Be creative. The two words I have the most difficulty with. A lot of the time professors will give a list of recommended topics for an assignment; they offer suggestions for those who would otherwise have no idea where to start. Unfortunately, for the purpose of writing blogs, the possibilities were endless. And that left one question: what do I write about?

It turns out, creativity is an incredibly complex phenomenon, and even more difficult to measure than other cognitive processes such as attention or memory. Even measures of general intelligence, albeit controversial, have been able to capture the full range of intellectual ability, as many other bloggers have already mentioned on this site (looking at you, MCAT).

Creativity measures, on the other hand, are even more numerous and part of a diverse array of methods that quite frankly do not agree with each other, which explains why empirical research of this phenomenon fails to yield consistent results.

I have long wondered, is creativity a trait one is born with? Or is it better viewed as a skill that can be learned and improved? And why did it seem that other students in my class were more creative than I could ever be?

A report in 2012 attempted to redefine the criteria by which we measure creativity. They noted prominent use of a two-criterion definition in past studies: an idea or response is said to be creative if it is 1) novel or original; and 2) useful, adaptive, or functional. Why wasn’t this a reliable definition? Because it is perfectly feasible for an idea to be both novel and useful, but not necessarily surprising, which presumably requires a bit of divergent thinking (DT) and remote associations (RAT).

Bursts of creativity involve a Eureka or “aha!” experience, therefore a corresponding “nonobvious” third measure was included in the standard definition.

Scales for assessing creativity have focused on different aspects, whether it’s the person’s personality, as with the Creative Personality Scale (CPS), or the creative product, using the Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT).

The authors of the 2012 report suggested the Creative Achievement Questionnaire (CAQ) as the most promising measure. It concentrates on actual achievements in specific domains such as scientific inquiry, creative writing, humour, theatre and visual arts, music, and culinary arts (Table 1).

However, the authors note that an integrative battery of tests that combine the measures mentioned earlier is needed to look at all heterogeneous dimensions and have a broader impact in understanding the process underlying this phenomenon.

Despite the wealth of measures in the literature investigating creativity, some concerns still remain. There is hope that someday a CQ, similar to the “IQ test” for intelligence, will help us differentiate brains of varying creativity. But perhaps there isn’t a single answer or scientific formula for having ideas. Trying to systematize it implies that we all share a universal process, but in reality creativity works differently for everyone.