James C. Kaufman is a psychology professor at Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut who specialises in human creativity. “The act of writing creatively helps us organize our thoughts and feelings, improves our mood, helps us reflect on our lives and cope after trauma,” Kaufman says. He himself has written phone note poems, as well as using the app to jot down lyrics, thoughts, and ideas.

“The process of being creative does a whole bunch of really good things for us,” physically and mentally, said James C. Kaufman, professor of educational psychology at the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. Kaufman, who has written extensively about creativity, said there are many reasons why a stimulating hobby can help us. The first is pretty simple: It’s fun.

In addition to becoming crucial for financial and social well-being, creativity has psychological benefits. James Kaufman from the University of Connecticut examined how creativity has a potential to contribute to past, present, and future meaning-making. Past-focused meaning making involves finding ways to successfully cope with challenging experiences, such as trauma, regret, or nostalgia-provoking events.

University of Connecticut psychology professor James C. Kaufman, an expert in creativity research, in a Psychology Today post, sees people sheltering in place exhibiting “an increase in everyday creativity.” Although he lists a hierarchy of creative achievements, from “the family singing a song from ‘Les Miserables’” to publishing a “book about kiwi cultivation,…it is important not to let such a comparison diminish their value.”

Join the University of Buckingham’s CREATE-hub researcher Dr. Gill Hill as she talks about her creativity research alongside Professor James Kaufman, in the latest BPS Research Digest podcast.

James Kaufman, a professor at the Neag School of Education, theorizes that creativity is both a widespread phenomenon and critical to human development. Rather than reserving the term “creative” for the favored few who produce globally acclaimed works of art or world-changing discoveries, he said, creativity is a label just as easily applied to the prosaic activities of everyday life — learning, problem-solving or making a junior high art project.

Ronald Beghetto wears many others in studying and working to inspire creativity, especially in education. He is one of the speakers at the Creativity Conference at Southern Oregon University August 3-6. And he visits with us about his work on creativity.

Professor, doctor, expert on creativity, whatever you call him, James C. Kaufman, Ph.D., knows the subject of creativity about as well as anyone. As a psychologist, Dr. Kaufman has been studying and writing about creativity for many years, and is currently a professor of educational psychology at the University of Connecticut.

According to Neag School psychology researchers James Kaufman and Ronald Beghetto, little-c creativity has been useful for addressing common misconceptions about creativity.

The research reinforces other studies showing that creativity is not fixed, says James Kaufman at the University of Connecticut. “There’s a lot of evidence that you can nurture or suppress creativity,” he says. “Obviously, individual differences also play a role, but the ways that teachers give feedback and organisations reward employees have huge impacts.”