Authors: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Creativity (28 page)
This kind of “naïveté,” generated by confidence and a merging of self-interest in a larger project—such as astronomy, in Rubin’s case—acts as a buffer between creative individuals and the forces of entropy that frustrate their personal goals.
Yet entropy cannot be kept at bay forever. Sooner or later death
stops the journey of discovery. Even worse, physical deterioration may set in and spoil the last years of life. At seventy-three, the historian William McNeill still chops logs in his rural retreat and leads an otherwise vigorous life. But at the end of the interview he muses:
Well, the other thing that you haven’t touched upon that certainly seems to be important is good health. You know, being able to assume that your body does what it should, without paying any special attention. Now this is absolutely essential to getting things done. And I’ve wondered, if you were really sickly, what would happen? If something really twisted your whole experience of the world—some severe pain or something else. It would be just a different world, that’s all. There certainly have been individuals who’ve had miserable, persistent pain, persistent difficulties of a
physiological kind. I’ve never been in that position, so I don’t know what it would be like. But it seems to me—well, it would be very hard to get up with a ringing headache and do anything.
As McNeill notes, the reason pain is so dreadful is that it forces us to pay attention to it, and so it interferes with concentration on anything else. So chronic pain could end all serious work. Of course, as he also mentions, some individuals are able to overcome even this obstacle. Michel de Montaigne, one of the most creative minds of the sixteenth century, suffered all through his life from kidney stones and a variety of other diseases. Yet he continued traveling, engaging in politics, and writing his famous essays. Stephen Hawking, immobilized in his wheelchair by Lou Gehrig’
s disease, unable to control even the vocal chords in his body, continues to develop his cosmological theories and travel around the world. But in this respect also our group was fortunate. Their health held up to the end, and they did not have to test themselves to see how their creativity could survive chronic pain.
T
here is still quite a bit of controversy among scholars about the relationship between age and creativity. When the topic was first studied, the findings suggested that creativity peaked in the third decade of life, and less than 10 percent of all great contributions were made by persons over sixty. Opinions differ, however, about what qualifies as a great contribution. When we look instead at total output, the picture changes. In the humanities the number of contributions appears to hold steady between thirty and seventy years of age; the trend is similar in the sciences, and only
in the arts is there a sharp decline after sixty. In our sample productivity did not decline either; if anything, it increased in the later years. Linus Pauling at ninety-one claimed that he had published twice as many papers between the ages of seventy and ninety than in any preceding twenty-year period.
Recent studies suggest that not only quantity but quality is retained with age, and some of the most memorable work in a person’s career is done in the later years. Giuseppe Verdi wrote
Falstaff
when he was eighty, and that opera is in many ways one of his best—certainly very different in style from anything ever written before.
Benjamin Franklin invented the bifocal lens when he was seventy-eight; Frank Lloyd Wright completed the Guggenheim Museum, one of his masterpieces, when he was ninety-one years of age; and Michelangelo was painting the striking frescoes in the Pauline chapel of the Vatican at eighty-nine. So although performance in many areas of life may peak in the twenties, the ability to change a symbolic domain and thus contribute to the culture may actually increase in the later years.
W
HAT
C
HANGES WITH
A
GE
?
One question in the interview asked about the major changes the person had experienced in the past two or three decades of life, especially with regard to his or her work. The answers are illustrative of how these creative individuals perceive the process of aging.
In general, the respondents did not see much change between their fifties and seventies, or sixties and eighties. They felt that their ability to do work was unimpaired, their goals were substantially the same as they had always been, and the quality and quantity of their accomplishments differed little from what they had been in the past. Generalized complaints about health or physical well-being were almost entirely absent. Not a single person, even among those well above eighty, had anything but a positive attitude toward how they were doing physically, even though they were rea
listically aware of specific decrements and limitations.
Surprisingly, when all the answers are taken into account, the number of positive changes reported is almost twice the number of negative ones. Part of this rosy picture is probably due to the tendency to put one’s best foot forward in an interview situation. But given the general frankness of the responses, I am left with the belief that we are dealing with something deeper than impression management. After all, it should not be surprising that if these people have carved out unique lives for themselves, they should also approach the end of life creatively.
The answers to the question about what has changed in the last twenty to thirty years fall naturally into four basic categories. They deal with changes in physical and cognitive capacities, in habits and personal traits, in relationships with the field, or in relationships with domains. In addition, changes in each of these four categories tend
to have either a positive or a negative valence—thus generating eight possible kinds of outcome.
Physical and Cognitive Capacities
As we would expect, the most frequent changes mentioned had to do with the person’s abilities to perform physically or mentally. About a third of the responses fell into this category. But we didn’t expect that the number of negative changes reported would be balanced by an equal number of positive ones. How could this be true, given the generally dismal opinion we have of old age?
Psychologists have long made a distinction between two broad types of mental abilities. The first is what they call fluid intelligence, or the ability to respond rapidly, to have quick reaction times, to compute fast and accurately. This ability is measured by tests asking a person to remember strings of numbers or letters, recognize patterns embedded in more complex figures, or draw inferences from logical or visual relationships. This type of intelligence is supposedly innate and little affected by learning. Its various components peak early—on some tests it is teens who pe
rform best, on some others it is twenty-or thirty-year-olds. Each later decade shows some decrease in these skills, and after age seventy the decline is usually quite severe even among otherwise healthy individuals.
The second type of mental ability is known as crystallized intelligence. It is more dependent on learning than on innate skills. It involves making sensible judgments, recognizing similarities across different categories, using induction and logical reasoning. These abilities depend more on reflection than quick reaction, and they usually increase with time, at least until sixty years of age. In our sample of creative individuals, it is this kind of mental ability that is supposed to be improving, or at least staying stable, even in the ninth decade of life.
When we look at what the interviews say, we find that the most common complaint is a decline in energy, or a slowing down in one’s activity. This is a problem especially for performers: Ravi Shankar recalls nostalgically that even ten years ago he was like a tornado, cutting records in England, flying to India to do the soundtrack of a movie, jetting to California for a concert, all without missing a beat; whereas now, at seventy-four, he prefers to stay home, take his time, and focus on a few students and select performances.
A few scientists also mention that they are getting slower and more cautious. Physicist Hans Bethe says that he makes more mistakes in calculations at eighty-eight years of age—although he is also more alert at catching mistakes than he used to be. Heinz Maier-Leibnitz, another physicist in his eighties, feels that while his appetite for doing things has increased, his energy no longer keeps up with his desire. Sociologist James Coleman recalls that twenty years ago he used to travel to a different city, check into a hotel incognito, and work four days and nights without inte
rruptions with just a few hours thrown in for sleep—a regimen that he would not follow now.
But an almost equal number of people said that in the last decades their mental abilities have remained the same, or have improved, a claim made most often by respondents in their sixties or seventies. This positive claim is based on the contention that because of greater experience and better understanding they can now accomplish things faster and better than before. For instance, Robert Galvin, who was seventy when he was interviewed, reports that his business decisions have become sharper and more effective because after intense study he now understands better the forces involve
d in international trade:
We understood as we traveled around the world that there were some markets that were open and some that were not. Europe was fairly open, Japan was very closed. And we instinctively knew that that was not tolerable. We didn’t know what to say about it, we couldn’t write a fancy memo about it. We could only say things in an elementary way. So we went back to school, to learn from scholars. Scholars had this important concept called the principle of sanctuary that was as applicable in business as in war. And all of a sudden what we instinctively knew became clearer to us. We now could think sha
rper and faster on issues of international trade.
Barry Commoner feels that now he is much smarter and knows a lot more than he did a few decades ago. Isabella Karle believes that experience provides her with a knowledge that is more complex than it was earlier. Several agree with the poet Anthony Hecht that time has honed their skills. All of these positive developments are examples of crystallized intelligence, the ability to use information available in the culture for one’s own ends. As far as it was possible to
determine, men and women gave exactly the same 1:1 ratios of positive to negative cognitive outcomes.
Habits and Personal Traits
The second category of changes people reported involved issues of discipline and attitude. These were mentioned about a quarter of the time, and here positive outcomes outnumbered the negative ones two to one. Negative changes almost always involved too much pressure and too little time, with the person taking the blame for not learning to avoid overcommitment. Other trait-related problems included increasing impatience and guilt over not keeping physically fit.
The positive outcomes featured diminished anxiety over performance, being less driven, and exhibiting more courage, confidence, and risk taking. Several respondents echoed Anthony Hecht’s words:
I probably am a little more trustful in unconscious instincts than I was before. I’m not as rigid as I was. And I can feel this in the quality and texture of the poems themselves. They are freer metrically, they’re freer in general design. The earliest poems that I wrote were almost rigid in their eagerness not to make any errors. I’m less worried about that now.
Several respondents mentioned having learned from past mistakes or criticism of their work. This kind of learning could be quite painful. John Reed, the CEO of Citicorp, believes that after being “bloodied” in the market, when the stock of his company took a severe plunge that he blames himself for not having foreseen, his whole way of exerting leadership had to be modified:
My approach to business has been much changed over the past ten years. I don’t think I’ve lost any of my spark, or creativity, but I’m not quite as free. I don’t have that absolute enthusiasm. It’s been tempered by the realization that you can be wrong. I know some of my shortcomings, in spades, and I’m quite sensitive to them. And what I’m doing now, I’m doing quite well, but it’s all discipline, it’s not natural. In other words, I have disciplined myself to do these things and get them done, and I am working at it very hard. But it’s not fun, and up till now, most things I have don
e have been fun.
C. Vann Woodward has the historian’s privilege of correcting his own shortcomings more easily, by bringing out a new edition of his work:
Well, I have learned more and I have changed my mind and the reasons and conclusions about what I have written. For example, that book on Jim Crow. I have done four editions of it and I am thinking about doing a fifth, and each time it changes. And they come largely from criticisms that I have received and those criticisms come largely from a younger generation. I think the worst mistake you could make as a historian is to be indifferent to or contemptuous of what’s new. You learn that there is nothing permanent in history. It is always changing. So, as one who writes about i
t, I am one of those who change, but I hope not for the worse.
The negative impact of time pressure was turned around by several respondents who felt good about having become masters of their own time. Again we see that the same event, in this case excessive demands on one’s time and psychic energy, can have either a positive or a negative valence, depending on what the person does with it.
But even when a person copes successfully with mushrooming demands, it is often impossible to master time completely. Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann describes how her methods of work have changed:
They have become more orderly, more systematic. I developed many techniques during the last twenty years to cope with this terrible lack of time—it has become worse and worse. I thought it couldn’t be, but still time got to be shorter.
The astronomer Vera Rubin is very graphic in her description of the demands on her time:
The biggest challenge is to try to get enough time to do science. There are professional meetings, there are all kinds of organizations, there are committees. I am available at any hour of the day or night for any woman astronomer who has a problem, and that is certainly well known. So I may spend an hour a day involved in
that kind of thing. It is just very hard to keep the time to do science, and I still really, really want to do it.
And I am more privileged than most because I don’t teach. But I think our expectations of what we can accomplish have gotten so high. I mean, there is the telephone and the fax and the computer. On bad days I have seventeen or twenty-four E-mail messages. Most days I really can barely handle my mail. I get lots of preprints and reprints and letters, and I don’t have a secretary, which would help at some level. But if I read all the reprints and preprints and letters I could spend the whole day just dealing with what comes in that day.
While men and women mentioned equal proportions of negative outcomes in terms of habits and traits, women reported more than twice as many positive outcomes as men did. Apparently creative women have an easier time adapting psychologically to the later years. Compared to men, they were especially likely to mention greater serenity and fewer internal pressures. Here again is Vera Rubin:
Thirty years ago it was totally different. I would have questioned whether I would ever really be an astronomer. I mean, I had enormous doubts early on in my career. It was just nothing but one large doubt whether this would really work. It wasn’t that I was able to persevere. I was unable to stop! I just couldn’t give it up, it was just too important. It just never entered the realm of possibility. But I never was sure, really sure, that it was going to work and I would ever really be an astronomer.
Relationships with the Field
Another fourth of the responses dealt with changes in the relationship with colleagues, students, and institutions. Again, the number of positive and negative outcomes were about equal, but with one intriguing difference: All the negative outcomes were mentioned by men, whereas the positive ones were equally divided between the genders. Men apparently miss more the lack of formal institutional membership that age usually entails; they suffer more from retirement with its decrease in prestige and power. Eugene McCarthy left
the U.S. Senate long ago; the sociologist David Riesman misses the scholarly conferences he no longer attends because he doesn’t like to travel; the physicist Viktor Weisskopf like many of his colleagues in the sciences, is no longer involved in active research.