Writer's block, an owner's guide: Sports and Creativity: the same thing?

Jock and Gordon Abra noticed that sport and creativity are alike. They’re both uniquely human activities, and they have some other similarities that we’ll get to in a moment.

Because sport and creativity are alike, the Abras suggest using sports as an analogue to help us understand creativity. They think this could help us to understand creativity (obviously they’re assuming that we know more about sport than we do about creativity, otherwise why bother?).

A couple of similarities:

- they are both uniquely human activities

- they make little sense from a rational or utilitarian point of view

Some differences between sporting activity and creative activity:

- sport is “usually” a physical activity while creativity requires imagination

- creative work generates tangible products while sporting achievement is ephemeral

- creativity is future-oriented whereas sports are largely set in the here and now

- creative people “tend to feel alienated from general society, misunderstood and unappreciated” while great athletes receive adulation and hero worship

- creators tend to be introverted and androgynous, while most athletes are emotionally stable (but this isn’t the opposite of introverted?) and score highly on measures of masculinity.

Advantages:

The point of all this is that sports can be used as an analogy for creativity. Here are the advantages of doing that:

- because it’s easy to identify great athletes, you can learn about creativity by looking at them instead of taking the trouble to find the people you’re really interested in.

- if you accept the sports analogy, you’re also likely to buy into the Abras�point of view on a different controversy (which we won’t go into here because why would you care?)

- the parallel between sports and creativity has allowed the Abras to develop a theory of motivation that applies to both. I’m really not sure what this theory is: my best understanding of what I’ve read (and I’m serious here) is that both activities are motivated by motivations which motivate both activities.

- knowledge gained in one domain may be applied in the other. This is true and it’s why I’m interested.

Shared motivations

There are four shared motives for these two human activities:

- mortality.

- “life’s ambiguities” which are temporarily resolved by the clear boundaries of the playing field and by an activity with clear rules and outcomes.

- the need for intimacy, expressed both in cooperation and in competition.

- the need to express “vague but intense feelings that we cannot put into words” to which we can only point, using symbols such as uniforms and team logos as well as the symbolism of sporting action itself.

So what?

The importance of all this for me and for this whole writer’s block project is that, if Abra & Abra are correct and we can use sports as an analogy to help us understand creativity, then sports psychology becomes useful as a way to explain and treat the problems of creators.

I said, “then sports psychology becomes useful as a way to explain and treat the problems of creators.” Amd that’s central to what I’m doing here. To my own surprise, things that have been discovered by sports psychologists are turning out to be relevant to creative block.

Enough for one day.

And your response?

Published on March 26, 2005 at 12:04 am. Linking to this article? Thank you! The permanent address is http://www.todayiwrite.com/journal/sports-and-creativity-the-same-thing.html

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