Anna Abraham, Ph.D. is the E. Paul Torrance Professor and Director of the Torrance Center for Creativity and Talent Development at the University of Georgia (USA). She investigates the psychological and neurophysiological mechanisms underlying creativity and other aspects of the human imagination, including the reality-fiction distinction, mental time travel, social and self-referential cognition, and mental state reasoning. She is the author of the 2018 book, The Neuroscience of Creativity (Cambridge University Press) and the editor of the multidisciplinary volume, The Cambridge Handbook of the Imagination (2020).
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
In the animal world, I think their creativity is bound up sometimes with their sense of survival. I think being bound up a little bit to their sense of survival. I had a conversation with the free climber Alain Robert. He's climbed over 150 skyscrapers with his bare hands, no ropes, nothing. No safety net. And he said, “My mind is my safety net. I know my mind very well.” And it made me think a little bit about your exploration of creativity and why it is important to know one's own mind. And how artists or other creatives get to know their mind.
ANNA ABRAHAM
I love podcasts and things like that, if only to listen to people who've done incredible things. We live in a kind of unusual time where we can hear firsthand people talking about their own experiences, and what they went through when they were creating something. And while artists differ greatly from one another in terms of the specifics of their process, what certainly seems to be the case is that they're extraordinarily interested in their own mind, and they have what we would call a metacognitive awareness. They know almost quite precisely, at least what doesn't work for them. They're very cued into what to avoid and how to sort of generate the mental conditions that are necessary in order to be as generative or as creative as they're likely to be in a specific situation. So that is a deep medical awareness that they have about their own process that is really quite something. They know themselves very well.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
Talking about creating the conditions that go into making an artist or nurturing creativity in the sciences. It does seem to me, as someone who has grown up around a lot of artists, we all have it, but for whatever reason some people just have that creativity a little bit closer to the surface. What are the things that help you identify creative children? How does it come about?
ANNA ABRAHAM
Well, I think if it's "closer to the surface" as you so beautifully put it, it's usually that you see it through their personality a lot more. It's just not just their actions or the products that they create, but they somehow are sort of glowing with it, in a sense. And you usually see that when they essentially embody specific traits that we know to be very important for creativity. And one is a sort of openness to new experiences that is one of the most consistent findings of creativity research that people across the board, whether you're looking at artists or scientists who've reached some level of creative eminence, they're all marked by a specific kind of openness to new experience. Very deeply curious and game for anything, if you want, for what a possibility can tell them, or the level which you can take them to next. So they are open to it, and excited by it.
And the second thing is that they exude a certain kind of confidence. Creative confidence is something that really can't be taught. And you can tell people "you should be more confident," but it's something that they have to...that can be cultivated by the person themselves. But usually what you see is this enormous confidence. Sometimes they'll say it with these sort of destiny kind of words. Like "I was put here for this reason. I know that I have a purpose in life and that is..." And that stems from a sort of profound confidence about what they have to offer the world and what lies within them. And so I would say those two features are perhaps the things that those sorts of people embody.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
It's interesting to look at some of those brain scans that have been done on people who practice live improvisations. Gabriela Montero does kind of classical piano in response to people in the audience who throw her an idea and she improvises on a theme. There've been brain scans and of her and in those improvisations and she kind of loses her sense of self. It disappears in during those moments.
ANNA ABRAHAM
In the case of improv, where it's physical, it might be a slightly different experience as well compared to someone sitting in front of a page and trying to write because like those physical embodiments, whether it's in a sporting arena or any sport or where you're trying to improvise in front of a group of people... And verbally, of course, if it's standup comedy or that kind of improv, you are in a collective space.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
I think the important thing is with talented in individuals, talent sometimes has that capacity to express itself in different domains. They may have their primary domain, and they have usually a variety of others, and they may be unrelated. So how do you identify that principle domain? Because when talent is there, it will come out one way, but sometimes it's really important to find out the area that really at chimes with you.
ANNA ABRAHAM
That’s a good point. How do you know that you're talented at something? At some point you encountered it or you were around it and you felt the pull, the drive towards it. Some people have it very early on. And other people do not. And the question of how do you know what works for you is a very big one. And partly it has to do with the opportunities that you have, the house you grew up in, and so on. And that's not to say that those are determining factors because there are plenty of examples of people who didn't come from any sort of background of artistry and then went on to become incredible artists. And the same for the sciences.
So, how to identify it is really based on what you encounter in the world and what you're aware of, and your awareness of your own skills. But for anyone who takes to art, they just understand that when you first did it or the early encounters with it were a sort of almost spiritual phenomenon. This is also true of scientists. They feel like they're part of something larger and it's impossible to define it for any one person, but you know it when you're in it. You discover for yourself that when you're writing a diary at night, that when you twist the words a specific way, it gives you incredible joy. And then you realize that this is your own private thing, that you can do really well, and you choose to pursue it more and more. But I think one way to do it is when they're young enough to sort of expose children to as many different things as possible.
This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this episode was Megan Hegenbarth.
Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).
