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The Palgrave Handbook of Social Creativity Research pp 527–539Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Creativity and the Social Brain

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Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture ((PASCC))

Abstract

The neuroscience of imagination has revealed extensive parallels between the brain correlates of creative cognition and those of social cognition. There is, however, scarcely any exchange of ideas between the different research communities that is aimed at understanding what such commonalities reveal. The evidence indicates that there are some fundamental similarities in the very nature of the information processing mechanisms that underlie cognitive and social aspects of mental life that are customarily viewed to be quite distinct from one another. This chapter features reflections on these similarities by generating cross-connections between creative cognition and social cognition. Themes that are explored include candidate mechanisms of correspondences between creativity and social behaviour, such as the ‘intention to communicate or evoke’ (by means of expression), the ‘drive to understand’ (by means of inference and discovery), and the ‘personal relevance bias’ (by means of alertness to self-related salience and significance).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Social Sciences, Leeds Beckett University, Leeds, UK

    Anna Abraham

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  1. Anna Abraham
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Psychology, University of Wrocław, Wrocław, Poland

    Izabela Lebuda

  2. Department of Psychology, Webster University Geneva, Bellevue, Switzerland

    Vlad Petre Glăveanu

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Abraham, A. (2019). Creativity and the Social Brain. In: Lebuda, I., Glăveanu, V.P. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Social Creativity Research. Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95498-1_33

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