In many countries, the COVID-19 pandemic led to a period of lockdown that impacted individuals’ lifestyles, in both professional and personal spheres. New problems and challenges arose, as well as opportunities. Numerous studies have examined the negative effects of lockdown measures, but few have attempted to shine light on the potential positive effects that may come out of these measures. We focused on one particular positive outcome that might have emerged from lockdown: creativity. To this end, this paper compared self-reported professional creativity (Pro-C) and everyday creativity (little-c) before and during lockdown, using a questionnaire-based study conducted on a French sample (N = 1266). We expected participants to be more creative during than prior to lockdown, in both professional and everyday spheres. Regarding Pro-C, we did not see any significant differences between the two comparison points, before and during lockdown. Regarding everyday creativity, we observed a significant increase during lockdown. Furthermore, our results suggest that participants with a lower baseline creativity (before lockdown) benefited more from the situation than those with a higher initial baseline creativity. Our results provide new insights on the impact of lockdown and its positive outcomes. These measures may have inarguably negative consequences on the physical and mental health of many, but their positive impact exists as well.

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In many countries, the COVID-19 pandemic led to a period of lockdown that impacted individual’s lifestyles, in both professional and personal spheres. New problems and challenges arose, as well as opportunities. Numerous studies have examined the negative effects of lockdown measures, but few have attempted to shine light on the potential positive effects that may come out of these measures. We focused on one particular positive outcome that might have emerged from lockdown: creativity. To this end, this paper compared professional creativity (Pro-C) and everyday creativity (little-c) before and during lockdown, using a questionnaire-based study conducted on a French sample (N = 1266). We expected participants to be more creative during than prior to lockdown, in both professional and everyday spheres. Regarding professional creativity, we did not see any significant differences between the two comparison points, before and during lockdown. Regarding everyday creativity, we observed a significant increase during lockdown. Furthermore, our results suggest that participants with a lower baseline creativity (before lockdown) benefited more from the situation than those with a higher initial baseline creativity. Our results provide new insights on the impact of lockdown and its positive outcomes. These measures may have inarguably negative consequences on the physical and mental health of many, but their positive impact exists as well.

If the importance of social psychological factors in creativity has been widely emphasized, research across the social sciences mainly focused on identifying contextual factors that increase or decrease individuals’ creative behaviors. Few studies have investigated the relationships between creativity and individual characteristics related to interpersonal and social interactions. The present contribution aimed to consider such characteristics, namely social risk-taking (i.e., willingness to challenge norms) and fear of negative evaluation (i.e., apprehension about receiving negative judgments of others). Two correlational studies were therefore implemented in order to clarify previous research suggesting that creativity would be positively associated with social risk-taking and to extend them by testing potential associations between creativity and fear of negative evaluation. Using self-ratings of creativity, but also creative self-beliefs and creative achievement, we hypothesized that creativity would correlate positively with social risk likelihood and negatively with fear of negative evaluation. As predicted, and replicating previous results, all our measures of creativity correlated positively with social risk-taking. Our results also consistently highlighted a negative association between beliefs in one’s creative capacities (creative self-efficacy) and one’s level of fear of negative evaluation. These findings corroborate the idea according to which creative individuals would be (social) risk-takers. In addition, individuals who are confident in their ability to generate creative productions would be less afraid of negative judgments from others. Several perspectives are proposed, in particular in terms of the intervention designed in order to enhance individuals’ creativity.

The different definitions of creativity that have been proposed by researchers have developed out of what are called explicit theories of creativity, on the basis of logical and semantic arguments, independently of empirical data. The present paper focuses on two such definitions, the standard definition (M.A. Runco & G.J. Jaeger, 2012), which defines a creative product as one that is novel and valuable, and R.W. Weisberg's (2015Weisberg's ( , 2018 intentional novelty (IN) definition, which defines a creative product as one that is novel and produced intentionally. Those two definitions make different predictions concerning the criteria that laypeople will when making judgments of creativity: both emphasize novelty, but the standard definition also includes value, while the IN definition includes the intention of the individual. Three studies (N = 983) tested those differential predictions using a scenario method. Overall, the results supported the importance of novelty and intentionality in lay-people's judgments of creativity, as well as raising questions about the role of value in such judgments. That pattern of results supported the IN definition. However, the results did not support the specific predictions made on the basis of the IN definition. The theoretical implications are discussed.

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In scientific research on creativity, there has been considerable debate concerning the criteria by which a production can be judged more or less creative, that is, about the definition of creativity. The most frequent definition – the standard definition – incorporates the criteria of novelty and value. However, other definitions, based on a single criterion or on more than two criteria, have also been proposed. Much of the discussion of this issue has been based on semantic analysis, a logical analysis of the concepts involved and the usefulness of the various proposed criteria. In this article, question of the necessary and sufficient criteria for defining creativity is approached from an empirical (i.e., psychometric) perspective. The studies that are examined here converge on the idea that the standard definition is not internally consistent, because its two proposed criteria (i.e., novelty and value) are largely independent. Moreover, judgments of the creativity of an object seem to be explained mainly by its novelty, which suggests the possible sufficiency of that criterion. These results are consistent with the intentional novelty definition proposed recently by Weisberg (2015, 2018).