Image of Everyday Creativity. An Individual Case of a Person with Passion

Abstract

The goal of the present study is to showcase the relation of creativity and passion, captured from the perspective of an analysis of experiences, subjective encounters, and feelings of an everyday creator, as well as analysis of their products. Basing on qualitative analysis of an individual case of a person with passion, the paper presents an image of their everyday creativity. In our research, we referred to the principles of everyday creativity (Richards, 1999, 2007, 2010). Analysis of the results of The Dualistic Model of Passion (Vallerand et al., 2003; Vallerand, 2008, 2010, 2015) became the theoretical frame of reference in our pursuits of the role passion plays in the examined person’s creativity. We conducted an analysis of the process and effects of everyday creativity of this individual in the context of two dimensions of harmonious and obsessive passion (Vallerand, 2015). Additionally, we analyzed and interpreted qualitative material in the context of the concept of Flow (Csíkszentmihályi, 1996) and Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance (Duckworth et al., 2007; Duckworth & Quinn, 2009; Duckworth, 2016). We analyzed traits of the examined everyday creator in the context of the Big-Five concept of personality (McCrae, 1987; McCrae & Costa, 1999). The research shows that using the theory of passion to analyze an individual’s everyday creativity can reveal two extremely different images of a person’s creative works, their personality, as well as the creative process itself. These images are differentiated by harmonious passion and obsessive passion, considered here as disparate sources of creativity.