Nr 15 Kreativitet: PDF-version - Populär Poesi

ior of the immediate contacts of the individual are
usually most salient to the individual but the more
indirect influence of contacts of contacts (friends of
friends) can play a role in
setting the individual’s para-
digm as well. Moreover, study
has shown that two individuals
who meet each other frequent-
ly and for longer times tend to
start to look and think alike.
Consider, if you can still re-
member, your first year of high
school. You looked around and
saw 30 insecure middle-school
kids. However, after the first
few months you start to see
that the first social relations
have formed and created
‘cliques’ in the class room. You
start to spend your lunchbreak
with the same few classmates
talking about a shrinking range
of subjects. And after that first year you see that
clique in the back of the class mostly wearing black
clothes, you have developed an interest in football you
share only with those five guys you have lunch with
and you cannot ‘hang’ with that group of girls without
being draped in boy band merchandise. On the one
hand, individuals that entertain close personal rela-
6
tions with one another gradually change their individu-
al attitudes and beliefs to be the same or compatible
and will tend to engage in activities that reinforce this
Gertrud Stein Foto: Carl Van Vechten
shared paradigm and will
abandon others that do
not. On the other hand,
people will choose to
establish, maintain or end
social relations based on
their preference to interac-
tion with people that are
similar to them. The com-
bined tendencies are called
the ‘homophily principle’
and are key to the under-
standing of the social
reframing of creativity as a
more social concept.
Picasso’s Debt to Mont-
parnasse
Not only adolescents are
susceptible to this kind of social homophily, it plays a
great role in artistic life as well. If we take Pablo Picas-
so as an example, we can see how the individual’s
social relations rather than an individual cognitive
process has led to the birth of cubism. In 1900 Picasso
visited Paris for the first time where he met Guillaume
Apollinaire through Max Jacob. He, in turn, took him to