4
The Genetics of Creativity: The Generative and Receptive Sides of the Creativity Equation
Art is the social within us, and even if its action is performed by a single individual, it does not mean that its essence is individual.
—Lev Vygotsky (1971, p. 249)
Creative processes, products, or persons have been conceptualized in many ways across many domains, and many attempts have been made to characterize these uniquely human phenomena from diverse perspectives—religious and mystic, philosophical, sociological, psychological, and historical. Hence, there are hundreds of definitions of creativity (e. g., Treffinger, 1996), but an increasingly consensual definition is that creativity is the ability to produce something that is both new/original and adapted/appropriate/valuable to a particular task or domain (e.g., Amabile, 1996; Barron, 1988; MacKinnon, 1962; Ochse, 1990; Sternberg & Lubart, 1995). Thus, as an “ability,” creativity is a phenomenon originating in individuals. However, because creativity results in a product that is valued to different degrees by an audience—appreciated, rejected, embraced, and cultivated, or put aside and forgotten—creativity is also a sociocultural phenomenon. While many studies have looked into the psychological factors contributing to the individual’s creativity, including aspects of both cognition (e.g., divergent thinking and intelligence) and conation (e.g., personality and motivational factors) that lead to the development of creative products (Selby, Shaw, & Houtz, 2005), the making of creative products is only part of the “creativity equation,” and few authors have looked at the other part—the cultural and social environment in which and for which the creative product emerges (e.g., Lubart, 1990).
The influence of genetic factors on the first part of the creativity equation is increasingly being investigated, with several studies focused on the genetic and neurobiological sources of this individual side of creativity (Reuter, Roth, Holve, & Hennig, 2006). However, the genetic factors that may influence the environmental side of creativity—that is, the genetic bases that underlie the reception of creative products—as well as the processes by which creative products may impact the human genome, have rarely been mapped out. This chapter does not pretend to do so, but aims to point out and discuss some of the important issues of the research into the genetic contributions to creativity that are generally disregarded and need further exploration, specifically: What are the societal/environmental factors that can affect a culture’s response to novel products or ideas? What are the possible genetic roots of these social processes that, to some extent, define what is creative or not and determine the “adoption” of new products? The answers to these questions will help us more fully understand the nature of creativity and its function in culture and society, leading to better ways to encourage creativity, both by nurturing individuals as creators and by providing cultural environments conducive to creative behavior.
To address these questions, we first provide some background on the current state of knowledge on the genetic etiology of creativity, which thus far refers essentially to the genetic bases of the individual factors involved in creative ability. Second, we review the sociocultural aspects of creativity and present how these aspects have been interpreted from an evolutionary perspective. This includes examinations of the genetic influences that shape populations and their cultures, the cultural environment that receives the creative product and determines its usefulness and value, and some possible interactive effects that may contribute both to creativity as an individual ability and to the reception and adoption of novelty as a social process. We conclude by underlining the importance of studying creativity not only as an individual, objective “ability,” but also as a cultural, time-specific, biologically grounded phenomenon with a social purpose.
Facets of Creativity
Creativity as Ability: The Genetic Basis of the “Creative Individual”
The idea that “genius runs in families,” suggesting the hereditary nature of creative giftedness and talent, can be traced back at least to Francis Galton (Guilford, 1987). Nowadays, there is substantial interest in understanding the genetic bases of creativity and related constructs (e.g., Chavez-Eakle, Graff-Guerrero, García-Reyna, Vaugier, & Cruz-Fuentes, 2007; Kaufman, Kornilov, Bristol, Tan, & Grigorenko, 2010), interpreted as individual ability. This approach and a related growing body of literature on this topic (e.g., Csikszentmihalyi, 1997; Guilford, 1950; Runco, 2004; Sternberg, 2006) contribute to the understanding of both the individual and the social processes involved, which we will describe further.
Several lines of evidence support the hypothesis connecting the variation in people’s genomes to the variation in people’s creativity. Research focusing on the genetic bases of creativity within the traditional behavior-genetic framework—quantitative-genetic research using twin (e.g., Grigorenko, LaBuda, & Carter, 1992; Reznikoff, Domino, Bridges, & Honeyman, 1973) and family studies (e.g., Dacey, 1989; Scheinfeld, 1973; Vernon, 1989)—generally produces contradictory findings (Kaufman et al., 2010), and it is thus difficult to draw consistent conclusions from this approach. In general, these studies have produced low to moderate heritability estimates of creativity. These mixed findings could be related to the different indicators of creativity used in different studies, since different aspects of creativity (e.g., divergent-exploratory thinking processes as opposed to convergent-integrative thinking processes; see Barbot, Besançon, & Lubart, 2011) may be influenced by different genetic bases. This is consistent with the idea that creativity is an emergent property of the synergistic interaction among a cluster of more fundamental characteristics, rather than a single trait in itself (Estes & Ward, 2002). As a consequence, the genetic sources of individual differences in creativity may be partly explained through work on the genetic bases of cognition (intelligence) and conation (personality), as both contribute to individuals’ ability to be creative.
The Genetic Bases of Intelligence and Other Cognitive Factors Contributing to Creativity
There is a substantial body of literature on the genetic bases of intelligence, indicating that intelligence is highly heritable (Davies et al., 2011). Indeed, 50 percent of the variance in intelligence may be explained by genetic contributions (Deary, Spinath, & Bates, 2006; Devlin, Daniels, & Roeder, 1997; Patrick, 2000; Plomin & Spinath, 2004). This has been illustrated by multiple twin and adoption studies suggesting that additive genetic effects contribute to over half of the population variance in intelligence in adults (Davies, et al., 2011; Deary, Johnson, & Houlihan, 2009; Deary, Penke, & Johnson, 2010). Across six genome-wide association scans for genes contributing to intelligence and cognition (Butcher et al., 2005; Buyske et al., 2006; Dick et al., 2006; Luciano et al., 2006; Posthuma et al., 2005; Wainwright et al., 2006), signals did cluster in regions on three chromosomes (2q, 6p, and 14q); however, the use of different measures to determine phenotype, overlapping datasets between the studies approached with different methodologies, and small effect sizes suggest that we should be cautious concerning the stability and replicability of these results (Mandelman & Grigorenko, 2011). Hence, no specific gene or gene variants have been robustly associated with phenotypes of intelligence. The most recent genome-wide association study (GWAS) for cognitive ability, conducted with five cohorts of relatively healthy middle-aged to older adults, concluded that a substantial proportion of the variance in intelligence is associated with common single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs, the most common type of polymorphism in the human genome, which represents the substitution of ancestral nucleotides with alternative nucleotides) in linkage disequilibrium with causal variants. This is consistent with a highly polygenic model that suggests that many genes of small effects underlie the additive genetic influence on intelligence (Davies et al., 2011).
Researchers have also recently been exploring the heritability of various creativity-related cognitive components. One such component related to creativity is divergent thinking. Kéri (2009) identified a polymorphism (rs6994992) in the promoter region of the neuregulin 1 gene to be associated with creativity in individuals with high intellectual and academic performance. The highest creative achievements and divergent-thinking scores were found in people who carried the TT genotype at rs6994992 of the neuregulin 1 gene, previously shown to be related to risk for psychosis and altered patterns of prefrontal activation. These results supplement the evidence for the possible underlying genetic basis of creativity and certain types of neuropsychiatric conditions (e.g., Smalley, Loo, Yang, & Cantor, 2005), which we will review further. Complementarily, Volf and colleagues (2009) found a significant association between verbal and figural divergent-thinking scores and the 5-HTTLPR polymorphism of the neurotransmitter serotonin transporter gene (5-HTT). The subjects with SS (i.e., homozygous for the short allele) and LS (i.e., heterozygous) genotypes demonstrated higher verbal creativity scores than the LL (i.e., homozygous for the long allele) genotype carriers. The carriers of the SS genotype also demonstrated higher figural creativity scores than the carriers of the LS and LL genotypes. According to Volf and colleagues (2009), this study provides evidence of the involvement of the central serotonin system in creativity regulation.
The Genetic Bases of Conative Factors Involved in Creativity
Researchers have also carried out many studies on the heritability of personality traits and other conative factors related to creativity. Among the key personality traits that have been examined with respect to creativity, such as risk taking (e.g., Roe et al., 2009) and openness to experience (McCrae, 1987), sensation seeking (sometimes referred to as novelty seeking) is a factor often associated with creative behavior and responses to creative products. According to Zuckerman (1994), sensation-seeking is a primary drive in both animals and humans. Neurocognitive and neuropsychological insights that could lead to a better understanding of the processes of novelty seeking and novelty finding have been reviewed (Schweizer, 2006) and confirm Zuckerman’s assertion. It has indeed been argued that novelty-seeking behavior is modulated by the action of the neurotransmitter dopamine (Cloninger, 1994). Specific genes involved in the substantiation of this transmission (in particular the dopamine receptor genes 4, DRD4, and 2, DRD2, and the dopamine transporter gene, SLC6A3) have been identified through genetic association studies and further been labeled “novelty-seeking genes” (Benjamin et al., 1996; Ebstein, Nemanov, Klotz, Gritsenko, & Belmaker, 1997; Ebstein et al., 1996; Lerman et al., 1999; Prolo & Licinio, 2002). Genetic linkage studies for novelty-seeking have been carried out (Curtis, 2004), but the results are somewhat inconsistent. Munafo et al.’s (2008) meta-analysis concluded that the DRD4 gene (specifically, its C521T polymorphism) may explain up to 3 percent of the phenotypic variance in traits of novelty seeking and impulsivity, but that the findings may be distorted by publication bias. More recently, Verweij and colleagues (2010) conducted a GWAS on harm avoidance, novelty seeking, reward dependence, and persistence using Cloninger’s temperament scales (Cloninger, Przybeck, & Svrakic, 1991). The scores of a sample of 5,117 individuals were tested for association with 1,252,387 genetic markers; however, no genome-wide significant SNPs for any of the four scales were detected. This result suggests that the genetic contributions to personality consist of either many common variants of very small effect size or rare variants of somewhat larger effects, or both.
Creativity and Madness: Another Line of Evidence for the Heritable Nature of Creativity
An important body of studies has examined the heritable nature of the association between creativity and madness, proposing that a genetic component underlies this association (e.g., Glazer, 2009; see also Carson, current volume). For instance, Karlsson (1970) observed that the offspring of psychiatric patients are twice as likely as normal individuals to work in creative professional fields. Along with similar studies, these results have further cemented the conviction within the field of a link between mental illness and creativity (Glazer, 2009), with some directional hypotheses explaining this link (e.g., Richards & Kinney, 2000). Similarly, it has been hypothesized that some personality traits that are thought to be predispositional or characteristic of creativity such as psychoticism (e.g., Eysenck, 1983) might be at the same time vulnerability factors for psychopathology.
By extension, researchers have proposed that there could be some shared genetic mechanisms that contribute to such shared manifestations of creativity and mental illness (e.g., Folley, Doop, & Park, 2003), and this hypothesis has also been supported by findings from molecular-genetic studies of creativity (e.g., Keri, 2009). For instance, Smalley, Loo, Yang, and Cantor (2005) proposed that, as atypical cerebral asymmetry (ACA) has been featured both in certain aspects of creativity and in a number of neuropsychiatric conditions, genetic risk factors underlying ACA may also be genetic enhancer factors for creativity (Smalley et al., 2005). However, the relationship between creativity and psychopathology is complex, differing between the groups of individuals in question, the nature of the illness, and the environmental factors involved (Glazer, 2009). As an illustration, Kinney, Richards, Lowing, LeBlanc, Zimbalist, and Harlan (2001) compared thirty-six index adult adoptees of biological parents with schizophrenia and thirty-six demographically matched control adoptees with no biological family history of psychiatric hospitalization. Those who did not have a clinical diagnosis of schizophrenia but had either schizotypal or schizoid personality disorder or multiple schizotypal signs in both groups (which other research has linked with a genetic liability for schizophrenia) had significantly higher creativity achievements (according to an interview-based measure) than other study participants. Reciprocally, it has been proposed that genes associated with affective disorders (e.g., mania, associated psychotic states, schizophrenia) serve as genetic reservoirs from which “genes for genius” are drawn (Akiskal & Akiskal, 2007).
Creativity: An Individual, Genetically Based Ability?
The search for the etiologies of individual differences in creativity remains challenging. Thus far, the mechanisms underlying the genetic bases of creativity—on the molecular and neurobiological levels—are still unclear, and the work on the specific gene action involved is inconclusive. As creativity results from the interactions of many cognitive and conative components, the genetic influences underlying creative ability could thus be informed through a better understanding of the genetic bases of these components. A major difficulty of reaching such an understanding is that the characteristics presumed to indicate creativity at the level of behavior may exceed 300 (Treffinger, 2009). As reviewed above, the genetic bases of some of the characteristics important for creativity have already been mapped out, including factors such as divergent thinking (Kéri, 2009) and sensation seeking (e.g., Ebstein et al., 1996; Koopmans, Boomsma, Heath, & Doornen, 1995). Unfortunately, though, as it is now generally accepted that all behavior has a genetic basis, heritability estimates are found to be only an initial—more suggestive than revelatory—indicator of the importance of genetic influences (Johnson, Penke, & Spinath, 2011a). In other words, heritability estimates validate a general belief that all behavior is inherited to some extent, yet these estimates have little explanatory power to support that belief, being characterized by underlying measurement error, statistical artifacts, epigenetic mechanisms, gene-environment interactions, and possibly other confounding factors yet to be discovered (Johnson, Penke, & Spinath, 2011b).
The Second Part of the Equation: The Reception of Creative Products
We now turn our attention from the individual creator to how the social world receives individuals’ creative products, in order to understand the second part of the creativity phenomenon: the mechanisms that play a role in defining what is considered to be creative, and, therefore, lead to the adoption or rejection of new products. What are the underlying genetic bases of the social processes that define creativity, if there are any? First, we will delineate how creativity is a cultural phenomenon, as discussed in the literature. Then, we will present creativity’s role in evolution, and the individual and social factors involved in creativity’s reception. Finally, we will present considerations of how creativity, as a part of culture, may affect the genome, as outlined by theories of gene-culture coevolution and transmission.
Creativity as a Cultural Phenomenon
Centuries of philosophical thinking and several decades of individualistic psychological theorizing have located creativity in persons or products that in some way “stand apart” from their social background (Glăveanu, 2010). However, the human features involved in creativity—creative “ability”—represent only one side of the creativity coin. The effects of the cultural environment on creativity can also be profound (Lubart, 1990)—first, because it is within cultures that creative products are valued, but also because cultures affect the definition of creativity, the creative process, the direction in which creativity is channeled, and the degrees to which creativity is nurtured (Lubart, 1990). For Selby and colleagues (2005), it is clear that creative behavior is influenced by the “match” or “mismatch” between personality (i.e., individual factors) and environment, supporting the dictum “What is honored in a culture will be cultivated there.”1 Consistent with this idea, Csikszentmihalyi (1999) claims that the phenomenon of creativity is as much a cultural and social as it is a psychological event.
Yet, an essential aspect of creativity involves a creative contribution being considered valuable by an audience, recipient, or evaluator (Hempel & Sue-Chan, 2010). Nowadays, diverse creativity theories converge on the importance of environmental interactions with individual characteristics (Selby et al., 2005), and there is much evidence for the ways in which culture influences creators, what they produce, and how the products resulting from individual efforts are subject to the judgment of the social world. Notions of “adaptation,” “appropriateness,” or “value” are often part of the definition of creativity (e.g., Amabile, 1996; Barron, 1988; MacKinnon, 1962; Ochse, 1990; Sternberg & Lubart 1995), emphasizing that a creative contribution must be recognized as such by a culture or society. Stein (1953) elaborates that a creative contribution has to be accepted as tenable or useful or satisfying by a group at some point in time, emphasizing a second important aspect of culture in the recognition of creativity: the notion of timing. The literature abounds with examples of famous creative contributions that were not recognized by their culture in their time (e.g., Van Gogh, Bach). These examples illustrate the sociocultural relativity of creativity. If the product is “only” defined as original, the nonadaptive aspect makes it strange, bizarre, and consequently not creative (relative to a particular culture at a particular time). In other words, creative products are not defined as creative if they are not identified as new and valuable, appropriate, or adaptive. However, in the art domain, Lubart (1990) has suggested a possible “universality” in the judgments of aesthetic value by experts, even though many specific characteristics of creative phenomena depend on the cultural environment. What might be the origins of such “universal” judgments? Apart from being different from other products (i.e., new, original), how is a creative product recognized as being adaptive or valuable in a particular culture, or even universally? What are the cultural processes by which a new product is adopted and progressively becomes the “new norm”? And how, beyond cultural differences, are these processes genetically grounded (or not)?
Creativity in Evolution and Creativity as Evolution
Many authors have argued that aesthetic and creative experiences and abilities are part of human nature (e.g., Feist, 2007). For instance, Henri Bergson (1911) in The Creative Evolution describes the unique ability of humans to create artificial objects, especially tools to make tools, infinitely varying their making. Correspondingly, Witt (2003) argues that tool creation is a qualitatively distinct, and very rare, form of production in nature, relying on knowledge transmitted from generation to generation throughout the ontogeny of humans. The question is, how is this type of knowledge transmitted?
Before exploring the possible underlying mechanism of such phenotypic knowledge (applied to the “adoption” of novelty by a culture), it is worth noting that a growing body of empirical evidence supports the idea that human creativity and the aesthetic response has been shaped by evolutionary pressures (e.g., Barrow, 1995; Coss, 1968; Dissanayake, 1988, 2007; Feist, 2001; Miller, 2000). The historic (from prehistory on) occurrence of art, in some form or manifestation, in all cultures has led many to theorize on and investigate the adaptive or evolutionary aspects of creativity. Summarizing these theorizations, Dissanayake (2007) identified nine possible evolutionary uses of the arts (i.e., visual art, music, dance, and visual performance) for society: (1) as a way to acquire deeper knowledge of objects (Solso, 1994; Zeki, 1999) or to solve perceptual problems (Ramachandran & Hirstein, 1999); (2) as a medium for promoting selective attention and positive emotional responses (i.e., the positive effect of beauty) that lead to adaptive decisions and problem solving (Feist, 2007; Orians, 2001; Yusuf, 2009); (3) as a part of mate selection (Miller, 2000, 2001); (4) as symbolic gestures of commitment (as in art-filled religious ceremony; Irons, 2001); (5) as play or make-believe that serves as risk-free practice for later in life (Tooby & Cosmides, 2001); (6) to manipulate and control others, as propaganda (Aiken, 1998); (7) to enhance social cohesion, continuity, and cooperation, as in cultural ritual traditions (Boyd, 2005); (8) as a form of symbology to contribute to higher thinking and intelligence; and finally, (9) as a nonfunctional entity—something that solely offers aesthetic pleasure (Pinker, 1997, 2002). These hypotheses propose the possible functional roles of art that may form the basis for society’s receptivity to art, the historical prevalence of art making and other forms of creativity, and the possible roots of creativity in human evolution.
Among other theorizations (see Dissanayake, 2007), Feist (2007) outlines an evolutionary theory of aesthetics grounded in natural and sexual selection. Natural selection focuses on solutions that solve survival problems, whereas sexual selection provides solutions that solve social and reproductive problems. Feist (2007) speculates that these two forces of selection (as evolutionary processes) have been important in shaping human creative potential and behavior over the millennia, but that each has shaped a distinct form of human creativity: the more “applied” forms of creativity (technology, engineering, and tool making) are probably more under natural selection pressures in that they have direct implications for one’s surviving to reproductive age. By contrast, the more ornate and aesthetic forms of creativity (e.g., art, music, dance) are probably shaped more by sexual selection pressures, insofar as they implicitly signal an individual’s genetic, physical, and mental fitness and are deemed attractive by members of the opposite sex (Feist, 2007; Miller, 2001). Following Feist’s reasoning, it is possible to hypothesize that the human responses to these forms of creativity (i.e., the adoption of novelty, the aesthetic response) have been shaped according to the same evolutionary processes.
Feist’s theory of aesthetics is supported by empirical research carried out with infants on the origins and uses of aesthetics (e.g., Kogan, 1994). Indeed, with respect to children’s responses to creativity—either creating aesthetic objects or responding to them—Gardner (1982) has shown that all children exhibit a generalized pattern of development, suggesting that these responses are evolved domains of mind. For example, infant studies have shown that newborns have a preference for attractive over less attractive faces (Langlois, Ritter, Roggman, & Vaugh, 1991; Rubenstein, Kalakanis, & Langlois, 1999), consistently looking longer at the more attractive faces. Such studies of facial aesthetics have been conducted across ethnicities, and these do show agreement of what is considered an attractive female face across both ethnic and racial groups (Cunningham, 1991). Similarly, another set of studies on infant appreciation of melody (e.g., Krumhansl & Jusczyk, 1990; Trehub, 1987) also demonstrated early musical aesthetic response in human. For example, it has been found that six-month-old infants can detect mistunings in scales derived from their own native traditions as well as from unfamiliar traditions, while adults can more easily detect mistuning in the music of their own culture (Lynch, Eilers, Oller, & Urbano, 1990). Whether this can be explained adaptively or not, musicality (i.e., musical aesthetic response) appears to be a built-in feature of being human (Kogan, 1994). Other studies on specific musical abilities appear to confirm a possible genetic contribution. In a twin study carried out by Drayna and collaborators (Drayna, Manichaikul, de Lange, Snieder, & Spector, 2001), 136 monozygotic (“identical”) twins and 148 dizygotic (“fraternal”) twins were required to detect out-of-key notes in popular melodies. Performance was more similar between identical (r = .79) than between fraternal twins (r = .46), suggesting the importance of genetic influence in this particular facet of musical ability that could reflect the roots of some aspects of aesthetic judgment, possibly encoded in the genome (Kogan, 1994). Such evidence could thus explain the possible roots of the “universality” of aesthetic judgment, beyond cultural differences, as suggested by Lubart (1990).
Judging Creative Products: Individual and Social Processes and Their Underlying Genetic Bases
At the individual level, what are the factors that contribute to the judgment, appreciation, or adoption of new products, and how are these processes biologically and genetically grounded? The cultural roots of mental abilities can be mapped onto biological functions, since our perceptions, feelings, emotions, and judgments toward creative products are tied to physical structures (i.e., sensory organs and the brain) that are themselves dependent on the genome. Contrary to expectation, these issues are increasingly addressed by researchers in economic-related fields, including consumer psychology, cultural economics, or microeconomics. The adoption of novelty (or innovation-adoption) is, within these fields, a topic of major interest as it may explain change in consumption patterns (e.g., Ruprecht, 2005) and thus represent strong potential at a practical (i.e., commercial) level. Other topics of interest related to the reception of creative products from a consumer behavior perspective generally relate to the components of general consumer innovation-adoption (Wood & Swait, 2002), including the general “cultivation of taste” (McCain, 1979), optimal stimulation level (leading to the adoption of novelty), variety seeking, novelty seeking, exploratory tendencies, and information seeking (Hirschman, 1980; Raju, 1980; Steenkamp & Baumgartner, 1992; Venkatraman & Price, 1990). Openness to experience (e.g., Feist & Brady, 2004) and sensation seeking have also received major attention in innovation-adoption studies (e.g., Schweizer, 2006), while the genetic bases of these personality traits have also been explored as discussed above (e.g., Ebstein et al., 1996; Koopmans et al., 1995).
Beyond personality and other individual-related factors that contribute to individual differences in the perception and appreciation of novelty, some factors more anchored in evolutionary processes may also play a role, as emphasized through work in microeconomics. For example, Ruprecht (2005) presents an evolutionary approach to consumption theory, which highlights the role of consumer learning to explain the complex history of sweetener consumption—sweeteners being a good example of a “new” product that has been widely adopted in consumers’ patterns. Building on the “continuity hypothesis” (Witt, 1993), which considers the evolution of culture to be based on biological evolution, Ruprecht (2005) argues that two evolutionary learning processes—reinforcement learning and social cognitive learning processes—explain the adoption of sweeteners by diverse cultures. The “continuity hypothesis” proposed by Witt (2003) suggests that human preferences result from learning processes that rely on certain universal “wants” that have been formed during human phylogenesis. These wants (including the need for air, nutrients, sexual activity) have a genetic basis and are considered to be “primary reinforcers” (Ruprecht, 2005), as conceptualized in classical conditioning. When these primary reinforcers are regularly paired with other items, the latter then obtain reinforcing potential and become secondary reinforcers. These secondary reinforcers are thus “learned” and act as rewarding experiences, and preferences of higher-order emerge (Ruprecht, 2005). During the individual learning history, a spectrum of “wants” or a “preference order” evolves (Witt, 2003). This reinforcement learning can also have a cultural aspect. Through reinforcement processes, preferences that are acquired by one generation are transferred to the next generation (e.g., parents tend to expose their children to goods that they like themselves). Ruprecht (2005) also identified the importance of social cognitive learning processes (the social version of reinforcement learning), underlying the role of consistency or “tightness” of individual choices with the prevailing social conventions and norms. Ruprecht (2005) illustrates this process in the context of the development of sweetener consumption, arguing that, for example, the consistency of beliefs with social norms is more crucial than proper scientific evidence for the alleged effects of sweeteners (given that the avoidance of obesity has become a normative imperative for certain groups of consumers).
Correspondingly, research shows that the “taste” for creative and artistic goods is not given only once for all time, but is dependent upon repeated exposure and experience (e.g., Bigand & Poulin-Charronnat, 2006). Berns, Capra, Moore, and Noussair (2010), for example, have observed the prevalence of conformism for the choices and appreciation of popular songs by teenagers, which could be interpreted in light of the sociocognitive learning process described by Ruprecht (2005). Berns and colleagues (2010) showed that the tendency to change one’s evaluation of a song was correlated with activation only in the anterior insula, a region associated with physiological arousal, particularly to negative affective states. They interpret their results by suggesting an underlying mechanism whereby people are motivated to switch their choices in the direction of the consensus, through the anxiety generated by the mismatch between one’s own preferences and others. This reinforces the importance of the role of consistency in individual choices with the prevailing social conventions and norms in innovation-adoption, as a social process. “Cultivation of taste” (e.g., McCain, 1979) may also be the reason for the existence of distinct preference traditions in different nations, regions, and population groups. This tendency of the population to fall into quite distinct and relatively homogeneous groups suggests multiple equilibria in the determination of tastes and demands (McCain, 1979). According to McCain (1979), these multiple equilibria may explain a sudden flowering of taste, the division of the population into “fan” in-groups and nonfan out-groups, seemingly arbitrary and mutable national traditions of drinking coffee or tea, and similar phenomena. As per recent mathematical models (Laland, Odling-Smee, & Myles, 2010), it is likely that this type of “niche” construction due to cultural processes could modify the selection on human genes.
Gene × Culture × Creativity Interaction
Social processes are thus part of the equation in the evaluation and adoption of novelty, even though these processes can be mapped onto biological and genetic roots. Genes and culture are thus partners in determining what creative products will be produced and valued (Kogan, 1994); and, as genetic features of humans may explain particular cultural events such as creative expression, production, and reception, it is also likely that reciprocally, cultural events may have influenced the evolution of the genome. In fact, a few works have attempted to better define the mechanisms by which genes and culture interact (e.g., Laland et al., 2010). For example, gene-culture coevolution studies, based on a theory first proposed by Lumsden and Wilson (1981), provide evidence that cultural practices, and not only large-scale environmental events, may influence the evolution of the genome. This theory attempts to establish a link between biological and cultural evolution, by which culture is shaped by biological constraints, and biological traits are simultaneously altered by the genetic evolution brought about by cultural innovations. More recent work building on these ideas (Laland et al., 2010) presents two plausible models of gene-culture interaction: (1) gene-culture coevolution and (2) niche-construction theory. The former generally builds on conventional population genetic theory, tracking the changes in allele and genotype frequencies in response to the more typically studied evolutionary processes such as genetic selection and random genetic drift, but also incorporating cultural transmission. The latter derives from evolutionary biology and is based on the capacity of organisms to select and modify natural selection in their environments, such as their use of particular plants to build nests modifying nutrient cycles, thus affecting evolutionary outcomes. Mathematical models show that niche construction due to cultural processes can modify selection on human genes (Laland et al., 2010). Findlay and Lumsden (1988) updated their gene-culture theory on the evolution of the creative mind; in their later theoretical model, the genotype, brain development, the cognitive phenotype (creative individual), and the sociocultural environment are interconnected to represent the multiple interactions and effects of discovery and innovation. Innovation is posited to affect not only the sociocultural and physical environment, but also the genetic composition of the next generation, either through natural selection or nonselective evolutionary mechanisms, that is, gene-culture transmission.
Conclusion
In this chapter, we have sketched out some of the less well-studied facets of creativity, particularly those that reflect creativity’s dependence on a receptive environment, and we have explored the relationship of that dependence with genetic (biological and evolutionary) mechanisms. We have examined both addends of creativity’s equation—that of the individual creator and that of the culture that receives the creative product—finding that both have notable and suggestive ties to the genome and therefore may be subject to the forces of evolution (while contributing to it). What does this mean for our understanding of creativity?
First, it is likely that many of the factors that contribute to creativity as an individual ability (e.g., novelty seeking, openness to experience), also contribute to the reception of creative products. Thus, much of the work on the genetic roots of creativity as an individual ability can help elucidate the “second part” of the creative equation: the genetic bases of the reception of creative products. Second, though creative advancements have been more typically credited to the “force of the creative individual,” from the perspectives presented here, we can see that perhaps the evolutionary demand and need of a culture for new solutions have been equally forceful in making creativity happen. Conversely, we have seen that, by sociocultural mechanisms, creative products may also change the course of evolution and impact the genome. These mechanisms include social cognitive and “reinforcement” learning processes, which clarify how the consistency of beliefs with social norms (or predominant “taste”) contributes to the adoption of novelty. Such mechanisms of the “standardization of tastes” can be mapped onto biological functions (how our perceptions, feelings, and judgments toward creative products are tied to biological structures) that are themselves dependent on the genome. In other words, it is important to see creativity not only as an individual “ability,” but also as a cultural and time-specific phenomenon that is biologically grounded and has a social purpose.
With respect to future research on this topic, it is worth noting that many evolutionary approaches have speculated on how creativity and the reception of creative products may be a built-in feature of humans, and that many of these approaches have been heavily criticized as they tend to be highly theoretical. However, recent advancements in the research on the genetic bases of creativity tend to support these evolutionary hypotheses. Thus, further genetic studies examining these evolutionary hypotheses may discern the actual mechanisms of gene-culture transmission of creative ability, and for how creative products are received. Such research would contribute to the understanding of creativity as an essential feature of human adaptation and evolution (e.g., for the generation of new solutions to newly evolving problems). Indeed, in the creativity equation presented here, it is inescapably clear that wherever humans exist, creative productions will be made. There is no creativity without the social world, and there is no social world without the genetic forces that substantiate humans and humanity.
Acknowledgments
The preparation of this chapter was supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health, administered through grant RO1 DA01076; King Faisal University, Alhassa, Saudi Arabia, through grant R09517 (The Etiological Bases of Giftedness); and through the generous support of Karen Jensen Neff and Charlie Neff (The Aurora Project).
Note
1. Dictum attributed either to Plato (e.g., Selby et al., 2005) or to Aristotle (e.g., Torrance, 1998).
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