From Library Journal
Sternberg (psychology and education, Yale) and Lubart propose that creativity, like intelligence, is something everyone has and that it can be developed. Able to generate/intuit new and possibly unpopular ideas and work with determination to make these ideas accepted by others, creative people, the authors state, have the willingness to take sensible risks to go against the crowd in effective ways. These traits may explain why commercial, educational, and political institutions make great overtures to creativity but are seldom truly able to integrate it. Sternberg (editor of Encyclopedia of Human Intelligence, LJ 1/95, among many others) and Lubart also discuss the difference between creative potential and creative performance. They include individual chapters on the six personal, creative resources: intelligence, knowledge, thinking style, personality, motivation, and the environmental context. While not a "how-to" book, their work is accessible and appropriate for general psychology collections in larger public libraries and recommended for academic psychology collections.?Scott Johnson, Meridian Community Coll. Lib., Miss.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Sternberg and Lubart take a decidedly different look at creativity that many will find quite revealing. The subject here is not the Einsteins or Picassos of the world, but average people and their ability to be creative. The biggest hurdle to being creative, the authors argue, is the existence of so much pressure in our society
not to be original and different. In spite of their claims to the contrary, many people "just don't want to hear" anything new. Naturally, the book condemns this mentality and discusses ways that people can develop their own creativity. The authors dissect the roles of knowledge, intelligence, environment, and motivation in their analysis of the creative mind. In the larger sense, by asserting that most people can be intellectually inventive at some level, they are in conflict with the belief that only the few possess such powers. Creativity at its democratic best.
Brian McCombie