Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is most well-known in the field of psychology for coining the term “flow.” Flow is the idea that in creative practices, a person can arrive at productive, deeply focused and transcendent states in which time and identity disappear (1997). The way to get to these states is to find the sweet spot between the right amount of challenge and relaxation.
Flow, in and of itself, can motivate an individual to higher achievement and deeper inquiry into their creative practice. What do we know about how to go about increasing the likelihood for flow to occur? Csikszenthihalyi (1990) states that the seven universal conditions that occur in a flow state are: 1) perceived balance of skill, 2) sense of control, 3) clear task goals, 4) opportunity for intense concentration, 5) feedback, 6) lack of self-consciousness, and 7) enjoyments. He would also say that some activities, such as making music, rock climbing, dancing, sailing, chess, and so on, are conducive to flow because they are designed to make optimal experience easier to achieve. They have rules that require the learning of skills, they set up goals, they provide feedback, they make control possible. They facilitate concentration and involvement by making the activity distinct from everyday existence.
Typically, the research concerning flow in art-making centers around high performing adolescents (Csikszentmihalyi, Rathunde, & Whalen, 1997; Garces-Bacsal, Cohen, & Tan, 2011; Abuhamdeh & Csikszentmihalyi, 2004; Simpson, 2012). In Jill Lauer’s 2015 master’s thesis, however, she found that even with novice art students, interest in the learning topic in her art classroom increased likelihood of flow, which in turn increased the likelihood of the students’ ability to engage with challenge. Lauer’s study divides the literature review into each of the seven universal conditions for flow, using each subsection to show how each condition could be strengthened in a learning environment. The results of her work imply that we have ways of understanding and measuring the conditions for flow in a way that is reliable enough to be standardized. This has implications for standardized education and for learning creative thinking. Flow states are available to everyone, and by knowing flow states, creative thinkers gain confidence in recognizing those conditions in other areas of their lives.
Csikszentmihalyi’s work in the field of creativity at the University of Chicago spans decades. In his 1997 book, Creativity: The psychology of discovery and invention, he presents his thoughts about creativity based on 30 years of research on how creative people think and work. Creativity itself, at least in the context of how he deals with it in the book, is defined as a process by which a symbolic domain in the culture is changed. He points out that in cultural evolution, even fundamental things like speaking and making fire must be taught and learned, just as with creative practices, one must learn the rules and languages within each domain, before transferring creative thinking skills to other areas of expertise. This is in contrast to biological evolution, in which changes are imprinted in the human genome. Therefore, one thing creativity requires is attention, and attention is a limited resource.
Previously, Howard Gardner (who is more well known for his work on multiple intelligences) had stated that creativity must occur within a domain, and does not predict analogous proclivities elsewhere (1988). Csikszentmihalyi diverges from Gardner in his findings regarding domain-specificity and transfer of skills. He states:
So while specializing in a particular domain can wait until late adolescence, an intense involvement in some domain might be necessary if a person is to become creative. Knowing the basics is essential. Acquiring the foundations of math and physics for a scientist, of drawing for an artist, of the classics for a writer is the starting point of any further innovation. Yet, it is important to keep in mind that most breakthroughs are based on linking information that usually is not thought of as related. Integration, synthesis both across and within domains, is the norm rather than the exception (p. 329).
Csikszentmihalyi also contributes the idea of big-C versus little-C creativity. Big C being the kind of profound creativity that changes some aspect of culture, and little-c creativity taking place in everyday life. Csikszentmihalyi says that big-C creative ideas arise from a synergy of many sources, not the mind of a single person. That creativity is enhanced by environmental changes, not trying to make individuals think more creatively. And, that genuine creative accomplishment is almost never the result of a sudden insight, but comes after years of hard work. Thus, his systems model, which is intended to facilitate the evolution of big-C creativity, has three parts: domain, field, and individual. The idea being that the creative person is someone whose thoughts or actions change the domain or establish a new domain, but that a domain cannot be changed without the consent of the field responsible for it.
Understanding Csikszentmihalyi’s contributions of a systems model to the field of creative thinking brings more context to the 21st century skills’ call for more “creativity and collaboration,” because his work shows that creativity and collaboration are not only necessary for the evolution of ideas, but also that they cannot function without the other. Collaboration is one of the most misunderstood parts of the 21st century framework, but creativity research frames it in a way that offers the educator or policy-writer tools to operationalize it in the curriculum effectively. Csikszentmihalyi laid the groundwork for other researchers who continue the systems model of creative thinking. Clapp and Hanson (2019) offer the reframing that no students “are” creative, however all have the opportunity to participate in creativity. They envision instruction geared toward creative thinking as a framework, more than a curriculum, that reframes creativity as a “biography of an idea” to which all students contribute. This destigmatizes the belief creativity requires the production of ‘good ideas’ from individual ‘geniuses’ and instead, assumes that ideas are symbol manipulations and evolve through social and material interactions.
Abuhamdeh, S., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2004). The Artistic Personality: A Systems Perspective. In Sternberg, R. J., Grigorenko, E. L., & Singer, J. L. (Eds.), Creativity: from potential to realization (31-42). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Clapp, E.P. & Hanson, M.H. (2019). Participatory creativity: Supporting dynamic roles and perspectives in the classroom. In R. Beghetto and G. Corazza (Eds.) Dynamic perspectives on creativity (27-46). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: Harper & Row Publishers.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996). Creativity: The psychology of discovery and invention. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.
Csikszentmihalyi, M., Rathunde, K., & Whalen, S. (1997). Talented teenagers: The roots of success and failure. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Gardner, H. (1988). Creativity: An interdisciplinary perspective. Creativity Research Journal, 1(1), 8-26.
Lauer, J. (2015). The relationship between classroom environment and instruction on the ability of art learners to enter into flow. Master’s Thesis, The University of Iowa.
Simpson, A. V. (2012). Design Structures: Improving the quality of in-class design critiques. Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education, 11(1), 63-80.
