homework
What interferes with Creativity?
Exploring potential barriers
What is a creativity barrier?
Adams (1979) describes barriers to creativity as mental walls that block the problem solver from correctly perceiving a problem or conceiving its solution.
Barriers are like blocks, which impede the performance of creativity skills (Hillal, Izza & Zayed, 2013)
Everyone is creative by birth, but the external agents destroy it (Adam, 1999)
(Davis, 1999) identifies the following five categories of barriers:
Learning and habits
We learn ‘‘the way things have always been done’’ and ‘‘the way things are supposed to be done.’’
Over the years, it becomes difficult to see and create new possibilities.
Old habits and expectations interfere with new ideas, activities, and possibilities.
Rules and Traditions
Procedural barriers include policies, procedures, and regulations (including unwritten ones) that slow or prevent creative innovation and risk taking.
Bureaucratic policies can reduce the possibility of getting an official acceptance for any new project.
Perceptual Barriers
People are accustomed to seeing or perceiving things a certain way, making it difficult to see new meanings, relationships, and ideas.
Perceptual “fixedness” or reluctance to see things differently is opposite to innovation and flexible thinking.
Cultural Barriers
“Cultural blocks include habits and learning, rules, traditions, stereotypes, and the environment” (Adam, 1999; Davis, 1999)
“These barriers include compliance to the ways people think others expect them to behave and a fear of being different. So it can result in a loss of individuality and creativity” (Adam, 1999; Davis, 1999)
Emotional Barriers
“These can and do stop creative productivity because they include shortage of people, money, time, supplies, and/or information that is needed for creative thinking or for the implementation of creative ideas” (Davis, 1999)
Creative Activity