THE NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATIVITY

1: evolutionary ethology

Neil Greenberg

University of Tennessee

ORICL

July 11 2000

My Own Work . . .

Clarifying the neurobehavioral causes and consequences of social behavior

Specific lesions in the striatal complex profoundly impair aggression

Stress endocrinology orchestrates and maintains the social dynamic

(at least in the reptile model)

Natural History

• Natural history is the study of natural organisms and objects.

• It involves the description of nature and attempts to determine the causes, consequences, and interrelationships of the phenomena observed therein.

ETHOLOGY

• ETHOLOGY, the biological study of behavior has its roots in Natural History.

• ETHOLOGY is among our most powerful disciplinary tools for understanding the causes and consequences of behavior

• It is the approach to understanding behavior that invokes the methods and theoretical constructs of several disciplines within biology

Ethology

• Ethologists . . .• describe behavioral traits,• the development of behavioral traits in individuals

(ontogeny, experience),• the environment in which behavioral traits occur

(context, stability),• the evolution of behavioral traits (how they enhance

fitness), and• the physiology and “proximal causation” of behavioral

traits (neurology, endocrinology).

EVOLUTIONARY ETHOLOGY

• “EVOLUTIONARY” refers to the assumption that environmental circumstances selectively preserve traits that enhance fitness.

• “FITNESS” refers to relative success in reproduction, particularly clear when circumstances limit the number of offspring that can survive. Traits that enhance fitness are “adaptations.”

Adaptations

ADAPTATIONS are . . . Both manifest traits and . . .

“. . . processes by which organisms or groups of organisms maintain homeostasis in and among themselves

in the face of both short-term environmental fluctuations and long-term changes

in the composition and structure of their environments.”

(Rappaport, 1971)

IS CREATIVITY an ADAPTATION?. . .

YES! • Creativity is a potent biological adaptation in that

it catalyzes or facilitates a regulatory or advantageous change in response to a real or perceived challenge or stress.

• Creativity consequently results in higher fitness in terms of one’s direct or indirect contribution to future generations.

CREATIVITY . . .

• reflects a spontaneous or evoked increase in the intensity of cognitive processing . . .

• that enables the relating and integrating of variables . . .

• not ordinarily associated with each other.

“The adaptive process . . .

is one of continuous assimilation of internally mediated consequences of the organism’s action on the environment and the resulting accommodation of these action schemes into the previously formed structure”

(Piaget 1980)

CREATIVITY, like all adaptations

• Helps us cope with challenges that threaten our capacity to meet needs such as:

• Physiology (food, drink, exercise)• Safety (security, order, protection)• Belonging ( sociability, acceptance, love)• Esteem (status, prestige, acknowledgment)• Self-Actualization (personal fulfillment)

(Maslow’s need hierarchy)

CREATIVITY: meets needs, is intrinsically motivating

• Real or perceived needs are served by creative perceptions, thoughts, or actions which associate familiar or novel stimuli in varying combinations.

• Intrinsic reward systems operate to maintain this valuable activity.

• Rewards are commensurate with the real (or perceived) urgency of the need, once the dissonance created by difficulty in accommodating it is resolved.

CREATIVITY meets needs . . . . . . it can heal the mind and body

• The therapeutic benefits of activities that involve the experience of creativity provide powerful evidence for a biologically adaptive function that may be independent of any specific kinesthetic, visual, or musical art form.

CREATIVITY defined . . .

• CREATIVITY . . .

• involves the expression of unprecedented or novel perceptions, thoughts, or actions . . .

• by which an organism or group of organisms copes . . .

• with present or potential changes in the composition and structure of the environment.

What is the “experience” of creativity ?

• The defining experience of creativity involves a dramatic change in perception or understanding.

• This can be more or less “exciting,”

EUREKA ! !

The sense of reward is commensurate with the intensity of the need satisfied, with the tension or dissonance resolved.

"...nothing holds me -- I will indulge my sacred fury…!”

(Kepler announcing the discovery of his Third Law)

ORIGINS OF CREATIVITY

• Alternative theories such as INSPIRATION or PERSPIRATION are NOT mutually exclusive . . .

• They each refer to one of the several dimensions of creativity that ordinarily work as an ensemble.

INSPIRATION THEORY

• Joan: . . . you must not talk to me about my voices.

• Robert: How do you mean? Voices?

• Joan: I hear voices telling me what to do. They come from God.

• Robert: They come from your imagination.

• Joan: Of course. That is how the messages of God come to us.

PERSPIRATION THEORY

Thomas Alva Edison

Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration.

Integrating subsystems

• Primary and Secondary Process Cognition

• “ . . . primary process cognition of dreaming, reverie, psychosis and secondary process cognition involving the abstract, logical, reality-oriented thought of waking consciousness” (Fromm 1978)

• creative individuals can more easily shift gears from primary process, unfocused attention (associated with low levels of cortical arousal), to more focused secondary process (higher levels of cortical arousal) for the expression or implementation of creative insights (Kris 1952).

Creativity and Stress

The activation and use of the biological mechanisms we possess to deal with any deviations from the resting state constitutes the “stress” response.

STRESS . . .is essential for coping with . . . challenges to our biological stability . . . challenges to our capacity to meet our needsis among our most potent adaptations

creativity ?

Sometimes the creative insight strikes like lightening, but it is

• orchestrated by cognition• guided by motivation• energized by emotion

These engage the same neural and endocrine subsystems as the stress response

How stress works . . .

First, an almost instantaneous sympathetic‑adrenomedullary (SAM) “flight‑or‑fight” acute response (adrenaline)

Next, a few minutes later, a back-up hypothalamic‑pituitary‑adrenocortical axis (HPA) “chronic” response (ACTH and glucocorticoids

What does stress have to do with creativity ?

The endocrinology of stress enhances the neural mechanisms of perception and cognition and action (input—integration—output)

Stress enlarges our possibilities for solving problems

CREATIVITY meets needs . . .. . . it can enrich the spirit

Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know

(Keats Ode on a Grecian Urn, Stanza 2)

A thing of beauty is a joy forever:Its loveliness increases; it will neverPass into nothingness.

(Keats, Endymion. Book I, Line 1)

"It was as though I had looked for a truth outside myself, and finding it had become for a moment a part of the truth I sought...” (CP Snow)

Premises of the neuroethological approach to Creativity

• Learning requires the orchestrated actions of motivation, affect, cognition, and access to a network of potential associations

• Physiological stress selectively activates the essential neural systems and expands the range of potential associations

• “Creativity” is at the end of a continuum that begins with the simplest connections of associative learning

A biological understanding of creativity

• “Creativity” is at the end of a continuum due to adaptive co-opting of the machinery of associative learning and of physiological stress

• Physiological stress is a response to intrinsic and extrinsic (environmental) change

• Adaptive developmental changes induced by physiological stress enhances the interface with selective environmental pressures and expands an organism’s adaptive options and potential for innovation.

EXTREMES: CREATIVITY as an AFFECTIVE DISORDER

• Creativity often involves unique or unconventional ways of perceiving, thinking, acting

• It is unsurprising that these unique ways may sometimes be expressed as behavioral dysfunction -- disorders such as TLE, depression, schizophrenia

Creativity and Life

"When making a decision of minor importance, I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons. In vital matters, however, such as the choice of a mate or a profession, the decision should come from the unconscious, from somewhere within ourselves. In the important decisions of personal life, we should be governed, I think, by the deep inner needs of our nature." --Sigmund Freud

Creativity and Art

• Art is among the purest expressions of human creativity

• Creativity is among our most potent coping mechanisms

• The aesthetic experience affects our confidence in our beliefs

ART: an extreme expression of creative communication

"The best things cannot be told, the second best are misunderstood. After that comes civilized conversation; after that, mass indoctrination; after that, intercultural exchange. And so, proceeding, we come to the problem of communication: the opening, that is to say, of one's own truth and depth to the depth and truth of another in such a way as to establish an authentic community of existence.” (Jos Campbell, 1968)