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Life purpose is an internal representation of a personally meaningful, prosocial contribution the person intends to engage with over their life span. Individuals’ purposes interact within a social-cultural eco-system by directing individuals’ perceptions toward situational resources (including others’ purposes) that can help enact their purpose. Education can encourage students to explore their purposes within and beyond the classroom. This paper describes a case study of a class offered six times using three different ecological “niches”: (1) conceptual understanding eco-niche focused on learning the concept and its relationships to other concepts; (2) resources-application eco-niche focused on reconceiving aspects of the concept as intellectual instruments to apply to real-life cases, including students themselves; (3) iterative practice eco-niche focused on implementing purposes within various contexts and interpreting feedback from those contexts. Using a feedback loop model to interpret how each eco-niche favours a different starting point and development trajectory through Damon’s (2008) four dimensions of purpose, this eco-niche comparison (a) emphasizes how “high impact” educational experiences focus not on the students’ improvements but rather on the improvements of communities as a result of students' enacting their purpose through their contributions, and (b) offers insights for teachers to infuse purpose development opportunities in their classes. El propósito de vida es una representación interna de una contribución prosocial significativa que la persona intenta realizar a lo largo de su vida. Los propósitos de los individuos interactúan dentro de un ecosistema sociocultural al dirigir las percepciones de los individuos hacia los recursos situacionales que pueden ayudar a cumplir su propósito. La educación puede animar a los estudiantes a explorar sus propósitos dentro y fuera del aula. Este artículo describe un estudio de caso de una clase ofrecida seis veces usando tres “nichos” ecológicos diferentes: (1) comprensión conceptual enfocado en aprender el concepto y sus relaciones con otros conceptos; (2) aplicación de herramientas enfocadas en reconcebir aspectos del concepto para aplicar a casos reales, incluyendo a los propios estudiantes; (3) práctica iterativa enfocada en implementar propósitos dentro de varios contextos e interpretar la retroalimentación de esos contextos. Usando un modelo de bucle de retroalimentación para interpretar cómo cada nicho ecológico privilegia un punto de partida diferente y una trayectoria de desarrollo a través de las cuatro dimensiones de propósito de Damon (2008), esta comparación de nicho ecológico (a) enfatiza cómo las experiencias educativas de "alto impacto" no se enfocan en las mejoras en los estudiantes, sino más bien en las mejoras a las comunidades a través de las contribuciones de los estudiantes, y (b) ofrece ideas para que los maestros infundan oportunidades de desarrollo de propósito en sus clases.

This chapter uses the COVID-19 pandemic and social justice movements of 2020 to demonstrate how feedback loops within and across minds generate cultural stability and cultural change. Minds and cultures compose each other: Parents and leaders pass on shared knowledge from previous generations to children, then each person’s mind makes further meaning of their experiences over a lifetime. We share some of these meanings with others. Meanings shared widely form a culture, which is again passed on to the next generation. This is a feedback loop that generally keeps a culture stable but not stale. In flexible cultures, a few shared meanings are new to a group—they are creative and can change culture. Some individuals intentionally aim to create new meanings, dedicating their lives to introducing variability, difference, and novelty into their culture. The mechanisms for such purposeful creativity involve the interaction of positive feedback loops that amplify a new meaning and negative feedback loops that counteract and then incorporate a new meaning. Cultural stability or change occurs depending on individuals engaging each feedback loop in relation to the other loop through reflection and proflection. Past-focused reflections, involving “how and why” of already culturally accepted meanings, interact with future-oriented proflections, involving the “what-if” and “what-next” in new meaning’s possibilities. Together, they show how our image of the future and what-could-be can influence our current meaning-making and behavior.

Rather than considering human potential in terms of an unrealized desired state, what if we framed it as gaining momentum in worthy long-term pursuits? This conceptual article, integrating ideas and findings from several scholarly literatures, explores how life purpose can serve as a meaningful, intentional guide for individuals, especially youth, to direct their other potentials into prosocial contributions to society. The argument (a) considers life purpose itself as a form of intrapersonal giftedness different from academic giftedness; (b) describes how life purpose could include distinctions of further potentials: coherence among purpose dimensions, influence on different life domains, reach of others impacted by the youths’ contributions, emphasis to change society, and precocious emergence of purpose’s dimensions and distinctions; and (c) muses how life purpose’s directing of other potentials might become a potential that could be realized by all youth.

INTRODUCTION. Few studies consider how purpose in life predicts emotions related to community service in college courses even though a purpose in life, a “compass” for finding opportunities to make meaningful prosocial contributions, should motivate students to serve. METHOD. Multilevel structural equation modeling estimated direct and indirect effects of survey responses regarding students’ past service experience, sense of purpose, and searching for purpose on their emotional expectations for service-learning before starting. RESULTS. Controlling for age, gender, extrinsic motivation, and characteristics of universities and courses, students’ past service experience and two purpose variables positively related to expected positive emotions toward service work, mediated through both students’ helping identity and intrinsic motivation to serve. Only sense of purpose was associated with higher intrinsic motivation, which was associated with lower expected negative emotions. DISCUSSION. Considering students’ life purpose may stimulate intrinsic motivation and schemas of being a helping person, which could contribute to positive emotions toward community service even before the service work begins.

Life purpose is a long-term aim to make one’s life count. Education—especially moral education—might be considered a key cultural mechanism for young people to ‘thread’ their lives into the culture...

Interest in youth purpose is growing among scholars around the world. With globalization, better understanding of life purposes in different countries becomes more important as this generation’s youth are influenced by ideas and events anywhere. This special issue contributes to this inclusive, worldwide frame of mind by showcasing work done outside the US on the development, functioning and moral import of purposes as personal ‘threads’ intertwined that contribute to a global ‘tapestry.’ This introduction provides frameworks for thinking about the articles that follow, including: (1) the constructs and characteristics that different countries associate with purpose; (2) reciprocal and mutually reinforcing interactions of cultures’ values, norms, institutions and morals as sources of purpose with purpose-pursuing individuals’ perceptions of opportunities to act for shared benefit; (3) cultures’ contributions to whether and how purpose contributes to youths’ development of moral momentum in their l...

Future life perspective and present action, whose interaction affects how one’s current activity affects later life, offer a critical crossroads for young adults in Japan as stable career paths have become more uncertain. Past generations benefited from stable institutional pathways, but recent generations must forge their own ways. This article reviews how Japanese undergraduate students think about their present and future and relates these thoughts to identity and career development. We compare the Japanese conception with youth purpose in the US, which includes future intention, engagement in meaningful activities and beyond-the-self contribution. The Japanese emphasize intention and engagement. But many do not feel their present– future connections are meaningful, though because Japanese culture avoids giving negative meaning to struggle, they may avoid discussing. Considering one’s impacts on others is engrained in Japanese culture as a duty that beyond-the-self contribution would not be tho...

Life purpose is fundamentally ecological: individual life purpose aims interacting with cultural resources generate momentum in individual lives and in cultures. A dynamic life momentum loop model highlights how a purpose practice starts with a purpose aim (mental representation of a specific prosocial effect), filtered by personal meaning (significance or importance), that influences perception of situational resources (a subset of a culture’s shared meanings, artifacts, practices and “behavioral defaults” stored in the “common good”) to initiate opportunities to enact the envisioned prosocial effect, and afterward evaluate perceived feedback for effectiveness. Cultures also develop and, with increasing multicultural contact, individuals can influence and be influenced by multiple common goods. Repetitions of this purpose practice loop generate individual life momentum and shared cultural momentum.

This chapter proposes the concept of life purpose as a way to evaluate service learning’s strengthening and integration of a prosocial disposition in young people over time. It deals with criteria from the feedback-loop model that universities might use to build their own evaluation tools. Service learning helps students hone skills in a community setting and think differently about their role as a protagonist in community development. Life purpose has appeared in service learning studies as a correlational outcome, covariate and mediator. To illustrate, research collaborators in a multinational study of youth purpose and service learning conducted secondary analyses on their own within-country datasets. Surveys and document analysis might provide insights to institutions regarding their service learning offerings. Students in semester-long weekly service placements could complete questionnaires each week to chart their service and purpose development, with each week’s time at the service site being one ‘trip’ through the loop.

Life purpose combines personal meaning, future intention, active engagement and expected beyond-the-self impact into a self-regulating beacon for decisions and actions. Interest has grown in how teachers could foster youth purpose. Although studies show relationships between pedagogy and purpose, how teachers themselves understand the concept and view their role in its development need more research. This descriptive, qualitative, secondary analysis of observations and comments of teachers in the United States of America during their normal school days can help teacher educators to instil a purpose orientation in pedagogical training. Teachers are interested in purpose for pupils and for themselves. But they are ambivalent about their efficacy to support purpose development. Currently, purpose is often equated with career rather than with a broader life aim. Personal meaning and engagement are easier purpose dimensions for teachers to design activities for pupils to practice, whereas intention and...

The first premise is that creativity requires a focal perceiver perspective to be determined or assigned. As criteria for perception or judgment, what we currently consider “dimensions” of creativity instead may be “precursors.” Ultimately, creativity shifts meaning for the whole culture. The second premise is that creativity requires a temporal perspective: its assessment is time-dependent on the first instance the perceiver notices. If the perceiver accepts the creative “ it,” then it is shared for others to judge it, creating a diffusion and adaptation process. The strongest form of creativity, then, is when it stands the test of time, goes beyond its own zeitgeist, and is institutionalized for future generations.

Through a cultural dynamics lens, what are the promises and pitfalls of having a life purpose to make a creative contribution to one’s culture? Purpose is self-regulation that focuses on a personally meaningful intention to accomplish something prosocial. Although previously studied among older adults reflecting on their lives, a more recent perspective on purpose studies youth prospectively planning their lives. Creativity is the introduction of a novel yet appropriate meaning into a situation that, over time if it is adopted by enough others, can become a new cultural norm. Purpose is a stabilizing personal beacon for understanding and enacting one’s role within a culture, whereas creativity initiates and amplifies a ripple effect on the culture’s dynamics. A creativity-driven life purpose aims to change, redirect, or augment some aspect of culture. It brings the promise of deepening and elaborating cultural resources and the common good. Yet, creativity often requires that the creator provides most of the momentum to proceed. The uncertainty of creativity can lead to fewer social and institutional supports plus more challenges and resistance. Creators need to find tolerant early adopters to demonstrate and educate their novel contributions to others. Despite these challenges, many creators describe their purposes in strongly moral terms: they consider their aim a personal responsibility to share with other minds something “beloved” in their cultural domain as a way to enlarge cultural opportunities for all. Educators can support or thwart creativity-driven purposes in youth; practical suggestions for helping such purpose development are discussed.

This study explores how youths' own definitions of purpose correspond with the dimensions of Damon, Menon, and Bronk's (2003) definition, and whether youths' definitions form bases for cultures of purpose that encompass youths' content of, confidence in, and integration of their purposes. Four cultures of purpose emerged: Supported, Strivers, Givers, and Disciples. The Supported focused on reasons and meaning for what they could gain from others and were confident in tandem with support received. Strivers aimed for primarily standard career success goals but felt uncertain. Givers felt certain about their aims to help others. Disciples, who tended to provide the most complex definitions, felt certain about their faith-focused purpose to serve God. These cultures of purpose provide insights about how purpose content and coherence function to integrate youths' experiences, and how some cultures may be more likely to provide a foundation for further development of purpose.

Having a purpose is a form of intrapersonal giftedness. An even rarer giftedness is motivation to positively change society or culture. This exploratory chi‐square and ANOVA study reports the prevalence, age distribution, stability over time, and characteristics of two change oriented aims in American adolescents. In a sample of 270, 12%, who tend to be older and more other‐oriented, have tolerant aspirations to bridge across group differences, focusing on peace, justice, racial unity, or immigrant inclusion to relieve suffering. Sixteen per cent, who tend to be more self‐oriented and spread across ages, have creative aspirations to introduce new ideas, primarily through arts and media. Both aims are difficult to maintain over time without connections to structure engagement with the aim.

Purpose is an internal compass that integrates engagement in activities that affect others, self‐awareness of one’s reasons, and the intention to continue these activities. We argue that purpose represents giftedness in intrapersonal intelligence, which processes information related to self, identity, self‐regulation, and one’s place in the world. Purpose is an extraordinary achievement. It is an ideal that young people are expected to accomplish by the end of high school, yet in our mixed methods study, only 26% of our sample overall (N=270 youth age 12–22) expressed a purpose. Still, purpose can be achieved precociously. Some youth achieve purpose much earlier than the norm: 11 6th graders in our sample showed a purpose.

Commitment involves how a person invests resources in a work role over long periods of time. Creativity is a novel, appropriate variation that is embraced by a field of gatekeepers and transforms the symbolic domain. This qualitative analysis (Cohen's kappas of .62, .86, .68 across three coders) addresses the different roles that commitment plays in the careers of 36 writers, depending on what level of creative influence the literary field has attributed to the writer's work. The sample was segmented into genre conformers who played by established literary rules (M = 0.15, SD = 0.18), experimentalists whose innovations have not yet caught on widely (M = 0.80, SD = 0.17), and domain transformers who changed the canon (M = 1.32, SD = 0.27). For genre conformers, commitment compensates. They invest technique in the craft of writing to improve their social standing among other writers, editors, and critics within the field. For experimentalists, commitment defies. They translate their selves into words by twi...

Two metaphors explicitly or implicitly used in the conceptualization of creativity are examined and compared. The boundary metaphor describes creativity in terms of crossing or pushing out a frontier. This metaphor underlies studies that emphasize creativity as a moment — an “aha!” experience or a sharp break from tradition. The organism metaphor describes creativity in terms of a reconfiguration of a problem, domain, or situation. This metaphor underlies studies that emphasize creativity as a transformation process. Research and educational implications for a potential shift in the dominant metaphor in the creativity research field are discussed.

For a scholar, a fate worse than being criticized is being ignored. Waterhouse (2006) has done Howard Gardner the courtesy of reading much of the primary and secondary literature on multiple intelligences (MI) theory. Although the authors disagree with several of her interpretations and conclusions, we appreciate her efforts as well as the opportunity to respond. We have 2 main criticisms: (a) Waterhouse misunderstands and oversimplifies MI theory and (b) Waterhouse's own line of argument undermines her claim that MI theory is not supported by the literature. This response reorients and clarifies for the reader the usefulness and implications of MI theory with the goal of demonstrating why Waterhouse's critique misses the mark in a number of respects.

Intrinsic motivation is the motivation to do something for its own sake, for the sheer enjoyment of a task. Extrinsic motivation is the motivation to do something in order to attain some external goal or meet some externally imposed constraint. Feelings of self-determination, control, and satisfaction have long been linked to an intrinsically motivated state. Environmental constraints such as the imposition of time limits, an expected reward, or an impending evaluation can undermine feelings of self-determination engendering an extrinsic orientation. However, under some circumstances, certain forms of reward may enhance intrinsic motivation through a process of motivational synergy. Intrinsic motivation has been linked to creativity of performance, longer-lasting learning, and perseverance. The fostering of intrinsic motivation in adults is especially important given the emergence of the knowledge economy. Managing knowledge workers means building a community of employees who have positive emotions, a favorable view of their company, their job, and their colleagues, and strong intrinsic motivation. More work needs to be done to understand the determinants of motivation in the workplace, including studies focused on the link between affect and motivation, interpersonal intrinsic motivation among collaborators, and commonalities and differences across cultures. Keywords: intrinsic motivation; extrinsic motivation; self-determination; “flow”; motivational synergy; cultural differences in motivation; interpersonal intrinsic motivation; work motivation

How should leaders make ethical decisions about the production and dissemination of creative products, when creative work adds to the normal leadership workload the complications of ill-defined tasks, uncertain solution paths, professionals who tend toward autonomy and exploration, and diversities of expertise that must collaborate? Ethics addresses the outcomes of decisions—typically the outcomes of decisions vis-a-vis others (Trevino, Brown, & Hartman, 2003). Creativity, the production of new ideas, and innovation, the translation of these ideas into viable new products and services (Mumford & Gustafson, 1988), are complex performances (Mumford, 2012) that can affect not only those involved in their production, but the organization and society more broadly.

Why and how do people intentionally choose to add variation and diversity to society and culture, rather than mimic others’ successes or otherwise support the status quo? These creative acts, and the ideas, products, or procedures they spawn, also create a problem space—or what I believe should be a problem space—at the intersection of creativity and ethics. Most of the scholars in this volume start from the perspective of creativity and examine how morality plays into creative endeavors. In this chapter, I provide the alternative starting point of moral reasoning and moral development and examine what effect creativity may have on ethics. How does injecting creativity—novel and useful ideas or products that can transform the cultures into which they are launched (Csikszentmihalyi, 1988; see also Moran, 2010d)—affect notions of what people consider to be good?

The quote above is taken from the novel The Vanishing (later adapted into a successful Dutch film and less successful American film). The main character, Saskia, describes her recurring dream of loneliness. Academia can tend toward such isolation, with different disciplines and topics staying within their own” golden eggs” of discourse. One of the goals of a volume such as this one is to force two” golden eggs” to collide by asking scholars from the fields of both creativity and ethics to consider how these topics might be related.

What effect does creativity have on individuals, groups and societies, and on the fundamental values on which they base their actions and institutions? What constitutes good and evil, right and wrong, and how does creativity disrupt these beliefs? The Ethics of Creativity brings together an impressive collaboration of thinkers from several countries and disciplines to illuminate the thorny issues that arise when novel ideas and products brought forth by creativity collide with the rules and norms of what we believe to be 'right' or 'good'. This book tackles questions of why most people claim to love creativity yet, in practice, may quash creative intentions, how creative innovations can create new ethical problems, when creativity and ethics tend to coincide and when they tend to conflict, and how both creativity and ethics might be harnessed to support a brighter future for all.

The prevailing belief today is that if young people can accumulate enough “points” in the “game of school”—test scores, grade point averages, number of Advanced Placement or honors classes, number of extracurricular activities—then they “win.” Many people emphasize numbers without interpretation. But what do the numbers mean? What are they for? With all this emphasis on academic achievement for its own sake, have we lost sight of why children should develop these intellectual capacities? What’s the use of these scores in the broader picture of a person’s life or a culture’s well-being?

In this chapter, we examine how creativity develops across the life span in four discrete domains: the arts, the sciences, political leadership, and moral leadership. We address four themes: how creativity and leadership have been studied; the contributions and limitations of those conceptual and methodological approaches; ways a developmental framework based on dynamic interactions among talented individuals, fields of powerful gatekeepers, and domains of knowledge illuminates the emergence of extraordinary achievements; and the indicators of creativity and leadership in childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood. The chapter is divided into eight sections. We summarize the history of achievement research from general intelligence testing to multiple intelligences, expertise, creativity, leadership, morality, and personality perspectives. We outline the definitional, developmental, domain-specific, and methodological issues currently facing researchers. We describe the developmental-systemic framework we employ to synthesize empirical findings in the four domains cited previously. Within each domain, we present what is known about ordinary development, and then highlight markers that suggest a leap to extraordinary accomplishment. We conclude with an analysis of differences and similarities among the developmental pathways of the four domains and propose lines of further research. Keywords: achievement; art; creativity; development; expertise; gifted; intelligence; leadership; moral; prodigy; science; talent