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The Psychological Record https://doi.org/10.1007/s40732-021-00505-7

B R I E F CO M M U N I C AT I O N

How Can We Talk about Creativity?

Sarah Sumner1

Accepted: 28 June 2021 © Association for Behavior Analysis International 2021

Abstract In his work Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1953/2009) argues that our language is only clearly com- municated by agreement of definitions and judgments. He suggests that the meanings of such words are found in their use by the verbal community. Further, their use may somewhat change from instance to instance, which makes the debate about their essence, essential properties, or definition futile. He instead suggests that each use has a set of family resemblances; that is, the uses may share some, but not all features with one another. The word is part of a language game that has identifiable consequences for its participants. The same may be true for the study of creativity. Instead of searching for creativity, or how to make one more creative, behavioral investigators may first find it more productive to investigate the language game of which the term creative is a part: that is, we should perhaps determine the criteria and consequences for asserting a creative act occurred and why it is considered important.

Keywords creativity · language game · Wittgenstein · Skinner

What is it that the word “creativity” names? We talk about “it.” We admire “it.” We study “it.” We try to encourage or teach “it.” But is there an “it?” The approach taken here is that the effort to define creativity may be largely futile at best and misdirected at worst. But if creativity does not name something, what is it people are doing when they speak of “it?” Instead of assuming there is a thing, or process, or quality, that creativity describes, perhaps a better approach to understanding creativity may be not to define (and argue about) what the word “creativity” names, but instead, inves- tigate the effect on a verbal community of using the word “creativity.”

In Philosophical Investigations (1953/2009), Ludwig Wittgenstein coined the term “language games.” Wittgen- stein uses the term “language games” to describe how words

get their meaning by examining how the words are used within a verbal community. That is, the meaning of a word is not in what it stands for or what it represents; instead, its meaning is found in the effect it has on a verbal community. Wittgenstein explained this further by giving an example of how to conceptualize words and their meaning,

I send someone shopping. I give him a slip of paper marked “five red apples.” He takes the slip to the shop- keeper, who opens the drawer marked “apples”; then he looks up the word “red” in a chart and finds a color sample next to it; then he says the series of elementary number-words. I assume that he knows them by heart up to the word “five,” and for each number-word he takes an apple of the same color as the sample out of the drawer.—It is in this and similar ways that one operates with words.—“But how does he know where and how he is to look up the word ‘red’ and what he is to do with the word ‘five?’”—Well, I assume that he acts as I have described. Explanations come to an end somewhere. But what is the meaning of the word “five?” No such thing was in question here, only how the word “five” is used.” (pp. 5–6)

In other words, the word “red” can have a different effect depending on how the audience responds to “red.” In this example, if there had not been a color sample to match the

This article is based on a presentation delivered at the Association of Behavior Analysis International 41st Annual Conference, Chicago, IL. Special thanks to Dr. T. V. Joe Layng for your support, guidance, and inspiration for this article. I am extraordinarily thankful for your comments, and to Awab Abdel- Jalil and Leah Herzog for your feedback.

* Sarah Sumner sarahsumner@my.unt.edu

1 Department of Behavior Analysis, University of North Texas, Denton, TX 76012, USA

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word “red,” then the person gathering “apples” may not gather Red Delicious Apples, but instead Honeycrisp Apples with yellow and green tints mixed with red. The use of red is defined by what the person brings back from the store.

Those familiar with Skinner’s treatment of verbal behav- ior may find this is not unlike Skinner’s approach. Skin- ner (1957) defined verbal behavior as behavior reinforced through the mediation of a listener, and further, the other/ listener’s behavior has been conditioned to reinforce the speaker’s verbal behavior. To understand meaning is to understand this relation. Day (1969) elegantly compared and contrasted the viewpoints of Skinner and Wittgenstein. He pointed out 10 similarities across their philosophies. For example, the section The Behavioral Nature of Language identifies the similarity in regard to language. Both view language as “something natural, with an emphasis on the effects of verbal behavior and on the situation in which ver- bal behavior occurs” (p. 496). “For both, there are no such things as meanings, where meanings are taken to be mental entities somehow focally involved in communication. For both, a search for meaning can lead only to the study of word usage, to the analysis of verbal behavior as it is actually seen to take place. For both, the meaning is the usage” (p. 498).

If we accept Wittgenstein and Skinner’s proposition that meaning comes from use, and not from reference to, or a stimulus substituted for a thing, what are the implications for understanding creativity within a behavior analytic context, not as a thing to be studied, but as part of a language game that may change from instance to instance?

Creativity may not be a tangible thing at all, or even a word that represents a thing (Wittgenstein, 1953/2009). It may be that the interaction within a community defines what creativity is and what it is not. And further, that use, although overlapping from situation to situation, may not be the same in many cases. As Wittgenstein noted, "human agreement decides what is true and what is false.—It is what human beings say that is true and false; and they agree in the language they use. That is not agreement in opinions but in form of life” (p. 94). In behavioral terms, both the speaker and listener (i.e., the verbal community) are governed by similar contingencies. That is, the interlocking speaker/lis- tener consequential relations (after Skinner, 1957) define the meaning of the words used. In essence, these differing contingencies may be considered as describing the bounda- ries between differing language games. Hagberg (2014) writ- ing in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy suggests that our aesthetic engagements are occasions and activi- ties. Thus, in order to analyze the properties that explain something as “beautiful” or “creative,” one must look to the activities in which we engage when using the terms “beau- tiful” and “creative.” In behavior analysis, how we use the word creativity within a given speaker–listener relation is perhaps best understood by the different uses that behavior

analysts have made of the term—their language games. Let’s examine two such uses from two behavior analysts.

Enter Skinner

Much of Skinner’s (1970) discussion of creativity is focused on artistic creativity and how one can encourage it. He spends much of his time in “On Creating the Creative Art- ist” describing how to provide environments such that works described as creative are more likely to occur. Skinner does not appear to embrace the notion that there is a special con- tribution of an individual whose work may be classified as creative. He states,

the poet is also a locus, a place in which certain genetic and environmental causes come together to have a common effect. Unlike a mother, the poet has access to his poem during gestation. He may tinker with it. A poem seldom makes its appearance in a completed form. Bits and pieces occur to the poet, who rejects or allows them to stand, and who puts them together to compose a poem. But they come from his past history, verbal and otherwise, and he has had to learn how to put them together. The act of composition is no more an act of creation than "having" the bits and pieces composed. (p. 398)

If there is no specialness to behavior that makes it crea- tive, then that specialness must arise out of the effect of the behavior on the audience.

Skinner (1957) uses the language of process and contin- gencies to describe and account for the creative act. In other words, the artist’s reinforcers are contingent upon specific behaviors often under audience control of which the artist is also a member. This particular process produces what is later called the creative act. From Skinner’s perspective, the creative act is an outcome of a selective process that leads an artist to the final composition. Skinner (1981) asserts that “neither phylogenically nor ontogenically has verbal behav- ior evolved to the point at which a complex combination of personal history and a current situation will give rise to a passage having an appropriate effect upon the reader” (p. 7).

As Skinner (1972, p. 378) notes,

A poem seldom makes its appearance in a completed form. Bits and pieces occur to the poet, who rejects or allows them to stand, and who puts them together to compose a poem. But they come from his past history, verbal and otherwise, and he has had to learn how to put them together.

In other words, the final composition does not occur full blown as a form of inner expression. It is the outcome of a step-by-step process as a function of one’s history of

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reinforcement and audience control. Skinner (1970), how- ever, does not detail what the verbal community is doing when it uses the term “creative,” but does suggest it can be trained to do so.

Enter Epstein

Epstein et  al. (2008) takes a more procedural approach by establishing four competencies that allow for “creative expression.” He coined the term “generativity theory”—the theory that novel and creative behavior is a function of the combination or reordering of previously established behav- iors that occur under specifiable conditions. Epstein main- tains that individuals may acquire the ability to create these conditions. He lists four competencies: capturing, challeng- ing, broadening, and surrounding. These four competencies allow one to identify and train measurable behaviors that predict the rate and nature of creative expression. “Captur- ing” is to preserve new ideas as they occur or find a place and time where new ideas can be observed easily. In terms of creative writing, capturing is the behavior of writing. For example, having a pen and paper on hand to write down ideas as they occur. The second competency is “challeng- ing,” this is for one to take on difficult tasks, to set open- ended goals, to effectively manage fear and stress associated with failure. It is the criterion needed to set the occasion for a creative act. For example, if one faces a situation where the usual outcomes of one’s actions do not follow, then one keeps behaving without giving up; like pushing through writer’s block. The third competency is “broadening,” this is to seek training, experience, and knowledge outside of current areas of expertise and beyond the current repertoire. Increasing skills outside of the typical writing scope, like learning calligraphy. The fourth competency is “surround- ing,” this is changing the physical and social environments regularly and seeking out unusual stimuli or combinations of stimuli to evoke a creative act. In other words, making sure one’s stimulus control is changed so that new behaviors are evoked, like writing at a new coffee shop. All of these competencies describe four different behaviors that occur in relation to the environment. This raises the question are Skinner and Epstein talking about the same thing when they use the word, “creativity?”

The Language Games

Wittgenstein (1953/2009) suggests that language games provide functional definitions of words. He does this by giving an example of using tools in a toolbox. In essence, all of the different tools can be used differently. If a tool is used for one specific function, then someone else can use

that same tool for a different function. The word “hammer” is not an actual tool or a representation of the tool. It is to change the behavior in relation to the tool. In terms of creativity, person A describes a piece of art as creative and person B also describes the same piece of art as creative. In Wittgenstein’s perspective, one might conclude that person A and B are playing the same language game to describe one piece of art. It's about the interaction between the words communicated and actions from B. The terms are intended to have an effect on the audience and to meet a requirement from the speaker. Thus, the word “creative” does not represent the item itself, but the effects the word is having on others in the discussion.

Epstein’s use of “creative” is similar to Skinner’s in that the behaviors he describes have no special creative features but are classified as creative in reference to certain condi- tions in which they occur. However, Epstein uses the word somewhat differently from the way Skinner does. Epstein (1996) explains creativity by describing explicitly what the individual is doing. Skinner (1970) explains more about the general process and outcome of creativity and creative acts. Even though both use the word creativity to describe some- thing, the word “creativity” may not have the same effect on the audience. The question is raised, are they using differ- ent words to talk about the same thing (creativity)? Or are they using the same word (creativity) to talk about differ- ent things? Their language games although resembling one another, may in fact be quite different.

Another important topic described by Wittgenstein (1953/2009) is “family resemblances.” Family resemblances are

various resemblances between members of a family, build, features, color of eyes, gait, temperament, and so on and so forth, overlap and crisscross in the same way. And I shall say: “games” form a family, and like- wise, the kinds of number, for example, form a family. Why do we call something a “number?” Well, perhaps because it has a direct affinity with several things that have hitherto been called “number”; and this can be said to give it an indirect affinity with other things that we also call “numbers.” And we extend our concept of number, as in spinning a thread we twist fiber on fiber. And the strength of the thread resides not in the fact that one fiber runs through its whole length, but in the overlapping of many fibers.” (p. 36)

In behavioral terms, we can think of family resemblances as uses that share the same name but may have different functions or outcomes. In the first example, the use of “red” identifies the type of apple brought home. If one were to say, “no, it’s red,” and saying that, ended the conversation, then the use or function of the word “red” was to end a conversation. Both uses share features, they have family

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resemblances, but both, according to Wittgenstein, would have different meanings because they have different uses.

We would expect to find similar differences in the use of “creative” across a range of representational systems. Each is having a different effect on a verbal community. All want the verbal community to do something different, as a result of their differing explanations. The meaning of the word “creative” is then found in that change in the verbal com- munity and not in the subject matter being studied. Is one studying creativity and the other not? Does one approach understand creativity better than the other? Perhaps the dif- ferences do not lie in the thing being studied, but in the language used to describe that study. Various communities and representational systems may employ different language games, having different audience effects.

Nonvocal behavior likely must be considered as well. As described by Hagberg (2014), the nonvocal behaviors being exchanged between person A and B are also included in the effects on the audience. These nonvocal behaviors include “non-descriptive-predicate based remarks, where aesthetic adjectives play a diminished role or no role at all. We show our approval of a tailor’s work not by describing the suit, but by wearing it. Occasions and activities are fundamen- tal, descriptive language secondary” (p. 6). In other words, actions and nonvocal behaviors within a community may help define abstract terms such as “creativity” and “beauty” more than descriptive language.

This suggests that instead of striving for a behavior analy- sis of “creativity,” it may be more fruitful to explore how the word is used in everyday and academic discourse. That is, to understand creativity may be simply to understand the use of the word by the verbal community. What are the language games shared by verbal communities where the word crea- tive is used?

Creativity as a Social Event

Creativity may not be the study of a particular phenome- non, but the study of family resemblances and differences in representational systems and how they affect the audience. Therefore, it may be useful for behavior analysis to consider the range of language games when discussing creative acts, inside and outside of behavior analysis. This quest is not searching for the essence of what it means to be creative; instead, its focus is on the uses of the word within verbal communities. Much like the selection of the red apples described by Wittgenstein, the features described by Skin- ner and by Epstein may both occasion the use of the word “creative.” Stated differently, Skinner and Epstein are giving us two different lists to take to the behavioral store.

Perhaps, the role of the behavior analyst in terms of cre- ativity is to understand the social contingencies that give

rise to these relations, or stated differently, understand the language games that describe these relations. Using a lan- guage or an art form requires that we already be within a network of possible tools (contingencies) in a language- game or possible tools within an artistic style (after Hag- berg, 2016). Language games can change as a function of changes in social variables as described by Varnedoe and Gopnik (1990), that is, “in order for modern art to happen as it did, a diverse cast of spectators—fellow artists, a few collectors, a critic here and there, eventually a public—had to decide not to throw the aberrant players out of the game, but to see that their mischief redefined the way the game might be played” (p. 217).

Implications

It may be helpful for behavior analysts to decide what the rules of our language game are before we can determine how to teach creativity in applied settings. We need to know what we are trying to accomplish, what is the effect we are trying to have on a verbal community, what will the community be doing and saying? Once specified, then we may be able to determine the behavioral program that is required. We are likely not dealing with a single phenomenon, but multiple phenomena with family resemblances when we talk about creativity. That is, the doing and saying may differ across instances of “creativity.”

The uses could be different within different contexts, and within and between cultures. Behavior analysts can begin the analysis by determining how the term “creativity” serves a variety of functions in each of the communities in which it occurs. The creative behavior itself may be nothing special. The specialness may conceivably be found in the effect on the audience. Perhaps behavior analysts should clearly define the effects we are seeking when we use the word “creative,” and design our programs accordingly, rather than exploring or trying to define or analyze creativity itself.

Data Availability Not applicable

Declarations

Conflict of Interest Not applicable

References

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