Educational PsychologyReview, Vol. 7, No. 3, 1995

Scientific Creativity: A Short Overview Heinrich Stumpf 1,2

This article gives a condensed overview of important findings, methods, and theories related to scientific creativity. The topics discussed are grouped into the fourfold classification of the creative product, the creative person, the creative process, and the creative situation. Methods for evaluating the impact and creativeness of the creative product are citation analysis and rating inventories. The section on the creative person presents findings on the personality of creative scientists and research productivity across the life span. The section on the creative process reviews a stage theory of the creative act. Remarks on the creative situation include a summary of factors conducive to creative achievement and a discussion of the problem of multiple discoveries. In one of two additional sections, a comprehensive theory of scientific creativity--Simonton's chance configuration theory--is reviewed. The second additional section presents recommendations for further research on scientific creativity.

INTRODUCTION A large amount of the theoretical and empirical work done in the field of scientific creativity may be subsumed in the following topics: the creative work or product, the creative person (or creator), the creative process, and the creative situation (Isaksen, 1987; MacKinnon, 1987; Rhodes, 1961). Theories of creativity (like the many stage theories of the creative process) have usually focused on subsets of these topics, but there are also theoretical approaches that address a broad range of themes, most notably SiICenter for Talented Youth, Johns Hopkins University, 2701 North Charles St., Baltimore, Maryland 21218. 2Correspondence should be addressed to Dr. Heinrich Stumpf, Center for Talented Youth, Johns Hopkins University, 2701 North Charles St., Baltimore, Maryland21218. 225 1040-726XJ95/09(}0-0225507.50/0 r 1995 Plcnum Publishing Corporation

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monton's (1988) chance configuration theory. Present theories of scientific creativity are to a large extent theories of scientific eminence or genius. This paper gives a short overview of some important, basic findings and observations on scientific creativity. For much more detailed accounts, the reader is referred to Mansfield and Busse (1981), Jackson and Rushton (1987), Abra (1988), Simonton (1988), Ochse (1990), and Albert (1992).

THE PRODUCT Ochse (1990, p. 2) summarized the many existing definitions of a creative product by stating that it is "original (new, unusual, novel, unexpected) and also valuable (useful, good, adaptive, appropriate)." The difficulty is, of course, to decide in a given case whether a product meets these requirements. Abra (1988, Chap. 1) is probably right in saying that there will always be an arbitrary element in such an evaluation. To reduce the subjective element in evaluating creative products, two broad classes of methods have been developed: citation counts and expert ratings. Of course, a citation also involves, among other things, an evaluation by an expert leading to the decision to cite a work; but citation counts and rating inventories are treated separately here because they have many distinguishing features. The citation count method is not new, but the use of data bases such as the Science Citation Index (SCI) and the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) has made it more powerful in recent years. Although the citation of a specific publication is the basic datum of citation analysis, the method is often applied in a summary fashion to all the publications of an author during a given period of time. Thus, citation analysis is used as a tool to evaluate individuals and will therefore be treated in the third section of this article. Citation counts applied to individual publications across several years usually have a hyperbolic distribution with very few contributions being cited thousands of times and a substantial part of the existing publications not being referred to at all. Garfield (1987) reports for the SCI that 25% of the literature may never be cited and that only 17% are referred to 17 times or more often. This phenomenon has been described as "elitism." Patterns of citations among ptrblications tend to form clusters that often signal emerging or established areas of research. Although the interpretation of citation counts is straightforward, some properties limit their usefulness as indices of scientific excellence. The most important of these problems are mentioned in the third section of this article. One difficulty in the evaluation of citation counts for single publications is their dependence on the size of the cluster to which the publications be-

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long. Another inherent problem is that the frequency with which a paper is mentioned in the literature also depends on some properties of the paper that are not necessarily related to its quality, such as the status of the journal in which it is published, the language in which it is written, and the topic with which it deals. In psychology, for instance, methodological contributions tend to have higher citation rates than empirical or theoretical ones (Bentler, 1992; Garfield, 1975). Despite their limitations, citation counts have become very popular and will certainly continue to be an important tool for evaluating the scientific impact of publications and scientists. An alternative to citation counts are ratings of the scientific quality of a publication by experts. Such ratings are often done informally, but some interesting approaches improve the validity of such assessments. These approaches try to make the criteria used in such ratings more explicit than they usually are and try to make the ratings more systematic by having the rater evaluate several aspects of creativeness in the product. Besemer and Treffinger (1981) developed the "Creative Product Analysis Matrix," one of the most comprehensive present-day theoretical models to judge creative products. The model includes 14 criteria to evaluate a product; these criteria are subsumed in three dimensions: novelty, resolution, and elaboration and synthesis. Novelty is the extent to which the product involves new processes, materials, techniques, and concepts. Resolution denotes the degree to which the product satisfies the demands of the problem it was designed to solve, and elaboration and synthesis describe the "degree to which the product combines unlike elements into a refined development, coherent whole, statement or unit" (Besemer and Treffmger, 1981, p. 164). Each of these dimensions includes several more specific criteria, like "original," "germinal," and "transformational" in the case of novelty. Based on this model, Besemer and O'Quinn (1986; O'Quinn and Besemer, 1989) developed a rating inventory, the Creative Product Semantic Scale (CPSS). The CPSS has been psychometrically evaluated with artistic and commercial products. Unfortunately, it has not been widely used in the field of scientific creativity. Two similar instruments (Eichenberger, 1972; Taylor and Sandier, 1972) that were specifically developed for the field of science also have not been widely used by researchers.

PERSON Definition

Given the abundance of existing creativity tests (see Hocevar and Bachelor, 1989; Callahan, 1991 for recent overviews), it might appear appropriate to use such tests for the identification and prediction of creativity

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in science. There are, however, problems with the psychometric properties of most creativity tests (Michael and Wright, 1989). In particular, the correlations of the scores on creativity tests with actual creativity in science have often been found to be low (e.g., Mansfield and Busse, 1981). Consequently, most major theoretical approaches to scientific creativity have relied on real-life measures of performance (i.e., products) to identify persons as creative. Echoing the definition of a creative work, Ochse (1990, p. 4) defined a creative person as someone who has been "recognized by expert opinion as having contributed something of original value to the culture." Again, obvious problems exist in applying this definition to a specific person in an objective way, and sometimes textbooks tend to blur these problems by referring only to people who have unquestionably been creative, like Einstein.

Measurement

Attempts to identify creators on a broader basis include peer and supervisor ratings as well as evaluations of prizes and awards received by the persons and their memberships in scientific societies. Sometimes, these criteria as well as other variables have been combined into large batteries of indicators designed to measure scientific performance (Taylor, Smith, and Ghiselin, 1963; Taylor, 1987). The most important approach, however, counts the number of publications of a person and the number of references made to him or her in the literature. Both techniques have been used for a long time. Publication counts have revealed that some wellknown scientists claim stunning numbers of contributions to their science-like Poincar6, who published about 500 papers and 30 books (Simonton, 1984). Early analyses of references made to scientists have relied on citations in encyclopedias and biographical dictionaries (J. McKeen CatteU, 1903; Ellis, 1904). More recently, scientific information systems such as the Science Citation Index (SCI) and the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) have been used in this context. The most comprehensive approaches in this field are weighted publication counts and counts of citations in the literature as measures of productivity and scientific impact, respectively (see, e.g., Endler, 1987; Garfield, 1987; Gordon and Vicari, 1993; Howard and Curtin, 1993). One objection to publication counts is that they are measures of quantity rather than quality or of productivity rather than creativity. Empirical research, however, has shown a substantial correlation exists between a person's number of publications and his or her degree of scientific eminence, as measured by other criteria (see, e.g., Busse and

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Mansfield, 1984; Simonton, 1984a, Chap. 4; Simonton, 1988, Chap. 4 for overviews). Of course, there are exceptions to this rule--like Mendel, who published only seven papers (Ochse, 1990, p. 100)--but the "common misconception that the phenomenal intellects contribute only a handful of selective masterpieces, or even a single magnum opus, is plain wrong"; in fact, the "distinguishing characteristic of genius, scientific or otherwise, is immense productivity" (Simonton, 1988, p. 60). Despite the relationship between quantity and quality, simple publication counts based in the SCI and SSCI have not gone without criticism; a problem with these counts is that they consider only journal publications and assign the same weight to an epoch-making article as to a short comment. In response to this problem, Endler (1978, 1987) has developed a "Weighted Publication Index" and a "Weighted Productivity Index." The former index, for instance, assigns weights of 20 to published books, four to journal articles, and only one to unpublished reports. What publication and citation counts have in common is that their basic unit, the publication or citation, is clearly and objectively defined. Citation counts have been shown to be correlated with other criteria of eminence, like prizes and presidencies of scientific associations (see Endler, 1987, p. 167, for a summary), although the correlations found between citation counts from different sources (e.g., citations in the SSCI and in textbooks) have not always been high (Gordon and Vicari, 1993; Howard and Curtin, 1993). The counts based on the SCI and SSCI, however, have some drawbacks as described in Endler (1987, pp. 177-178). Some of these limitations are that only citations in journals, not references in books, are counted; the quality of the cited publication is not considered (papers may be cited because they contain errors); and that the counts are biased against authors publishing in languages other than English. Another problem inherent in citation counts is the fact that scientific creativity is not always expressed in publications, however important these are for science. Contributions to sciences neglected in such counts include patents, good teaching, reviewing and editing of manuscripts, and administrative work done for scientific institutions.

Productivity Both publication and citation counts have three properties referred to as "elitism," "sexism," and "ageism," (e.g., Rushton, Murray, and Paunonen, 1987); these properties are not necessarily biases of the counts, but rather reflect phenomena associated with scientific creativity.

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Elitism is reflected in the fact that a small proportion of authors and publications are highlighted at the expense of the large majority of contributors and contributions. Some time ago, Dennis (1955) estimated that 10% of the authors of scientific contributions published about 50% of the literature, whereas about half of those who published at all claimed only one publication. Endler, Rushton, and Roediger (1978) examined the SSCI for 1975 and found that in the top 100 departments of psychology in the United States, Canada, and Britain, only about 25% of the faculty members were cited 16 times or more, while about 50% had fewer than five citations. As the relationship between quality and quantity of scientific productivity suggests, publication and citation counts usually are substantially intercorrelated; the observed correlation coefficients range from .28 (Rushton et al., 1987) to .76 (Simonton, 1988, p. 84). "Sexism" is reflected in the fact that publication and citation counts reveal that women publish less than their male counterparts and are not as prominent in science on the average as are males (Cole, 1981). One explanation for this observation is that social responsibilities at various stages of career development and scientific work prevent women from spending as much energy on their professional work as men (Ochse, 1990, pp. 172-175). '~.geism" refers to the phenomenon that scientific productivity is related to the age of the scientist. It has long been known that a characteristic curve describes the numbers of publications of scientists in various fields in relation to their age. Lehman (1953) published extensive data on this relationship. These and other data have been re-analyzed and reviewed by Simonton (1984b, 1988, pp. 66-84), who maintains that the function best fitting this relationship has the shape of an inverted backward-J curve. Productivity usually begins in a scientist's 20s, rises sharply to a maximum in the late 30s or early 40s, and then declines slowly. It should be noted, however, that there are interdisciplinary differences in this age-related trend, related to the maximum of the curve in particular. Some other important findings with respect to the age curve include a strong negative correlation between the age when the first contribution to science was made and the total number of publications over the life span, as well as the fact that an eminent scientist's publication career can be very long, with 50 years not being unusual. Although the number of publications per unit of time declines in the second half of life, gerontologists have argued that the actual contributions to science that can be made by elderly scholars should not only be measured in sheer numbers of papers published, because "the experience and wisdom of senior academics, coupled with better health and later old age, make them an important resource for society" (Birren, 1990, p. 27).

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Intelligence Obvious problems exist in administering standard intelligence tests to highly successful scientists. Often tasks on such tests are so simplistic that the tests results of eminent scientists or other creators tell us more about the tests than about the person taking them. Nevertheless, the expectation that every successful scientist will fool any intelligence test presented to him or her is not justified. In fact, IQ tests have been used with highly creative people, including scientists, and some recurring findings emerged from these studies: Creators 9 . . possess substantially above average intelligence . . . . A high IQ is probably necessary for admission to and completion of an advanced graduate program. However, as is apparent from the criterion-related validity studies of intelligence t e s t s . . , a high IQ does not usually differentiate creative from less creative professionals in the same field. A threshold effect seems to operate for IQ . . . . such that, above a certain level required for mastery of a field, IQ is not correlated with creativity. The IQ threshold varies from one field to another; it is probably higher in scientific than in artistic fields" (Mansfield and Busse, 1981, p. 51).

Much the same view has been expressed in more recent reviews by Findlay and Lumsden (1988), Vernon (1987), and Ochse (1990), among others. It is obvious that measurement methods more specialized than standard intelligence tests are required to predict success in science, but many attempts to use such methods have been unsuccessful.

Personality and Motivation As in the field of intelligence, research on personality characteristics and motives common among creative scientists has revealed quite a number of consistent patterns. When evaluating the results reported below, however, the reader should keep in mind that there are traits on which there is much variance among successful scientists. This variation is systematic enough that certain types of creators have been distinguished, such as the "adaptor" and the "innovator" (Kirton, 1987). Simonton (1988) maintains that in the life of the creative scientist, there is a shift from the "intuitive genius" to the "analytical genius." Citation analysis has revealed a trend from empirical to integrative and theoretical work in the lives of many scientists (Endler, 1987). A further qualification of the findings on personality, motivational, and biographical variables is the observation that different variables are related to different stages of the creative process (e.g., Mansfield and Busse, 1981). Thus, persons contribute to science in a variety of ways. Despite these dif-

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ferences, there is reasonable agreement as to which personality variables are related to scientific creativity (e.g., Ochse, 1990; Rushton et al., 1987). Usually, in studies of the relationships between personality traits and scientific creativity, scores on personality tests, self or peer ratings are correlated with some overall measure of success in science, such as publication or citation counts. Mansfield and Busse (1981), however, have developed a model that is theoretically more interesting in that it relates personality traits "to various stages of the creative process. In their review of the literature, Mansfield and Busse (1981) distinguished five processes that make up the creative act: (1) selection of the problem, (2) extended effort to solve the problem, (3) setting constraints, (4) changing constraints, and (5) verification and elaboration. These processes are discussed in more detail in the next section. Mansfield and Busse (1981) summarized the existing findings and concluded that six personality and motivational variables have consistently been shown to correlate with success in science. Instead of just listing these variables, the authors relate them to the different stages. According to their model, the four variables-autonomy, personal flexibility, the need to be original and novel, and the need for professional recognition--are essential for the stage of selecting the problem. Commitment to work is required for the process of extended effort to solve the problem, which often absorbs much energy. Autonomy, personal flexibility and openness to experience, as well as aesthetic sensitivity, help the creator both to set and change constraints; and commitment to work and need for professional recognition are essential for the process of elaboration and verification. Mansfield and Busse (1981) also include four developmental variables in their model: low emotionality of parent-child relationship, parental autonomy-fostering, parental intellectual stimulation, and apprenticeship. The authors relate these variables to the realm of personality and motivation and, thus, indirectly to the stages of the creative process. Inevitably, the links between the antecedent variables and the stages themselves are more speculative than are the relationships mentioned above. Other personality characteristics that have repeatedly been found to be associated with scientific creativity include low sociability, aggressiveness, dominance, and introversion (Rushton et al., 1987).

Psychopathology According to an old belief, creativity is related to psychopathology. Much of the evidence supporting this view is anecdotal or derived from biographies, but evidence from systematic, empirical studies lends some

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support to it. For instance, Juda (1949), in a large-scale investigation, found that the incidence of manic depressive disorders is ten times higher in creative scientists that in the general population. This observation, however, is at variance with the findings that successful scientists, according to their responses on personality questionnaires, can be characterized as emotionally stable (Cattell and Drevdahl, 1955). In her review of the literature, Ochse (1990), while acknowledging that the matter is controversial, concludes that there is a correlation of creativity with psychopathology, a correlation which is due to "a motivational thrust (resulting from emotional insecurity) leading to two possible outcomes--intellectual gains and emotional disorder" (p. 119). Epidemiological research (reviewed in Richards, 1981) and recent studies using self-report data (Rushton, 1990) have indeed found indications for an association between scientific creativity and psychopathology, although the correlations reported by Rushton (1990) are far from being impressive. In any case, two inferences from the available data appear to be safe: "One cannot conclude that psychopathology is a prerequisite for creative achievement, as some highly creative achievers are not disordered. On the other hand one cannot accept that mental health is necessary for creative achievement, as some creative achievers are indeed blatantly disordered" (Ochse, 1990, p. 119).

THE CREATIVE PROCESS There are numerous models of the creative process. Most of these models have described the creative act as a sequence of various stages, and the authors of these models have interpreted the stages in terms of different theories, such as Gestalt theory and psychoanalysis. Busse and Mansfield (1980), Abra (1988, Chaps. 4 and 5), and Ochse (1990, Chap. 9), among others, have summarized these approaches in detail. Most of these .approaches are based on introspective reports of creators from both the sciences and other areas. Many of these reports have highlighted the phenomenon of a sudden illumination in the process of solving scientific problems, an illumination often occurring when the creator was not consciously working on the problem. The various stage theories, however, have also stressed the importance of other processes, such as finding the problem, extensively working on it, and elaborating on the solution and translating it into a communicable form once it has been found. The present overview will deal with the model of Busse and Mansfield (1980; see also Mansfield and Busse, 1981) in some detail, because this model is based on an extensive review of earlier approaches and has been linked explicitly with characteristics of the creative person (see above). The

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first process postulated by Busse and Mansfield (1980), the selection of the problem, is guided by two considerations: "On the one hand, the problem must be one that is capable of solution. That is, given the instruments, methods, and knowledge available, the solution must stand at least a remote chance of being found. On the other hand, the problem should be one which, if solved, would represent a creative breakthrough" (p. 99). In some instances, the scientist does an additional step before selecting the problem: He or she actually discovers it (e.g., as an inconsistency in an otherwise well-established theory). The second process is the extended effort to solve the problem. This process may vary considerably in duration; anecdotal evidence suggests that it may take years. The third and fourth processes have to do with constraints, or mental sets that limit the scope of inquiry. First, constraints must be set on the solution of the problem. These constraints may be empirical, theoretical, or methodological. A theoretical constraint, for example, may be a previously existing theory related to the problem, as classical physics is related to the problem of the velocity of light. Second, some constraints will prove to be wrong, so there must be a process of changing the constraints. This process is related to what is called "restructuring" in Gestalt psychology and often occurs as a sudden illumination. Finally, a process of verification and elaboration is required, in which the scientist ascertains the value of the new set of constraints and puts that set into a form in which it can be presented to the public. Note that these processes need not occur in exactly the order presented above; the actual sequence of events may be much more complicated.

THE CREATIVE SITUATION Research concerning the situation in which scientific creativity occurs has examined a large array of psychological, social, cultural, political, and historical factors assumed to be related to creative achievement. Torrance's (1962, p. 143) list of psychological and social variables conducive to creative achievement is still worth mentioning in this context. The list of factors supporting creative work includes the absence of serious threat, the readiness'to take risks, the awareness of one's feelings, the awareness of oneself as being different from another, openness to ideas of others, confidence in one's perceptions of reality or ideas, and mutuality in interpersonal relationships. Work done on cultural and political factors includes the observation of differential incidence of creativity in various religious groups (see Ochse, 1990, pp. 62-64 for an overview); speculations that certain world views such

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as materialism, individualism, conceptualism, and skepticism favor scientific growth (Simonton, 1976); and the recent discussion on whether and how political factors like internal war, external threat, political instability, and civil disturbances are related to societal creativity (Bailin, 1990; Feldman, 1990; Hausman, 1990; Martindale, 1990; Rubenson, 1990; Simonton, 1990; Stahira and Walberg, 1990; Stein, 1990). Research concerning the influence of historical factors on scientific creativity has sometimes stressed the impact of the situation at the cost of the individual. Historians of science have often made the case that, at specific points in history, certain discoveries or the development of certain theories were inevitable. Kroner (1921), for instance, asserted that the philosophy of German idealism actually had to develop the way it did once the foundations were laid. While Kroner would not deny that Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel--the main exponents of this development--were creators, others have deemphasized the role of the individual scientist in such a process and stressed the role of the "spirit of the times" or Zeitgeist (a term used extensively by Hegel). The Zeitgeist might also explain another observation, which has been termed the "Yuasa phenomenon" (Yuasa, 1974). This phenomenon implies that, in the history of science, there are periods in cultures when scientific creativity reaches a zenith, in terms of both quantity and quality. The philosophy of German idealism is such a period. One of the strongest arguments that the Zeitgeist plays an important role in scientific productivity is the observation that often in the history of science, the same discoveries were made independently and simultaneously by several scientists, a phenomenon often referred to as multiple discovery or "multiples." Probably the best known example of a multiple is the development of calculus by Leibniz and Newton. Multiples have been thought to be a very common phenomenon in science (e.g., Merton, 1961), and have been interpreted in terms of sociocultural determinism, asserting that discoveries and inventions are created more or less by. the Zeitgeist. More recently, however, Lamb and Easton (1984) and Simonton (e.g., 1987, 1988) have criticized this view. Simonton objected that the criteria for the identification of two or more discoveries as a multiple have been used too liberally (see also Schmookler, 1966). Simonton (1986) used a series of Monte Carlo simulations to examine the power of various models to explain the observed incidence of multiples. According to his results, the occurrence of multiples reported in the literature can be explained, by stochastic models without any necessity to assume any sort of sociocultural determinism as implied by Zeitgeist theories. This does not imply that the Zeitgeist is unimportant for the progress of science, but the "conclusion

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seems sound, however tentative, that multiples are the result of a fundamental stochastic mechanism, one that entails chance permutations that are selectively retained, articulated, and disseminated" (Simonton, 1988, p. 176). The theory of these chance permutations or configurations will be briefly sketched in the next section.

CHANCE CONFIGURATION THEORY Simonton (e.g., 1988), in his chance configuration theory, states that the human mind constantly combines mental elements (such as observations of facts, knowledge of conventions and rules) into permutations. Some of these permutations are stable and retained for further information processing; these are referred to as "configurations." Once configurations are consolidated, they can become mental elements in forming new configurations, which are usually constructed in a hierarchical manner. This "integration of configurations makes us think more economically, for the number of unrelated elements with which we must cope is dramatically reduced" (Simonton, 1988, p. 14). When such a configuration has been formed, it must undergo several further selection processes before it can be considered a discovery or invention. It must be structured in a way that it can be communicated to other scientists. This may require a great deal of change and the creation of a new configuration, which is called "communication configuration." Once a communication configuration has been made public, its success depends, among other things, on whether the recipients have a similar set of mental elements (e.g., similar prior experience); whether their experience has a low state of organization (so that the configuration can help them to think more economically on the subject), whether there is consensus on the meanings of the linguistic, mathematical, and logical elements of the configuration, and whether it is possible for the recipients to translate it back into the original configuration. Chance configuration theory has been used by Simonton (1988) to explain many phenomena associated with scientific creativity, including the stages of the creative process, the correlation of creativity with personality traits, motives, and developmental antecedent variables; the occurrence of multiples; the development of productivity across the life span; the Yuasa phenomenon; and the correlation of quantity and quality in scientific creativity. Thus, most of the findings reported above have been re-interpreted by Simonton in terms of his theory. Chance configuration theory may therefore be regarded as one of the most comprehensive contemporary approaches to understanding scientific creativity.

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FUTURE DIRECTIONS The psychology of scientific creativity is a vast area of research, and although some strands of research have a long tradition and research results have converged in some areas (as mentioned above), there is a strong need for more work on many aspects of the phenomenon. Given the scope of the field, any list of suggestions for further research that can be given in a short review article like the present one will necessarily be selective and subjective. Two general recommendations for further research, however, appear to be inevitable. The first has to do with the fact that the present psychology of science predominantly is a psychology of scientific eminence (e.g, Simonton, 1988, Chap. 7). Unquestionably, psychologists need a more comprehensive understanding of what Kuhn (1970) calls "normal science." Studying the work of ordinary scientists may be less fascinating than research on scientific genius, but the work of the ordinary scientist is essential for progress in science and should not be neglected in the study of factors contributing to development of our culture. The second recommendation is to use the scientist's implicit theories of scientific creativity as elements for developing explicit theories. Sternberg (1985) and Runco and Bahleda (1986) have done pioneering work on implicit theories of creativity, but psychologists still need research focused on the field of science that includes a broad range of topics related to scientific creativity. These topics should include not only the nature of scientific creativity but also identification, development, education, mentorship, and fostering issues. MacKinnon (1987) grouped the areas in which more research is most needed into the fourfold classification of product, person, process, and situation. MacKinnon stressed the importance of the product because, "until this foundation is more solidly built than it is at present, all creativity research will leave something to be desired" (p. 120). Improving our present methods for evaluating scientific work is indeed one of the greatest concerns in research on scientific creativity. Undoubtedly, the methods mentioned in the second section of this article have helped us considerably in overcoming subjective elements in the appraisal of scientific work, but publication analysis and citation analysis have also shown that the way scientific work is produced has changed over the decades. One important trend is that publications by more than one author have become the rule in the natural sciences. Most of the research summarized above, however, can be characterized as "individualistic" in that it focused on the individual creator rather than on the team producing scientific work. This is true even for the method of citation analysis based on the SSCI, which neglects the role of contributors other than the first author. Clearly, psychologists need more refined methods for evaluating the work of teams and of individuals within

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teams. In developing such methods, the criterion should not be limited to citation counts. Studies relating citation analysis to other measures of the quality of a scientific product, such as the inventories mentioned in the second section of this article, are clearly in order. At the level of the person, an urgent need is the development of psychometric methods to improve present tools for the identification of scientific talent and the prediction of success in science. Much work has been done on individual tests of creativity and their evaluation (e.g., Treffinger, 1987), but more attention must be paid to the fact that a successful scientist has to go through several stages of education and training, each of which puts different emphases on abilities, skills, and knowledge. Thus, diagnostic models that measure different abilities, skills, and personality traits at different points in the life of a scientist appear to be more promising than models with single, isolated measurements. As far as the creative process is concerned, MacKinnon's (1987) demand for more real-life studies concurrent with the work of the scientist should be taken very seriously. A lot of research has been done on the stages of the creative process, but most of these studies were retrospective and focused on problem solving attempts that finally were successful. Of course, the moment of illumination in the creative process will provoke continued research interest, but studies in this area should not neglect the process of extended effort to solve a problem, which in actual cases may take months or years. As far as this stage is concerned, psychologists need a better understanding of the cognitive and motivational processes involved. Research in this area will not only be of theoretical interest; it should result in practical approaches to improve the efficiency of the scientist's work in that stage. As far as the creative situation is concerned, again, the need for more research examining the interaction of scientists working in groups must be stressed (see also MacKinnon, 1987). There are numerous approaches to creativity training (see Hany, 1993 for an overview), but few of these approaches have been geared to the work of scientists in groups and to understanding the roles and contributions of different persons in such groups. A final general recommendation has to do with the fact that much of our knowledge on scientific creativity is derived from Western civilizations, and prominently among them English speaking countries. Even the most comprehensive accounts we have (Ochse, 1990; Simonton, 1988) present little evidence from other cultures. The evidence we have (e.g., Yaroshevskii, 1987), however, suggests that creativity may indeed be viewed differently in other cultures. Thus, the truism that psychology should become more "international" certainly applies to research on scientific creativity.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author is indebted to Susan Hellerman and Carol Mills for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. Requests for reprints should be sent to Heinrich Stumpf, Center for Talented Youth, The Johns Hopkins University, 3400 North Charles Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21218, U. S. A.

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