DOMINIC W. MASSARO, editor
University of California, Santa Cruz

The Meaning of Dragon: When Yours Is Different from Mine

Creativity: When East Meets West
Edited by Sing Lau, Anna N. N. Hui, and Grace Y. C. Ng. Singapore: World Sci- ence Publishing, 2004. xix + 431 pp. Cloth, $58.

Like many other concepts in psychology, creativity was once viewed as an intangible construct, incapable of being studied empirically. For this reason, research into creativity has developed only in the past 50 years. A PsycINFO search reveals only 4 publications before 1959 but 620 publications in the 1960s. The number rises to 2,876 in the last decade of the 20th century and to almost 2,000 in the first five years of the 21st century (Table 1). One impetus for the recent surge in studies of creativity comes from the East (by which I broadly refer to Asia, particularly East Asia). Niu (2006) recently reviewed the history and development of creativity research in Chinese societies (i.e., Hong Kong, mainland China, Singapore, and Taiwan). She claimed that research in these areas has flourished since the beginning of the 21st century and is now moving the field forward significantly. In Taiwan alone, at least 40 graduate theses on creativity have been produced annually since 2000, more than 10 times as many as in the previous two decades (see table 1 of Niu, 2006). This number would be impressive even in the United States, where the majority of creativity research papers are produced. However, primarily because of language barriers, this important contribution from the East has not been fully acknowledged in the West (particularly Western Europe and North America). In contrast, Eastern scholars for decades have studied Western theories of creativity and practical strategies to promote creativity, integrating both theories and strategies into their own research and education practices.