Research into creativity over the life course has a long history of concentrating on individual characteristics thought to be associated with shifting patterns. In large measure creativity has been explained as a consequence of intelligence, cognitive style, personality, imagery, and other endogenous factors. These human capital factors are not sufficient in themselves to explain differential creativity either by age or among diverse groups. In addition to individual-level considerations there is an array of societal and domain specific factors that must be taken into account. A number of these are discussed under the rubric of social capital. Finally a relational perspective is advocated as an interpretative framework and discussed in terms of dialectical life span approaches to the life course.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
AbrahamK. (1949). The influence of oral eroticism on character-formation. In BryanD. & StracheyA. (Trans.), Selected papers of Karl Abraham (pp. 393–406). London: Hogarth Press.
2.
AlpaughP., & BirrenJ. E. (1977). Variables affecting creative contributions across the adult lifespan. Human Development, 20, 240–248.
3.
AlpaughP.ParhamI.ColeK., & BirrenJ. E. (1982). Creativity in adulthood and old age; An exploratory study. Educational Gerontology, 1, 17–40.
4.
ArnheimR. (1947). Perceptual abstraction and art. Psychological Review, LIV, 66–82.
5.
ArnheimR. (1954). Art and visual perception: A psychology of the creative eye. Berkeley: University of California Press.
6.
BarronF. (1956). The disposition toward originality. In TaylorC. W. (Ed.), The 1955 University of Utah Research Conference on the Identification of Creative Scientific Talent (pp. 478–485). Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
7.
BarronF. (1958). The psychology of imagination. Scientific American, CXCIX, 150–166.
8.
BarronF., & WelshG. (1952). Artistic perception as a factor in personality style: Its measure by a figure preference test. Journal of Psychology, XXXIII, 199–203.
9.
BeardG. (1874). Legal responsibility in old age.New York: Russell's American Steam Printing House.
10.
BourdieuP. (1986). The forms of capital. In RichardsonJ. (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education (pp. 241–258). New York: Greenwood Press.
11.
BourdieuP. (1996). The rules of art: Genesis and structure of the literary field.Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
12.
BrandtstadterJ. (1990). Development as a personal and cultural construction. In SeminG. R. & GergenK. J. (Eds.), Everyday understanding: Social and scientific implications (pp. 83–107). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
13.
BreytspraakL. (1984). The development of self in later life.Boston: Little, Brown.
14.
BrillA. A. (1931). Poetry as an oral outlet. The Psychoanalytic Review, XVIII, 357–378.
15.
BrownR. T. (1989) Creativity: What are we to measure? In GloverJ. A.RonningR. R., & ReynoldsC. R. (Eds.), Handbook of creativity (pp. 3–32). New York: Plenum.
16.
Cohen-ShalevA. (1989). Old age style: Developmental changes in creative production from a life-span perspective. Journal of Aging Studies, 3, 21–37.
17.
ColeS. (1979). Age and scientific performance. American Journal of Sociology, 84, 958–977.
18.
CoxC. (1926). The early mental traits of three hundred geniuses.Stanford: Stanford University Press.
19.
CrossonC., & Robertson-TchaboE. (1982). Age and preference for complexity among manifestly creative women. Human Development, 26, 149–155.
20.
CsikszentmihalyiM. (1996). Creativity: Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention.New York: Harper Collins.
21.
CutlerS. J., & HendricksJ. (1990). Leisure and time use across the life course. In BinstockR. H. & GeorgeL. K. (Eds.), Handbook of aging and the social sciences (pp. 169–185). San Diego: Academic Press.
22.
DaceyJ. (1989). Peak period of creative growth across the life span. Journal of Creative Behavior, 23, 224–248.
23.
DennisW. (1954). Predicting scientific productivity in later decades from records of earlier decades. Journal of Gerontology, 9, 465–467.
24.
DennisW. (1956a). Age and achievement: A critique. Journal of Gerontology, 11, 331–333.
25.
DennisW. (1956b). Age and productivity among scientists. Science, CXXIII, 724–735.
26.
DennisW. (1958). Age decrement in outstanding scientific contributions: Fact or artifact?American Psychologist, 13, 457–460.
27.
DennisW. (1966). Creative productivity between the ages of 20 and 80 years. Journal of Gerontology, 21, 1–8.
28.
DiamondA. M. (1984). An economic model of the life-cycle research productivity of scientists. Scientometrics, 6, 189–196.
29.
DiamondA. M. (1986). The life-cycle research productivity of mathematicians and scientists. Journal of Gerontology, 41, 520–525.
30.
DohrJ. H., & ForbessL. A. (1986). Creativity, arts, and profiles of aging: A reexamination. Educational Gerontology, 12, 123–138.
31.
EriksonE. H. (1963). Childhood and society (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
32.
EverdellW. R., (1997). The first moderns.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
33.
FoxH. H. (1963). A critique of creativity in science. In ColorM. A. (Ed.), Essays on creativity in the sciences (pp. 123–152). New York: New York University Press.
34.
FreudS. (1908). The relation of the poet to day-dreaming. Reprinted in Collected Papers, Volume IV. RiviereJ. (Trans.). London: Hogarth Press (1958).
35.
GeertzC. (1973). The interpretation of cultures.New York: Basic Books.
36.
GiddensA. (1979). Central problems in social theory.London: MacMillian.
37.
GolannS. E. (1963). Psychological study of creativity. Psychological Bulletin, 60, 548–565.
38.
GubriumJ. F., & HolsteinJ. A. (1994). Grounding the postmodern self. The Sociological Quarterly, 35, 685–703.
39.
GuilfordJ. P. (1950). Creativity. American Psychologist, 5, 444–454.
40.
GuilfordJ. P. (1956). The relation of intellectual factors to creative thinking in science. In TaylorC. W. (Ed.), The 1955 University of Utah Research Conference on the Identification of Creative Scientific Talent (pp. 69–95). Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
41.
GuilfordJ. P. (1957). Creative abilities in the arts. Psychological Review, LXIV, 110–118.
42.
GuilfordJ. P. (1958). Basic traits in intellectual performance. In TaylorC. W. (Ed.), The Second Research on the Identification of Creative Scientific Talent (pp. 66–81). Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
43.
GuilfordJ. P. (1959). Traits of creativity. In AndersonH. H. (Ed.), Creativity and its cultivation (pp. 141–161). New York: Harper.
44.
GurvitchG. (1972). The social frames of knowledge.New York: Harper and Row, Torchbook.
45.
HaenslyR. A., & ReynoldsC. R. (1989). Creativity and intelligence. In GloverJ. A.RonningR. R., & ReynoldsC. R. (Eds.), Handbook of creativity (pp. 111–134). New York: Plenum.
46.
HaskellF. (1993). History and its images: Art and the interpretation of the past.New Haven: Yale University Press.
47.
HendricksJ. (1972). Career patterns of abstract expressionists. Unpublished Dissertation. State College, PA: The Pennsylvania State University.
48.
HendricksJ. (1992). Generations and the generation of theory in social gerontology. International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 35, 31–47.
49.
HendricksJ., & LeedhamC. L. (1989). Making sense: Interpreting historical and cross-cultural literature on aging. In von Dorotka BagnellP. & SoperP. S. (Eds.), Perceptions of aging in literature: A Cross-Cultural Study (pp. 1–15). New York: Greenwood Press.
50.
HocevarD., & BachelorP. (1989). A toxonomy and critique of measurements used in the study of creativity. In GloverJ. A.RonningR. R., & ReynoldsC. R. (Eds.), Handbook of creativity (pp. 53–76). New York: Plenum.
51.
HolznerB., & MarxJ. H. (1979). Knowledge application: The knowledge system in society.Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
52.
HornerK. L.RushtonJ. P. & VernonP. A. (1986). Relation between aging and research productivity. Psychology and Aging, 1, 319–324.
53.
JonesR. V. (1986). Complementarity as a way of life. In FrenchA. P. & KennedyP. J. (Eds.), Niels Bohr: A centenary volume (pp. 323–342). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
54.
KastenbaumR. (1989). Old men created by young artists: Time-transcendence in Tennyson and Picasso. International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 28, 81–104.
55.
KastenbaumR. (1991). The creative impulse: Why it won't just quit. Generations, XV, 7–12.
56.
KastenbaumR. (1992). The creative process: A life-span approach. In ColeT.Van TasselD., & KastenbaumR. (Eds.), Handbook of the humanities and aging (pp. 285–306). New York: Springer Publishing Co.
57.
KoganN. (1973). Creativity and cognitive style: A life-span perspective. In BaltesP. & SchaieK. W. (Eds.), Life-span development psychology. Personality and socialization (pp. 145–178). New York: Academic Press.
58.
LabouvieE. W. (1979). Identity vs. equivalence of psychological measures and constructs. Paper presented to the Annual Meetings of the American Psychological Association, cited in Romaniuk & Romaniuk. New York: NY.
59.
LehmanH. (1953). Age and achievement.Princeton: Princeton University Press.
60.
LehmanH. (1962). The creative production rates of present versus past generations of scientists. Journal of Gerontology, 17, 409–417.
LevinsonD. J. with DarrowC. N.KleinE. B.LevinsonM. H., & McKeeB. (1978). The seasons of a man's life.New York: Knopf.
63.
LindauerM. S. (1992). Creativity in aging artists: Contributions from the humanities to the psychology of old age. Creativity Research Journal, 5, 211–231.
64.
Lorenzen-HuberL. (1991). Self-perceived creativity in the later years: Case studies of older Nebraskans. Educational Gerontology, 17, 379–390.
65.
MacKinnonD. W. (1962). The highly effective individual. Teachers College Record, 61, 367–378.
66.
MaslowA. H. (1959). Creativity in self-actualizing people. In AndersonH. H. (Ed.), Creativity and its cultivation (pp. 83–95). New York: Harper.
67.
MayR. (1959). The nature of creativity. In AndersonH. H. (Ed.), Creativity and its cultivation (pp. 65–68). New York: Harper.
68.
McClellandD. C. (1958). Issues in the identification of talent. In McClellandD. C.BaldwinA. L.BronfenbrennerU.StrodtbeckF. L. (Eds.), Talent and society (pp. 1–28). New York: Van Nostrand.
69.
McClellandD. C. (1976). The achieving society, New York: Irvington.
70.
McCraeR. (1987). Creativity, divergent thinking and openness to experience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 1258–1265.
71.
McCraeR.ArenbergD., & CostaP.Jr. (1987). Declines in divergent thinking with age: Cross sectional, longitudinal and cross-sequential analysis. Psychology and Aging, 2, 130–137.
72.
McDowellJ. M. (1982). Obsolescence of knowledge and career publication profiles: Some evidence of differences among fields in costs of interrupted careers. American Economic Review, 72, 752–768.
73.
MertonR. K. (1957). Social theory and social structure.Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
74.
MeyerJ. W. (1988). Levels of analysis: The life course as a cultural construction. In RileyM. W. (Ed.), Social structures & human lives (pp. 49–62). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
75.
MichaelW. B., & WrightC. R. (1989). Psychometric issues in the assessment of creativity. In GloverJ. A.RonningR. R., & ReynoldsC. R. (Eds.), Handbook of creativity (pp. 33–52). New York: Plenum.
76.
OromanerM. (1977). Professional age and the reception of sociological publications: A test of the Zuckerman-Merton hypothesis. Social Studies of Science, 7, 381–388.
77.
PickeringA. (1995). The mangle of practice.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
78.
PlanckM. (1949). Scientific autobiography and other papers.GaynorF. (Trans.). New York: Philosophical Library.
79.
RiegelK. (1973). Dialectical operations: The final period of cognitive development. Human Development, 16, 346–370.
80.
RiegelK. (1979). Foundations of a dialectical psychology.New York: Academic Press.
81.
RoeD. (1951). A study of imagery in research scientists. Journal of Personality, XIX, 459–70.
82.
RoeD. (1972). Maintenance of creative output through the years. In TaylorC. W. (Ed.), Climate for creativity (pp. 167–191). New York: Pergamon.
RogersC. R. (1954). Toward a theory of creativity. ETC: A Review of General Semantics, XI, 249–260.
85.
RomaniukJ. G. & RomaniukM. (1981). Creativity across the lifespan: A measurement perspective. Human Development, 24, 366–381.
86.
RuthJ. E., & BirrenJ. E. (1985). Creativity in adulthood and old age: Relations to intelligence, sex, and mode of testing. International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 8, 99–110.
87.
Sasser-CoenJ. (1993). Qualitative changes in creativity in the second half of life: A life-span developmental Perspective. Journal of Creative Behavior, 27, 18–27.
88.
SchaieK. W. (1978). External validity in the assessment of intellectual development in adulthood. Journal of Gerontology, 22, 695–701.
89.
SchaieK. W. (1990). Intellectual development in adulthood. In BirrenJ. E. & SchaieK. W. (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of aging (3rd ed.), (pp. 291–309). San Diego: Academic Press.
90.
SeltzerG. (1989). Music matters: The performer and the american federation of musicians.Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press.
91.
SimontonD. K. (1977). Creative productivity, age, and stress: A biographical time-series analysis of 10 classical composers. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, 791–804.
92.
SimontonD. K. (1984). Genius, creativity, and leadership: Histriometric inquiries.Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
93.
SimontonD. K. (1985). Quality, quantity, and age: The careers of 10 distinguished psychologists. International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 21, 241–254.
94.
SimontonD. K. (1988). Age and outstanding achievement: What do we know after over a century of research?Psychological Bulletin, 104, 251–267.
95.
SimontonD. K. (1990). Creativity and wisdom in aging. In BirrenJ. E. & Warner SchaieK. (Eds.), Handbook of the psychology of aging (3rd ed.), (pp. 320–329). San Diego: Academic Press.
96.
SimontonD. K. (1991). Creative productivity through the adult years. Generations, XV, 13–16.
97.
SorensonA. (1986). Social structure and mechanisms of life-course processes. In SorensonA. B.WeinertF. E., & SherrodL. R. (Eds.), Human development and the life course (pp. 177–197). Hillsdale, NJ: Earlbaum.
98.
SteinM. I., & HeinzeS. J. (1960). Creativity and the individual.Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
99.
TermanL. (1925). Genetic studies of genius. Vol. 1: Mental and physical traits of a thousand gifted children.Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
100.
VaillantG. E., & VaillantC. O. (1990). Determinants and consequences of creativity in a cohort of gifted women. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 14, 607–616.
101.
Van TasselD., (Ed.), (1979). Aging, death, and the completion of being.Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
102.
VernonP. E. (1989). The nature—nurture problem in creativity. In GloverJ. A.RonningR. R., & ReynoldsC. R. (Eds.), Handbook of creativity (pp. 93–110). New York: Plenum.
103.
WeberM. (1957). The rational and social foundations of music.Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
104.
WelshG. S. (1975). Creativity and intelligence: A personality approach.Chapel Hill: Institute for Research in Social Science.
105.
WilsonJ., & MusickM. (1997). Toward an integrated theory of volunteer work. American Sociological Review, 62, 694–713.
106.
ZhaoH., & JiangG. (1986). Life-span and precocity of scientists. Scientometrics, 9, 27–36.
