumes on how to develop personal creativity, or how to build organi-

zations where individual creativity can be nurtured. Critics have not failed to note that

the content of such advice is generally predictable, repetitive, and utterly uncreative

(Frank, 2013).

It must be said that not everyone has subscribed to the notion that history, or

culture, was shaped primarily by great men. For example, Tolstoy throughout War

and Peace argued against the then widely held opinion that Napoleon was a genius

of warfare, who single-handedly could change the destiny of nations (see Simonton,

1979). The growth of sociology as a scientific discipline made us increasingly aware

of the impact of social forces shaping culture. Even in the realm of the arts, which,

because of its subjectivity, seemed clearly dependent on individual genius, some his-

torians have noted that it is not so much the individual artists who are responsible for

the existence of great works of art. For instance, without the opportunity and guid-

ance provided by the bishops, bankers, and guilds that wanted to make Florence the

most beautiful city in the world, the great works of the 15th century that define the

high point of Western art would never have come about (Hauser, 1951; Heydenreich,

1974). Similar arguments have been made for the explosion of music in Germany and

Austria: Bach, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven were given the chance of composing

their great works because the many princelings competing with each other for promi-

nence sought out and supported promising musicians who could impress guests at the

Systems Model of Creativity 535

elaborate parties where all the important people showed up, and the reputations of

hosts were made.

Creativity as a topic in psychology

Given the state of the zeitgeist, and the fact that psychologists are defined by their

expertise in understanding individual human behavior, it was inevitable that creativity

would be perceived by psychologists as something to be explained in terms of the cog-

nitive, emotional, and motivational processes taking place within individual persons.

Some, building on the early work of the Italian physician, Cesare Lombroso

(1874/2006), who, writing in 1870, suggested similarities between the creative and

the criminal mind, have been exploring the connections between mental illness and

creativity. It made sense to assume that insanity and originality might have common

roots. In fact, the epileptic seizures causing patients to mumble and move uncon-

trollably have long been interpreted as signs of divine possession. This perspective

is still lively in the psychological literature, where every once in a while, the debate

erupts as to how much of creativity, if any, is due to bipolar disorders, or even to

schizophrenia (e.g., Flaherty, 2004; Hershman, 1998; Jamison, 1993; Rothenberg,

1990; Simonton, 2005).

Other psychologists were more interested in the processes that might turn ordinary

thinking into creative breakthroughs. The earliest systematic work on creativity con-

ducted in the US, that of J. P. Guilford, resulted in the concept of divergent thinking

(Guilford, 1967) – which later spawned the notion of “thinking outside the box” (De

Bono, 2008). The expectations here are that if one becomes more fluent, flexible, and

original in one’s thinking, the outcome will be thoughts that lead to more creative

results. Again, these early approaches are still being pursued, and many new concepts

are added to the vocabulary of the discipline, from Getzels’ problem finding (Getzels,

1975) to Simonton’s model of creative productivity (1997), and Sternberg’s economic

model (Sternberg, Kaufman, & Pretz, 2002).

The effects of early childhood experience on later creative achievement have become

the main interest of still other psychologists. From Freud’s biography of Leonardo da

Vinci (Freud, 1947), where he proposed that the great master’s inability to be sure of

the identity of his natural father resulted in his lifelong insatiable curiosity, and down

to our days, the affective tangles of childhood play a prominent role in explanations

of creativity (Roe, 1946, 1952). Howard Gardner developed the notion of crystalliz-

ing experiences as important turning points in the development of creative individuals

(Gardner, 1993). Another perspective on the motivation that fuels creative persons is

deliberate practice (Ericsson, Charness, Feltovich, & Hoffman, 2006), 10,000 hr of

which are claimed to be a prerequisite for creative achievement in any field.

It would be very tempting to conclude that all this work on the psychology of

creative individuals has resulted in a convincing account of how creative works come

about, and how creativity might be enhanced. But after doing research on creativity for

several decades, I came to the uncomfortable realization that this optimistic conclusion

could not be argued and, what is more, that the underlying assumptions about where

the creative process takes place were so restrictive that no meaningful answer to the

riddle of creativity could come unless we changed them. Basically, what I realized

was that looking for creativity in the head of an individual could never lead to an

understanding of the phenomenon. What the individual thought, felt, and did was


very important to know – but it was only one part of a larger picture, extending out

into the society and the culture.

This insight, which “crystallized” in my mind during a small meeting on creativity

convened by Howard Gardner and David Feldman at Harvard in the late 1980s, was

subsequently called the Systems Model of Creativity (Feldman, Csikszentmihalyi, &

Gardner, 1994). After listening for a day and a half to some of the best thinkers in the

psychology of creativity discuss the cognitive processes, motivations, and emotions

that distinguish creative from less creative individuals, I realized that the conversation

did not match my own experience.

In the longitudinal study of artists I had been involved in (Getzels & Csikszent-

mihalyi, 1976), we had used some of the best tests and inventories to measure the

thinking and feeling of art students, yet 10 years after graduation, the students we

thought had the greatest creative potential were no more likely to have continued

in an artistic career than their peers whose performance in school had suggested a

lack of creative potential. For example, women students had scored better on creative

thinking and creative personality inventories than men. Yet out in the world 10 years

later, the only ones with visible artistic accomplishment were men. Some of the most

“creative” students came from ethnic minorities; yet, 10 years after graduation, all of

them were working at routine jobs unrelated to art.

These and many similar results led me to reconsider my assumptions about the

whole field I had been working in. Foremost among the questions raised was “How

do we know what is creative?” I realized that the definition of creativity I – and every

other psychologist – used was based, explicitly or more often implicitly, on a judgment

made by some group of evaluators. The mother who lovingly tacks her child’s scribbles

on the refrigerator door calls them “creative.” In kindergarten, teachers evaluate the

creativity of finger paintings. Later, it might be psychologists who use tests to decide

who is creative and who is not; followed by employers, peers, or the public at large.

At no point is there an objective sign that someone is indeed creative. All we have are

social attributions of creativity, from the cradle to the Nobel Prize, and then to the

evaluation of posterity.

If this was true – and ever since that first moment, I was convinced it was true –

it meant that any understanding of creativity must include the sources of attribution

as well, because it was they that decided whether something was creative or not. I

remembered then the great disappointment I experienced when, at age 12, I first

entered the Arena Chapel, built by the Scrovegni family of bankers in Padua, to look

at the frescoes Giotto painted in 1305 on its walls. My father, who was an enthusiast

of Italian art, had been telling me for weeks how lucky I was to visit Padua and to

have the privilege to savor this masterpiece that revolutionized the art of painting.

I entered the plain little church with great anticipation, but at each step down the

nave, my incredulity kept increasing: Why were these dark, stilted, flat figures on the

wall considered so exceptional? A Walt Disney comic book seemed infinitely more

interesting, livelier, and more meaningful. Just as beauty, creativity is also in the eyes

of the beholder…From this, it also follows that for artistic creativity to exist, one must have an appro-

priate audience, one that knows enough about art to realize how Giotto was one of

the first painters to represent people with recognizable feelings as opposed to stylized

expressions. And the next was the conclusion that we could not look at creativity as

just a supply issue; we must also consider the demand. In a society that is not interested


in novelty, the potentially creative individuals will not be able to flourish; in a society

committed to novelty, individuals who otherwise would have settled for traditional

accomplishments might be stimulated to surpass tradition.

At first, the realization that creativity is not an elemental substance but a compound

is humbling, or even devastating. But taking this perspective on creativity, whether we

like it or not, is likely to shed more light on the process than the perspective where

creativity is considered as the outcome of a purely intrapersonal process. It is important

to realize that what I mean here is not just that the social response to a creative idea

might kill it or delay it. Several psychologists recognized this fact since at least the

1950s (Kosoff, 1990; Simonton, 1975; Stein, 1953). The much stronger claim made

here is that an idea or a product cannot be called creative until and unless it is seen as

such by society. In other words, it is the attribution of creativity by relevant segments of

society that determines whether a new idea or product is creative. I wish it were not so,

and that we could tell whether something was creative or not by submitting it to some

kind of objective test, as we can test ore for the presence of gold. But creativity does

not exist by itself; no matter how far we pursue an objective analysis of it, eventually

we reach a social evaluation on which the entire attribution rests.

The only reason we call Albert Einstein creative is that some of the most respected

physicists of his time vouched for the importance of his ideas, which 99.99% of the

population could not understand or care about. The only reason we call Van Gogh

creative is because, after his death, some of the most respected art historians and col-

lectors discovered in his work qualities that were not visible to his contemporaries

when he was still alive. It is no use to claim that Van Gogh would have been creative

in any case, even if his creativity had not been revealed posthumously. If we are to

remain objective about the facts, we can only say that Van Gogh’s paintings became

creative only after the carnage of World War I made it impossible for lovers of art to

hold on to the standards of pretty serenity prevalent in the canvases painted before

the War. Instead, the hallucinating vibrancy of Van Gogh’s canvases provided an alter-

native standard by which to appreciate a work of art: harmony and beauty were out,

suffering and conflict were in.

Perhaps Van Gogh would have been called creative, even without World War I.

Perhaps the tastemakers were getting bored by the smooth realistic representations of

the 19th-century masters, and were looking for change. As Colin Martindale (1990)

writes, artistic styles tend to be realistic and harmonious at first, but with the passage of

time, the style becomes exhausted, and if young artists want to be noticed, they have

to start breaking the style down. Typically, they do so by expressing raw emotions in

their art: conflict, rage, sex, or horror. Whether we focus on exogenous causes, such

as World War I, or on endogenous causes, such as the eventual exhaustion of what a

style can offer, the point is the same: What causes us to attribute creativity to an object

or an idea is determined only in part by the characteristics of the object or idea, and it

depends in great part on the response of the social milieu. In other words, the social

environment is always a cocreator, without which the creation cannot happen, and the

process of creation cannot be understood.

Systems Model of Creativity

These arguments can be summarized in a model that shows the various factors that

must be dynamically aligned to result in a creative product. The first version of the


Figure 25.1 A general model of creativity.

model was scribbled on a blackboard at the Harvard meeting mentioned earlier. It

was then developed further in a variety of publications (e.g., Csikszentmihalyi, 1990,

1996; Csikszentmihalyi & Robinson, 1986; Feldman et al., 1994).

Basically, the model represents three main elements interacting within a system (see

Figure 25.1). Each of these three elements is necessary, and their interaction is suffi-

cient to account for how something might result in becoming creative.

The first element is the culture. In this context, I will define culture as the system of

learned rules regulating human consciousness (i.e., thoughts, emotions, beliefs, and

intentional acts – as well as their products, such as the various technologies devel-

oped or adopted within the culture). By “learned,” we mean here that the rules are

not programmed into the genetic instructions we inherit but are absorbed through

interaction with other members of society.

The rules cultures transmit can be subdivided into various domains. A domain is

simply a set of rules and practices that apply to content sharing similar characteris-

tics. For instance, the domain of gastronomy contains rules about how to prepare

food. Recipes for preparing thousands of meals exist in many cultures, and they are

transmitted either as oral instructions or as written recipes from one generation to the

next. Another domain to be found in every culture is that of religion. It consists of

rules for how to think and behave in relation to supernatural entities. Rituals, prayers,

commandments spell out how to live a good life and propitiate the gods. Hundreds

of domains exist in every culture, including the various professions (each consisting

of rules for healing, for waging war; or for arbitrating conflicts, teaching, building,

and so on); then the sciences (of which there are many kinds, each subdivided into

subdomains); then the many forms of art … the point being, that to be considered

creative, a new product must fit into an already-existing domain, fit between them, or

establish a new domain of rules for thought or action.


To be a creative mathematician, for instance, one must be able to prove some theo-

rems that earlier mathematicians have not been able to solve, find new theorems that

no one has thought of before, or find a new notation system, a new kind of relationship

among quantities that has not been formulated before. Occasionally, the fundamental

propositions of the domain might be challenged, as by non-Euclidean geometry or

post-Newtonian physics. Advances in one domain may spur creative breakthroughs

in another, as with Linus Pauling’s application of quantum theories to the molecular

domain of chemistry. New technologies might help open up new domains, Beethoven

could not have written his opus 61 if the lute-makers of Cremona had not perfected

the art of making violins.

So, one of the implications of Figure 25.1 is that unless a person has access to a given

domain, they are unlikely to make a contribution to it, no matter how gifted they are.

But of course, then the person who acquires the information from the domain must be

motivated and able to change it. Most people will not become creative mathematicians

because either they have not learned enough of it to enable them to improve the

domain, they are not able to absorb the information, or they are not interested in

changing it. Among those who do learn some math, most will be glad to use what they

have learned, without any intention of trying to improve on it. They might become

great engineers or creative computer programmers, but their interest in math is mainly

as an extremely useful tool. The same is probably true of most teachers of mathematics.

But a few of them might find some issues in the math they learned that they think

could be improved upon. Either because of their personality or because of their ways

of thinking, these individuals might then start a process of change that will result in a

new way of doing mathematics.

The same is true of any domain. Giotto started to paint naturalistic figures because

he found the idealized representations of Byzantine art too stifling; Martin Luther

started the Reformation because he thought the rules of the Catholic Church had

corrupted the original message of Jesus Christ; Einstein claimed that he developed

the theory of relativity because he could not make sense of the physics he had studied

in school.

There might be few individuals who try to change an existing domain, but still

their number is much too large because, unfortunately, most of the novelty proposed

is worse than what was there before. Few new scientific theories can stand scrutiny,

just as very few new paintings will be worth hanging in the den, let alone on a museum

wall. The philosopher of management, Peter Drucker, has written that of the relatively

few among the many new ideas that inventors have, and then develop to the point of

getting a patent, only one in 500 will make any money (Drucker, 1985). In the 1980

US Census, 500,000 Americans wrote “artist” as their occupation. Shortly after, the

Gallup survey asked a large representative sample to name up to five living American

painters. The average number of artists reported was less than two, and the most often

reported name was “Picasso,” who by then was no longer living, and had never been

American when he was.

In many ways, the selection among new ideas is as severe as the selection that elim-

inates new mutations from the gene pool. In biological evolution, tradition trumps

change most of the time. The same seems to happen in the evolution of cultures:

Old ways of thinking, and of doing things, have been selected in the past because

they were better than the alternatives that existed then. They have also survived for

some generations. For these reasons, it is not likely that improving them will be easy.


Most novelties destabilize existing domains, but few will be improving them. Of

course, we might believe that all the 500,000 artists whose names remain unknown

were actually creative, but unrecognized. This conclusion, however, results in making

the concept meaningless: If all it takes to be creative is for a person to believe in

their own creativity, then everybody is creative, and the term becomes a synonym for

“human being.”

It is for this reason that to understand the process of creativity, one needs to consider

a third component. This is what is called the Field in Figure 25.1. The field is the part

of society that acts as a gatekeeper to the domain. In a sense, it plays a similar role to

that which the immune system plays in a living organism. It scrutinizes incoming life

forms that want to coexist with the organism and tries to reject or neutralize any that

might threaten it. Like the immune system, the field can err in two ways: It can be too

strict and eliminate novelty that would be beneficial to the organism, or it can be too

lax, and allow novelty to harm or destroy the organism.

When the field approves of a novelty generated by an individual, it will try to include

it in the domain. A tasty new recipe introduced by a chef at a trendy restaurant will be

commented on by the food critic of the daily paper, and might get included in future

editions of respected cookbooks. If the critics and cookbook writers are rather rigid in

their tastes, the cuisine will remain traditional and could be abandoned for that reason.

If they are too open to change, the cuisine will be called “fusion” and soon lose all

predictable character.

Sometimes, the novelty introduced represents such a great change in the domain

that there is no field that is competent to judge it and help it along. For instance, when

Sigmund Freud introduced psychoanalysis, he was operating in the field of medicine

and the subfield of psychiatry. It became clear to him (and to others in the field of psy-

chiatry) that the domain he was developing would not fit comfortably among physi-

cians and psychiatrists. So, he worked hard to assemble a group of men, mostly medical

ones, who appreciated the new domain; and with their help, he established the insti-

tutional structure that scientific fields need – such as meetings, journals, textbooks,

training programs, and academic specialties.

In the case of mass culture, the field almost overlaps with the society at large. The

gatekeepers of movies or popular music help the creation of novelty in their respec-

tive domains by investing money in new ideas and products, but they cannot directly

determine their inclusion in the culture. The gatekeeper of the domains of mass cul-

ture is society itself; a beverage like the “New Coke” introduced in the late 1960s

passed the test of the expert gatekeepers but was soon forgotten when consumers left

it on the supermarket shelves; the gatekeepers at Ford Motors thought the Edsel was

a worthy new addition to their brand but were forced to abandon the idea when the

market balked.

Novelties that do not depend on a mass market need a Field to filter out those that

will enrich the domain. Of course, the Field is often wrong, and this suggests that hav-

ing a competent field is as important for the flowering of creativity as having potentially

creative individuals, or a rich culture to draw from. This in turn means that all of us

are involved in the creation of creativity: as appreciators, supporters, consumers, and

transmitters of novelty. If society as a whole becomes insensitive to beauty or unin-

terested in science, then no matter how many promising artists or scientists there are,

there is not likely to be much creativity.


Systems Model of Creativity: Some Research Applications

Since its first formulation, the Systems Model has been applied to refine thinking

about creativity in several forms. For example, the New Zealand psychologist, Philip

McIntyre (2008, 2012), has applied the model to the composition of The Beatle’s

“Yesterday”. This song, which is claimed to be one of the most often performed pieces

of music of all times, has been widely praised within a traditional narrative structure:

Paul McCartney wakes up one morning in 1965 with a tune in his head; he just cannot

get rid of the melody in his mind; he sits down at the piano and hammers out the notes

of a beautiful new song.

McIntyre pointed out, however, that both written and verbal evidence shows that

McCartney had heard a tune by a different composer months before he sat down at

the piano, that he kept humming it, with variations, for a long time; and that once he

started writing his own version, his fellow Beatles as well as their managers suggested

important changes in the score. In other words, the domain provided a starting point,

and the field helped shape the final product, even before the song was exposed to the

selective forces of production, marketing, and sales.

Another somewhat unusual academic use of the Systems Model can be found in

the work of a couple who write about food and are themselves well-known chefs.

These authors, inspired in part by the Systems Model (Dornenburg & Page, 1996,

p. 6), compiled a three-volume set on the culinary arts: the first about the history of

cooking (the domain), the second about great chefs (the person), and the third about

restaurants and critics of cuisine (the field).

An even more esoteric application can be found in a study describing how the

Huygens–Cassini space probe to the moons of Saturn came about (Groen&Hamden-

Turner, 2005). The authors suggested that the previous attempts to organize a multi-

national space expedition of this magnitude, involving many competing institutions

and agencies, had failed in great part because it had been assumed that the tasks

involved were mainly scientific, to be solved by the methods of astrophysics and space

engineering. Instead, the Huygens–Cassini mission, after almost failing like its prede-

cessors, was rescued by leaders who realized that many other domains were involved –

such as politics, bureaucratic procedures, and cultural practices that needed to be

aligned before Russian scientists could effectively collaborate with German scientists,

and each of these with their American counterparts.

So, the model seems to be helpful in a variety of domains, indicating how mistaken

or mysterious accounts of creativity can be better understood by looking at them from

the perspective of the domain–person–field interaction (DPF). Within the domain of

creativity research itself, DPF has also found a niche. David Feldman et al. (1994)

featured it in an early work, and more recently Keith Sawyer (2006, 2013) has featured

it in textbooks on the subject.

Systems Model and Construction of Positive Psychology

A theoretical model, however, can be more than an intellectual tool for relating and

organizing ideas. As Kurt Lewin is often quoted as saying, “there is nothing more


practical than a good theory.” One of the most recent and successful practical applica-

tions of DPF has been to serve as a framework for developing a new perspective within

psychology. I will describe it in detail as an example of how the theory can influence

decisions in the so-called “real” world.

In the winter of 1998, my wife and I booked a week’s vacation at a resort on the

Kona Coast of Hawaii. By a vanishingly rare coincidence, the second day of our stay,

Martin Seligman and I almost literally ran into each other at a nearby beach. We had

met before, but never had a chance to really talk. Now, it turned out that he and his

delightful family were staying at the same resort we were. So, for the next few days,

from breakfast to after dinner, with many breaks to dip into the ocean, we exchanged

ideas about our calling and profession. This was the year before Marty became Pres-

ident of the American Psychological Association, and he was aware that a once-in-a-

lifetime opportunity to leave a legacy was about to open.

Even though our training and life experiences were quite different, we soon felt that

our views of where psychology should be moving in the coming decades were very

similar. We both felt that the reductionist model of man that psychologists, in their

desire to appear hard-nosed scientists, had been following for the past few generations

was missing the point. After they discovered behind the veil of Victorian pieties that

human beings were obeying instincts inherited from ancestors indistinguishable from

apes, psychologists were left with the conclusion that human behavior was nothing

but animal behavior; the accomplishments that we are so proud of, like the use of

language that resulted in the works of Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, or Goethe, are

simple side-effects of an evolutionary pattern based on complex thought processes that

were selected because they gave our species an advantage in the struggle for survival.

Similarly, love, gratitude, courage, and spirituality are things we feel not for their own

sake, but because they help us endure, survive, and reproduce.

Neither Marty nor I were comfortable with this view of human behavior. Some-

where, the baby had been thrown out with the bath water. The development of the

prefrontal cortex in humans had been a game-changer; people have developed internal

representations of goals they hope for, things they desire and love – and these have

become real and important in determining their behavior. It was time, we felt, for

psychologists to take seriously the whole spectrum of human functioning, not just the

part of it we share with our simian ancestry.

Of course, many people outside of psychology and some within it had come to the

same conclusion. The teachings of Maslow and Rogers, which spawned Humanistic

Psychology, are eloquent examples. However, we felt that the critique of scientism

usually falls into the opposite extreme, ignoring the insights of science while rejecting

its misapplied reductionism. So, where did that leave us?We decided to try formulating

our views in a way that our colleagues in the profession would feel compelling. But

the effects of whatever we wrote would take years to bring fruit, and by then Marty’s

presidency would long be over. How could we implement what we thought was an

important enrichment of the science of psychology within a shorter span of time?

It was at this point that my work with the DPF model of creative change began

to suggest some choices – even though, at the time, I was not consciously aware of

it. What I knew – based on Thomas Kuhn’s work with the rise of new paradigms

in science, and Pierre Bourdieu’s analysis of cultural change – was that it is easier to

influence the future course of a science by appealing to the curiosity and energy of

younger scientists than by trying to influence the already-established practitioners,


who had much to lose and little to gain from a new perspective that might replace the

one in which they had prospered. So, instead of appealing to our peers, we decided

to invite a small group of young psychologists for a week of meetings, to discuss what

these ideas might contribute to the future of psychology.

A few key decisions we made at this point turned out to be inspired. Marty, because

of his recent campaigning for the International Positive Psychology Association Pres-

idency, knew most of the leading psychologists in the country. We decided to write

to 50 of these individuals, asking them to nominate a former student younger than

30 years of age, who might be sympathetic to our ideas, and who had a chance to

become chairpersons of their psychology departments before they reached the age of

50. We would then write to the nominated individuals, ask them for their CVs, and

invite about 20 to spend a week in a sleepy fishing village Marty knew in Quintana

Roo – on the “Mayan Riviera” of Mexico.

This way, we thought, we might kickstart the formation of a field. As to the domain,

we thought that there were enough books and articles at the margins of the psycho-

logical literature to get things started; the newly constituted field would then take

over with the contribution of their own work. If the domain and field turned out to

have credibility, it would then attract persons to the new subdomain, which after long

deliberations we came to call Positive Psychology (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000).

The week we spent in the village of Akumal with the 20 young colleagues went

by very rapidly, but left an enduring mark on the profession. Of these participants,

several (e.g., Barbara Fredrikson, Jonathan Haidt, Corey Keyes, Sonja Ljiubomirski,

Ken Sheldon) have written their own book (or books) on various aspects of positive

psychology. Practically all of them are still very actively shaping the emerging sub-

domain. And they are not alone: the Third World Congress of positive psychology

took place in Los Angeles in 2013, with an attendance of 1,500 psychologists from all

over the world. Past world congresses have taken place in the United Kingdom and in

Philadelphia; European Congresses were held in Italy, Croatia, Denmark, and in the

summer of 2012 in Moscow, Russia.

This astonishing growth was made possible in large part because of a pent-up sense

among young people that psychology needed to expand in new directions. Thus, our

ideas resonated with the zeitgeist. But they needed the exertions of the emerging

subfield to become actualized. Here Marty played an indispensable role. For instance,

he was able to secure the financial support of the Templeton Foundation to establish a

series of prizes for young scholars in positive psychology, including a yearly $100,000

first prize, which was (and still is) one of the largest monetary recognitions for

breakthrough research done in psychology. The symbolic significance of such support

sent the message that the new subdomain was not a fly-by-night affair, but was taken

seriously in the world at large. The Meyerson Foundation helped fund the Virtue in

ActionDictionary of Strengths (intended as the Positive Psychology counterpart to the

DSM IV dictionary of psychopathology) spearheaded by Chris Petersen (Peterson &

Seligman, 2004).

Marty also started the highly successful and influential MA program in positive

psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, which has inspired similar programs in

Denmark, Italy, South Korea, and other places. In 2006, the first Ph.D. program in

positive psychology was started at the Claremont Graduate University in California.

The Journal of Positive Psychology also started publishing a few years ago, and is gaining

momentum and reputation.


This detailed history of the first 10 years of a new intellectual direction provides a

good illustration of what it takes for an idea to gain enough visibility to qualify as a

contender for the designation of being creative. The new subdomain of positive psy-

chology might, in time, be considered a creative addition to psychology, not because

of the talks that Marty and I had in Hawaii; not because of the week-long meeting

we had in Akumal; not because of the many publications, prizes, congresses, and aca-

demic programs. All of these are necessary, but not sufficient. The creativity of the idea

will be assured only if it inspires enough young people to do work that is understood,

valued, and remembered by future generations.

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Documents

The Wiley Handbook of Genius (Simonton/The Wiley) || The Systems Model of Creativity and Its Applications