Creativity in the Everyday: Culture, Self, and Emotions

Nothing is more everyday than emotion, and nothing seemingly less creative. Yet, creativity in the domain of emotion, both eminent and everyday, is the topic of this chapter. As in other domains of creativity, a creative response must be effective in meeting some challenge or standard of excellence. Two other criteria for creativity are novelty and authenticity. Novelty requires that the response be unique to the individual or group, and authenticity requires that the response originates in the self, as opposed to being an imitation or copy. (As here conceived, the "self can extend beyond the boundaries of the individual person.) The exact weight given to the criteria of novelty and authenticity may vary from one person to another, from one domain of creativity to another, and, most important for our present concerns, from one culture to another. A second major concern of this chapter is the way cultures differ in the criteria for assessing creativity. Western cultures are often characterized as individualistic, and Eastern cultures as collectivist. These cultural orientations, we suggest, reflect dimensions along which a person's intraand interpersonal transactions may vary, namely through (a) differentiation and (b) involvement. Through literary examples—John Keats from the West