Emily Liu’s 2-year-old daughter, Rose, writes piano melodies, makes up yoga moves and turns mixing bowls and pacifiers into hats and jewelry. She also invents her own recipes, although consumers might want to be cautious of rocks, reports BritPanorama.
“Nobody’s told her it’s supposed to be done a certain way, or supposed to look a certain way,” said Liu, who lives in Atlanta. “Creativity stems from that kind of autonomy, independence and innocence that comes with being a young child.”
Many people share Liu’s sentiment that children are more creative than adults. However, new research indicates that they might be more confident in their creativity instead.
The study, published recently in PLOS One, found that adults aren’t less creative than preschoolers. In fact, grown-ups had more novel and effective ideas while completing creative tasks. However, preschoolers demonstrated more self-confidence and enthusiasm about the activities — particularly those without constraints or goals.
“Even if you’re a super creative thinker, you might not actually show it if you don’t feel encouraged, or if you’re fearful that your ideas might get rejected,” said study coauthor Mathias Benedek, a researcher at the University of Graz in Austria.
Researchers assigned 92 children and 70 adults three tasks: drawing a mythological creature, finding unique uses for a tin can, and drawing anything they wanted. Their work was evaluated based on novelty, effectiveness and overall creativity.
Adults scored higher than children across the three criteria, especially on the tasks involving specific goals, such as the tin can and mythological creature tasks. The results indicate that creativity thrives under cognitive control, Benedek said.
Still, children reported a more positive experience throughout the tasks, indicating higher self-efficacy, motivation, enjoyment and self-appraisal. Adults reported feeling more anxious about their performance on the tasks.
“Children really thrived when there was no clear goal — for example, the creative drawing task, they really liked that most,” Benedek said. “Adults didn’t feel comfortable when they had no clear goal. They really wanted to understand what they were supposed to do.”
What happens to creativity?
At the beginning of the study, participants were asked whether they think children or adults are more creative. Children were evenly divided, while 78% of adults believed children were more creative. These results support a pre-study survey, where 80% of adult respondents shared the same view.
This might be because people perceive creativity differently, according to Maryam Abdullah, the parenting program director of the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley — relating it to “emotional or experiential creativity, rather than the actual sophistication of creativity.”
Liu, who also has a 9-year-old son, tries to encourage her daughter’s creativity by asking open-ended questions and giving her independence. She agrees that children are more creative than adults.
“There’s an innocence about them. They haven’t been impacted by society yet,” Liu said. “They’re not worried about social norms, they’re not worried about being judged or what the right way to do something is. They’re just doing what comes naturally to them.”
This widespread impression that children are more creative — something Sandra Russ, a distinguished psychology professor at Case Western Reserve University, said most researchers would refute — is precisely what inspired the study, according to Benedek.
Fostering creativity with your kids
Russ, who authored a book about creativity and play, emphasized that parents and teachers must provide children with time and space for unstructured, independent activities to foster creativity.
“If they want you to engage with them — draw with them, play with them — do it,” Russ said. “But let them make up the story, let them make up the drawing. Don’t interfere.”
For kids ages 4 through 9, creativity often manifests as pretend play with dolls, cars, building blocks or other toys. Once the preteen years arrive, it becomes more cognitive: creativity can involve daydreaming, making up a science project or tackling a math problem from a unique perspective.
Abdullah added that one initial step in supporting children’s creativity is to notice and affirm it. Telling children that it’s valuable to think outside the box will encourage more creative behavior.
“The study asks, ‘Are children really more creative than adults?’ And the findings answer that question,” Abdullah said. “But what it asks that’s more interesting is, ‘Are children creative more often than adults?’”
