ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2015
The evolutionary roots of creativity: mechanisms and motivations.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 39 citations in OpenAlex.
- Stable Diffusion Models Reveal a Persisting Human-AI Gap in Visual Creativity.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026Article
- Adaptive Decision-Making "Fast" and "Slow": A Model of Creative Thinking.The European journal of neuroscience · 2025Review
- Article
- The association between liking, learning and creativity in music.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- "The song remains the same": not really! Vocal flexibility in the song of the indris.Animal cognition · 2023Article
- How being perceived to be an artist boosts feelings of attraction in others.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- The More Fertile, the More Creative: Changes in Women's Creative Potential across the Ovulatory Cycle.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Article
- Evaluating Human-Computer Co-creative Processes in Music: A Case Study on the CHAMELEON Melodic Harmonizer.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- Dance on the Brain: Enhancing Intra- and Inter-Brain Synchrony.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2020Article
- Learning and Consolidation as Re-representation: Revising the Meaning of Memory.Frontiers in psychology · 2019Article
- Song variation of the South Eastern Indian Ocean pygmy blue whale population in the Perth Canyon, Western Australia.PloS one · 2019Article
- The Neural Mechanism Underlying Cognitive and Emotional Processes in Creativity.Frontiers in psychology · 2018Review
- Spontaneous Cognition and Epistemic Agency in the Cognitive Niche.Frontiers in psychology · 2018Article
- Creating beauty: creativity compensates for low physical attractiveness when individuals assess the attractiveness of social and romantic partners.Royal Society open science · 2017Article
- Article
- Principles of structure building in music, language and animal song.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2015Review
- Without it no music: cognition, biology and evolution of musicality.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2015Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
We consider the evolution of cognition and the emergence of creative behaviour, in relation to vocal communication. We address two key questions: (i) what cognitive and/or social mechanisms have evolved that afford aspects of creativity?; (ii) has natural and/or sexual selection favoured human behaviours considered 'creative'? This entails analysis of 'creativity', an imprecise construct: comparable properties in non-humans differ in magnitude and teleology from generally agreed human creativity. We then address two apparent problems: (i) the difference between merely novel productions and 'creative' ones; (ii) the emergence of creative behaviour in spite of high cost: does it fit the idea that females choose a male who succeeds in spite of a handicap (costly ornament); or that creative males capable of producing a large and complex song repertoire grew up under favourable conditions; or a demonstration of generally beneficial heightened reasoning capacity; or an opportunity to continually reinforce social bonding through changing communication tropes; or something else? We illustrate and support our argument by reference to whale and bird song; these independently evolved biological signal mechanisms objectively share surface properties with human behaviours generally called 'creative'. Studying them may elucidate mechanisms underlying human creativity; we outline a research programme to do so.
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