James Melvin Rhodes

Rhodes theory asserts that creativity is not merely an elusive and fuzzy capacity with no predictable structure, but exhibits a clear-cut composition of four essential components and dominant factors which have an impact to any kind of result, solution or idea. In his epoch-making article Rhodes wrote 1961:

About five years ago I set out to find a definition of the word creativity. I was interested in imagination, originality, and ingenuity. In time I had collected forty definitions of creativity and sixteen of imagination. But as I inspected my collection I observed that the definitions are not mutually exclusive. They overlap and intertwine. When analyzed, as through a prism, the content of the definitions form four strands. Each strand has unique identity academically, but only in unity do the four strands operate functionally.[13]

This article became the probably most cited single source in applied creativity ever and has established Rhodes' reputation as a pioneering contributor to creativity research,[14] since it not only endowed a seemingly unstructured field with a structure, but delivered a classification system and within it four precise starting-points for classified research about creativity.[15]

Rhodes defined four separate strands which have influence on the occurrence of creativity and which represent the essential cornerstones for any kind of creativity research: Person, Process, Press and Product:[16]

• "The term person, as used here, covers information about personality, intellect, temperament, physique, traits, habits, attitudes, self-concept, value systems, defense mechanisms, and behaviour." (p. 307).
• "The term process applies to motivation, perception, learning, thinking, and communication." (p. 308).
• "The term press refers to the relationship between human beings and their environment." (p. 308). This notion and the word "press" are rather common in the field of education.
• "The term product refers to a thought which has been communicated to other people in the form of words, paint, clay, metal, stone, fabric, or other material. When an idea becomes embodied into tangible form it is called a product." (p. 309).

The concept itself was copied numerous times, sometimes one-to-one, sometimes simply by replacing one term (e.g.: "place" instead of "press"), many a time without crediting the original author. Some followers also tried to add a fifth or sixth term which starts with a "P" (e.g.: "place", "problem", "preference", "phantasy", "persuasion", "passion", "power" or else). On closer inspection it appears that all terms added so far are already included within the original framework, thus are not to be embodied separately in the concept on an equal footing; in details: "Place" is a part of "press", "problem" is as a starting point a vital part of the "process", "preference" and "power" are linked to "persons", and "phantasy", "persuasion", "passion" are traits and capacities of "persons" too.

Hence the original lean concept shall be still deemed to be valid as the essential structure giving map and as "a system that enables researchers to study smaller manageable components of the complex concept of creativity".[17] This does deliver a sound basis both for researcher and practitioner in the field, to align creativity research endeavours in a comprehensive and comprehensible way by pooling the problems and objects of research.[18]

Today more than 600.000 entries for the keyword "4 "P"s of creativity" listed on Google and countless citations in the literature display tellingly the enduring importance of this concept to the field of creativity. Further testimonials are major international conferences and research projects which have been organized around the 4 "P"s model.[19]

Adjacent to his significant findings for further research in the field, Rhodes, as a result of his work, also arrived at the conclusion for the field of education, that "a body of thought about the nature of the creative process belongs in the arsenal of every teacher and teacher-to-be."[20]