Revisiting the Systems Approach: Commentary on Glăveanu’s Paper “The Psychology of Creativity: A Critical Reading”

Abstract

In responding to Glăveanu’s critical views on the psychology of creativity, this commentary summarizes seminal work that has been carried out on creativity since 1950s. It underscores the value of the systems approach and discusses key methodological issues related to this approach, including creativity assessment, the necessity for multi-level analyses, the bandwidth-fidelity-dilemma, the challenge of operationalizing creativity for empirical studies and the lack of communication across disciplines. It calls for more external support, cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural collaboration and the establishment of a more open, tolerant and creativity-conducive environment to encourage and unleash creativity in creativity research from creativity researchers.