Creativity and Imagination as Cultural Values Among European Publics: An Intergenerational Perspective

Abstract

It is widely recognized that creative intelligence is becoming one of the most desirable personal skills of the future. Creativity, however, operates not only at the individual level but also at the collective one: the socio-cultural environment can both foster and inhibit creativity by shaping specific perceptions of the world and directing creative activity towards specific domains. Therefore, substantial scholarly attention should be paid to social and cultural preconditions of creativity. Drawing on the data from the European Values Study, the article analyzes the attitudes of European societies towards the importance of imagination, examines the dynamics of these attitudes between 1990 and 2021, and explores their socio-demographic differentiation. The analysis reveals that the emphasis on imagination varies considerably across European countries and demographic groups, which means that cultural preconditions for the realization of creative potential are unevenly distributed. At the same time, the findings demonstrate that some significant shifts are occurring due to generational replacement in European societies.