Book Description

Recent years have witnessed an increasing awareness of the importance and relevance of creativity in social and psychological life. This has led to an awakening of research into creativity. The book "New Frontiers in Creativity" deals with themes that have emerged due to the expanding boundaries of research in creativity. These concern primarily new perspectives in regard to creativity, discovering of creativity in new populations and nurturing of creativity in new domains and spheres of action. The book presents four new perspectives concerning creativity. The first is a comprehensive model of creativity (by Kreitler) that does justice to the complexity of creativity in terms of the constitutive components, ranging from cognition through motivation, emotions, personality, psychopathology, behavior and the environment, focusing on the rich variety of variables in each of the components and their interactions. Another perspective focuses on creativity in the study and research of creativity (by Runco) by adopting meta-cognitive powerful tactics in the study and nurturing of creativity. A third new perspective describes the innovative methods and findings in neurophysiology of creativity, particularly in brain studies (by Shemyakina and Nagornova). The set of new perspectives is complemented by a description of the social processes characterizing the spread and maintenance of innovative ideas (by Fokas). The innovation in terms of populations is presented in the discussion of creativity in individuals diagnosed with dyslexia (by Cancer and Antonietti), in the controversial sphere of psychopathology (by Thys) and in the elderly (by Cohen-Shalev). Notably, the creativity of all three populations has been increasingly recognized in recent years. The third part of the book is devoted to creativity in various domains, including painting (by Vardi), psychotherapy (by Buzdugan, Grigore and Dinca), engineering (by Engel), architecture (by Casakin), sports (by Santos, Sampaio and Memmert) and nature (by Edlinger). The book includes 13 chapters, written by internationally known experts from different countries -- Austria, Belgium, Hungary, Italy, Israel, Portugal, Romania, Russia, and USA -- responsible for discoveries in the specific aspect of creativity with which they deal. The different chapters of the book present innovative approaches, based on empirical evidence and innovative methodologies. Thereby they contribute to the setting of the scene for new developments and new applications of creativity in the rapidly changing world that is in increasing need for creativity.