What experiences influence the development of creativity in children and adolescents? One experience is the mortification of creative aspirations. Creative mortification (CM) refers to the loss of one's willingness to pursue a particular creative aspiration following a negative performance outcome. The purpose of this article is to introduce an empirically testable model of CM. Specifically, the model highlights how CM can result from interpreting a negative performance outcome through the lens of internal attributions, fixed ability beliefs, and the experience of shame. The model further posits that young people's level of aspirational commitment, the feedback they receive, and their sociocultural context can moderate their interpretations and experiences of negative performance outcomes and CM.

Despite the importance to researchers and organizations of how creativity contributes to effective leadership and how leadership contributes to group and organizational creativity, our knowledge regarding this interrelationship remains largely limited. A review of the literature based on both theoretical grounds and empirical evidence reveals that studies examining the intersection between creativity and leadership in organizations are divergent in terms of how they conceptualize this relationship. A multi-level framework is used to synthesize the knowledge in both creativity and leadership disciplines, with multiple themes having been found at each level of the framework.

With recent increased attention to engaging students in written mathematical communication, the Elementary Mathematical Writing Task Force has recommended specific types of and purposes for mathematical writing with the ultimate goals of communicating and reasoning: Exploratory, Informative/ Explanatory, Argumentative, and Mathematically Creative. While it is recommended that all students engage in all types of writing, the mathematically creative type has specific implications for mathematically talented students. Justification for and ways to engage talented students in mathematically creative writing are presented and address the following questions: What is mathematical creativity? How can mathematically creative writing help meet the needs of talented students? And, what are the characteristics of a learning environment that fosters mathematical creativity and written communication?

Media entertainment has a tremendous impact on many aspects of life, yet individual preferences for media have been understudied. Following in the footsteps of Rentfrow, Goldberg, and Zilca (2011), we extend the study of entertainment preferences to the domain of creativity while controlling for gender, socioeconomic status, and personality. Our findings are consistent with past work, in that women prefer Communal themes while men prefer Dark, Thrilling, and Cerebral themes and that Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Openness positively predict effects on genres of entertainment while Conscientiousness and Neuroticism negatively predict these same effects. In new findings, a preference for Aesthetic content positively predicted general creativity, effects of the “Highbrow” preference on creativity were higher than that of “Lowbrow” in all domains except Everyday Creativity, and Communal and Aesthetic preferences had positive effects on 4 creativity domains. The clarity of relationship between entertainment preferences and creativity shed light on the profound value media may bring to education and social life.

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