Speaking of Psychology - It takes courage to be creative, with Zorana Ivcevic Pringle, PhD

Episode Date: April 29, 2026

Creativity isn’t just about making art or music -- it's about how we approach problems, respond to challenges and turn our ideas into reality. Zorana Ivcevic Pringle, PhD, author of “The Creativity Choice,” discusses the many forms of creativity; why it takes courage to be creative; how social environments can either stifle or spark ideas; the role of human innovation in a world increasingly reshaped by AI; and practical strategies for moving past creative blocks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

AI was supposed to take over the parts of the job you hate. Turns out, it made your job even harder. Instead of doing the work, it gave you homework. ServiceNow's AI specialists get work done from start to finish. Cases get resolved. Loops get closed. With ServiceNow, you can do the parts of your job you're best at and delegate the rest. To put AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com.

Most of us don't lack creative ideas. Think about the last time. you solved a problem in an unexpected way. Maybe you figured out a shortcut at work or improvised a meal from the leftovers in your fridge. We don't always label those everyday moments as creative, though. Instead, we think of creativity as making art or music, and we assume that it's something you're born with, not something you can cultivate. But psychologists' research suggests that creativity isn't just about flashes of brilliance or artistic talent. It's about how we approach problems, respond to challenges and turn our ideas into reality.

So what does it mean to be creative? What gets in the way of creative thinking and how can we move past those barriers? How do emotions and our social environments shape our creativity? What is human creativity worth in a world being reshaped by AI? And how can you move your creative ideas out of your head and into the world? Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association, that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life.

I'm Kim Mills. My guest today is Dr. Zorana Ichevich Pringle. Dr. Pringle is a senior research scientist and director of the Creativity and Emotions Lab at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, where she studies the role of emotion in creativity and well-being. Dr. Pringle is an APA fellow and has published more than 150 research studies in top academic journals. Her work has been covered by media outlets including NPR, the Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and many others. Her most recent book is called The Creativity Choice, the Science of Making

Decisions to Turn Ideas into Action. Dr. Pringle, thank you for joining me today. Thank you for having me. So as I said, your book is called The Creativity Choice, and that framing is interesting because a lot of people think of creativity as something you either have or you don't. So what do you mean by calling creativity a choice and how does that change the way we think about our own creative potential? You have mentioned several things that are really important to follow on. We tend to think of creativity as something that we either have or you don't have. And you see how people talk about it in our everyday lives. When I introduce myself at a party and people learn that I study creativity,

often I hear, oh, that is so interesting, but I did not get the creativity gene in the family. That is, then insert a relation or a friend, who inevitably do something that is artistic or in design or in these fields that we label as creative. And even we use the word creative as a noun, as if some people are there. that and other people are not. And what psychologists really mean by creativity is something much broader. It is something that is in the same time both original and effective in a way. And what that original and effective means varies depending on the level of creativity we are discussing, whether that is something in the learning process or something in our

everyday life, in our professional life, or something that can make a big difference in the culture at large. To help our listeners and me, I'm going to ask you how you define creativity, because in my reading of your book, you know, you focus on being able to do something novel and that the execution of the idea is critical to creativity. Am I understanding you right? You are understanding it's very much right. It's an important point that creativity is not just having ideas. There are lots of people who have ideas. We have all set in brainstorming sessions and ideas are flying. So it's not that lack of creativity that we see in the world is because we don't have those. It is something else. It is something that people sometimes call execution, but I think there is much more,

kind that term than meets the eye. It is a process of making first the decision of whether you are going to engage with it or not, whether it is worth engaging in something that might be carrying some risks, some psychological risks, risk to your reputation, risks to how you see yourself. Can you rise to the challenge? That's an important decision. It's a very first decision in engaging in creative work, but then each different branching is another choice that we can make towards something that is more conventional and easier, essentially easier, because there is a blueprint in how to do it, or something that is more unconventional, has a greater potential for being original, but can be frustrating, can be challenging, can be challenging,

and we need some emotional skill to address it, to get us through that process. Do you have any favorite examples of creativity and action, especially forms of creativity that people might overlook or not really recognize as creativity? We can look at creativity in different contexts. So we can look at creativity in the learning process, and that is making a connection between something that you are studying

and something from a personal experience or from other domains of knowledge that you already familiar with. Those new insights are a form of creativity. Or we can look at creativity in our everyday lives, solving everyday challenges, and we all carry very busy schedules. We have really difficult things we are trying to juggle at any given time. To give you a personal example, a few years ago, we were facing this challenge of how to arrange our summer travel.

Because my husband and I are academics and have conferences and obligations. Our child was too young to be traveling on his own, but we wanted him to visit his grandparents in Europe. And it seemed that these things cannot be integrated. How are we going to make it all happen? Do we have to make a choice that we don't want to choose something and not something else? And then my husband did something that he does a lot and he says, wait a second, how can we approach this as a creative problem?

And once he said that, we started thinking in a different way. We broke the problem in unobvious ways. So instead of saying both parents have to travel with a child, we solve the problem as one parent takes the child to Europe and the other parent takes him back. And it became possible to solve this really complicated problem in a creative way, right, with the mindset of creativity. Or to give you an unusual, very unusual example from professional life.

We think of creativity in professional life as designers and R&D people. What about a supervisor in a food services department of a hospital? Would you imagine that they could be creative? Not immediately. Not immediately, right? But this is what happened. And this person was noticing that his workers were getting burned out, essentially burned out. They were getting frustrated.

It was, they were getting tired and they were very unhappy. And also they were making mistakes. And these mistakes matter in this context because food is part of treatment. You don't want to be making mistakes and getting wrong people to wrong food to wrong people. And so he said, what can I learn from observing their points of frustration? That's where emotions matter and unexpected emotions matter. And he observed and realized that he can redesign the workflow. And he completely redesigned it to the point that people did not have to stretch anymore

to get different items. It was more convenient. and they were not overexerting physically. Burnout was diminished greatly. The mistakes were reduced. And he was very unexpectedly creative. Now, creativity seems like a difficult thing to study experimentally. How do you and other researchers measure and study creativity in a lab or in the real world?

That is a great question and the very challenging one, because creativity is, is something that in the real world can take hours, days, weeks, months. We are scientists, and scientists from having an idea for a study to publishing it can take several years, actually. So how do we get that? Well, in the lab, we can study certain parts of the creative process. So we can study how people come up with ideas in an experimental setting. But we are also very fortunate to live at a time when we can have technology that makes it possible to study people as they work on something long term.

So we have technology of experience sampling. We get notifications of people's phones that ask them, hey, what are you doing right now in this moment? Are you working on different projects? Are you collecting information? Are you in a meeting with collaborators? What is your experience like right now? And what are you thinking about? And then we can piece those pieces of information together and follow it through time.

How does creativity relate to problem solving? Are they essentially the same thing? Or is there something distinct about creative problem solving? I think that often in our everyday conversation we equate creativity and creative problem solving or complex problem solving. And there are similarities for sure. But the term creativity, I think, is broader than problem solving. Would you say that Monet was solving a problem when he was painting the water

lilies? We would probably not quite use that. Would you say that you were solving a problem when you decide to need to invent a new game with your child, probably we would not use that. Or in children's forms of creativity, are there solving a problem when they are engaging in pretend play, that foundational form of creativity in early childhood? So I think the concept of creativity is broader, but it includes problem solving. It includes creative problem solving and lots of the same processes are involved in it,

both cognitive and emotional. I know you've been asked this question before, but I'm going to repeat it because I think it's a good one. What's the difference between producing a one-hit wonder and having consistent creativity? Is the creator of a single hit, whatever that might be, less creative or just lucky? Oh, I love that question because it is one of those questions

where there isn't a single answer. And as a scientist studying creativity, I like when there isn't a single answer. So I think a key difference between doing something consistently and being a one-hit wonder is in the social side of creativity. Having the social infrastructure that can support, okay, you had one idea, you have one product, you have one product, you have contributed something, now there are supports that can be fertile ground for repeated creativity. You also mentioned luck there, and I think it is important to mention luck and acknowledge that especially in groundbreaking creativity, there is an important component of luck.

That does not diminish people's contributions in any way. They still have to act on opportunities provided by the lucky moment. They still have to champion all the resources. But luck can be construed on a very broad level as you are born at a time when your strengths can come to fruition or are appropriate for the times. it can be construed in a different way that you are born in a place where you are not fighting for survival. Those are very, very basic points of luck. But it's also being at the right place at the right time to be able to get the resources and get that social infrastructure. That's not diminish the fact that we still have to put a lot of work and create.

create teams and build on those ideas to make them happen. And sometimes it's timing. I mean, like the people who had come up with the MRNA vaccines, I mean, they used invention that really hadn't had a use until all of a sudden, boom, they put it together. Yeah, exactly. I mean, there are lots of examples like that. You have examples of things that are conceived theoretically,

but cannot be confirmed experimentally because we don't have the technology, the idea, theoretical formulation of what we now call the hex boson was made in the 60s. But just a few years ago, we had the technology. So all of that is important. We're going to take a short break. When we return, I'll talk with Dr. Pringle about why creativity requires courage and about how to get past creative blocks.

Are you one of those media strategy people clicking through slides, scrolling spreadsheets? Yes? Good. This is for you. Because on Spotify, there's an audience that's different. Locked in, loyal, invested. They're called fans. Fans don't just listen to music. They feel seen by it, like it belongs to them. So when your brand shows up on Spotify, that's who you're talking to. And you're right next to artists like me, Lizzo. So, are you ready to talk to fans? Spotify advertising. You're among fans. Hey, y'all. It's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder, what if? Like, what if it doesn't hold up?

That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit Wayfair.ca. Wayfair, every style, every home. Now, you say in your book that creativity requires courage. Why do you think that?

Well, what is courage? Courage is the willingness to act, even if you are afraid of something, even if it is not comfortable. And sometimes I hear in the communication in our culture that be formulated as you have to become comfortable with discomfort. But I don't actually know what being comfortable with discomfort means. If it's discomfort, you're not comfortable with it. So I am not sure that that formulation really helps.

I think that we just have to acknowledge that there are times in the creative process that are not pleasant and that they're challenging and that we are sticking our head out. Because by its very definition, if we are aiming to do something original, well, it has to be different from what has been done before in some fashion. and therefore we cannot know how it is going to be received. We cannot know can it be done exactly how we imagine it. Those are the risks and those risks are uncomfortable. So the courage is to acknowledge that they exist and to act in spite of that discomfort. And to be willing to accept when people say that idea won't work or you're out of your mind, why are you going this way?

Yeah, and sometimes it cannot work, but sometimes people are not aware that it could, and you get no a number of times before you get a yes. Also in your book, you talk about different levels of creativity. You call them mini-C, pro-C, and big C. What do those terms mean? We already hinted at those in our conversation. So when I mentioned creativity in the learning process, that is miniser. creativity. That is creativity that is original just in relation to your previous experience. Maybe

somebody else has made that connection before, but for you it is original and meaningful. On the Little C level, it is those everyday interactions, everyday problem solving, and everyday points of inspiration. Maybe you have a hobby. Maybe you are opening the fridge and there was a snowstorm and now you have to deal with what you have to deal with. And then on the pro C level, we are talking about creativity that takes expertise. You actually need to know how to code if you are writing a piece of software, you actually have to know how to conduct scientific research if you are a scientist and so on. And Big C, Big C is those giants, those names that first come to mind when we hear the word creativity, the Claude Monet's of this world and the Van Gogh's and Steve Jobs's and

Coco Chanel's. How do other people influence our creativity? Like say you're trying to come up with a creative solution to a problem, when is it helpful to bring others into the process and are people more creative in groups or as solo practitioners? Oh, there are, I think, two different questions that are embedded in this one. When we are working on something, even if we are working on something on our own, like if you're writing a book, you are, if you don't have a ghostwriter, you are doing it on your own. own. So you are sitting, like I was sitting writing my book in Barnes & Noble and in front of my computer. So it sounds like that kind of creativity is not social, but in reality it is because ideas and ways of thinking do not come out of vacuum. They come from interactions, past, present,

implied with colleagues, with our experiences in a fundamentally social world. So that is one kind of social influence and other people whose influence is sometimes implied by those experiences we have and the breadth of those experiences. If we are specifically working on a problem, reaching out to different people can help in different stages. So if we are looking for new ideas, it really helps to reach out to people you don't often talk to. So people who might not be on your team, people who are not close friends or colleagues, because you already know how your close friends and colleagues think. And if you are thinking of new ideas, you need different perspectives.

And it will be really helpful to reach to those who maybe you see once a year or maybe are the outskirts of your social circles. they might ask you the what-if question that you didn't even know you were after. And if you already have an idea, you are committed to it, now you just need help to develop it in more depths. Working with those who are close to you, who already know how you are thinking is going to be really helpful. So if you're a manager in a workplace, how can you create an environment that motivates people to be created? You create the environment by first creating the most fundamental social and emotional building block of creativity, and that is psychological safety. And that word is used a lot in our culture, but sometimes in ways that might be misleading.

So psychological safety does not mean you have the permission to say whatever comes to mind at any point. it means that you can share your ideas and your opinions without having a concern or a fear that you're going to be retaliated against. And it does not mean without consideration for others and their feelings because then we are dealing with an issue of respect. But once you have this atmosphere, then you are going to hear ideas. you're going to start hearing different perspectives, those that agree with you and those that disagree with you. If you only hear agreement, it's diagnostic that you don't have the safety. When a manager says, are there any questions and there are no questions, you do not have the safety. Yeah, I talked a little bit in the intro about artificial intelligence, and I know AI is becoming

more and more of our personal and professional lives. What do you see as the role of human creativity in the age of AI? And do you think AI is going to enhance or detract from creativity? This is one of those questions that there isn't a single answer to. I think that it's going to do all of the above in different ways. I think it helps to think in analogies sometimes, especially when we are dealing with something that is fundamentally changing how we live and deal with the world. So let's take two different analogies with technologies of the past. When photography was invented in the 19th century, there was a lot of writing about it being the end of painting. It's going to bring about the end of art and the end of painting.

Well, it did not bring up an end of painting. Sort of quite to the contrary, new schools of painting emerged that were very original, that were saying, hey, how about not portraying the world as we see it, but in more abstract ways. So it didn't do that. And then they were to get to the part of your question of, is it going to be good or is it going to be bad? Think of social media. We are discussing social media a lot in terms of all the problems it brought up. But it didn't bring about just problems.

It also enabled communication. It also enabled reconnecting with relationships we normally would have neglected. it enabled communicating and organizing in a way that otherwise would not be possible. That is not to deny its negative effects, but it's a complicated question. So I think a similar thing is going to happen with creativity. It's going to depend on that social structure we build around ourselves and that exist in our organizations and places of work. The one thing that really is comforting to me in a way is the emerging research on creativity and AI shows that AI on its own flattens creative ideas.

It produces a lot of ideas, so it seems very impressive, but those ideas are somewhere around the mid-level of how original they are. And, you know, creativity that makes a difference is not about the average. It's about something that is more unconventional. And we are still the ones asking the questions. We are still the ones who give it prongs. We are still the ones who say no, how about, and create direction. And now the research is showing that once humans who have greater creative potential, themselves interact with AI, they are able to enhance creativity and those who don't have those

starting creative abilities end up being less creative. Now, some of us experience some kind of creative block from time to time, like writer's block, for example. Do you have advice to get people past those moments? Creative blocks happen to everybody. And actually, the scientific definition of a creative block is lack of progress that is not due to lack of skill. So when you experience a creative block, remind yourself, hey, psychological science tells us it is not due to lack of skill, therefore this is temporary. Now, even if you know it is temporary, you still want to speed it up and you want to continue making progress. And there are a few things you can do. So the first thing that you can do is get yourself out of that emotional activation point.

Because if you are experiencing a creative block, it's overwhelmingly frustrating. And for some people, it's going to increase self-doubt. When some people, it can go all the way to self-loathing. And when I ask people who are creative professionally in different domains, the range of this experience can get pretty intense. So there is a trick in a way that people who study emotions have identified. Taking the third person perspective, imagine that this is not happening to you.

Imagine that a very dear friend is explaining what is going on with them and they are describing what is going on with you. They are now stuck. They were making progress. It was going well. And now they haven't written a word in two days and they don't know what to do. What would you tell that person? Well, you would tell that person.

You would show them some kindness. You would not tell them, well, you should have known better. We tell ourselves you should have known better. We tell ourselves that you could have a lot of, should have done something differently. But we don't tell that to a friend. We remind them that it is temporary. We remind them that they are doing their best.

And we might even suggest to them, hey, take a break. And that is the second thing we should really do. Take a break. Take a break and do something that is not just going for a walk necessarily. It's not just going to watch some Netflix. it still takes some effort. It still takes some work on your part. And why that matters is that as you are engaged in some other problem that you are not stuck on,

well, you are going to be making progress on that problem, so you are going to feel less guilty. But another thing is that you will free your mind from focusing on the part that you are stuck on. And it can give it kind of a rest that way. And in those circumstances, new connections often simply merge in ways that seem almost magical and those aha moments of sudden insight. So just to wrap up, I'd like to ask this question of most of the people on speaking of

psychology. What's next for you? What are you working on now? what are the big questions that remain to be answered? My big question is still how do we bridge that gap from having an idea to doing something with it and to making it real. But now I'm looking at it in a different way. I am exploring that process is a process that is fundamentally about self-regulation. It's a process of making a decision between do I continue exploring and do.

thinking broadly and going into some rabbit holes, or do I now commit and focus? And it is often a back and forth process. So I am exploring how we are balancing those different pools of creative work. Dr. Pringle, I want to thank you for joining me today. This has been very interesting and helpful. Thank you for having me. You can find previous episodes of speaking of psychology on our website at speakingof psychology.org or on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like what you've heard, please subscribe and leave a review. If you have comments or ideas for future podcasts, you can email us at speaking of psychology at a.pa.org. Speaking of psychology is produced by Lee Winerman. Thank you for listening.

For the American Psychological Association, I'm Kim Mills.