Meena, a potter in Khurja, tries crushed glass and river sand in her glaze and gets a sea-green shine on her pots, which buyers ask for at every fair. Arjun, a Class 9 student in a Kerala village, writes a poem about the first monsoon rain on his grandmother's roof, and it is read out at the school assembly. Dr Fatima, working in a Bihar district, works out a way of storing drinking water in clay pots fitted with copper strips, and cases of diarrhoea in the villages fall. Their fields differ: a craft, writing and medicine.
The acts of Meena, Arjun and Dr Fatima show one psychological attribute. Identify the attribute and the element common to all its manifestations.
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → Creativity: the production of something new and unique
Option (1) Aptitude: the potentiality to perform a particular activity — Incorrect. Aptitude is the potentiality to perform an activity, a specific skill that training can improve. The passage describes finished acts that produce something.
Option (2) Interest: a preference for a particular activity — Incorrect. Interest is a preference for a particular activity. Liking a craft or poems does not by itself produce anything, so it cannot be the common element of these acts.
Option (3) Creativity: the production of something new and unique — Correct. The glaze, the poem and the water method are manifestations of creativity in a craft, in writing and in medicine. Despite the different fields, the common element is the production of something new and unique.
Option (4) g-factor: mental operations common to all performances — Incorrect. The g-factor is Spearman's general factor: mental operations primary and common to all performances. It is part of intelligence. What links these three acts is a new product, which marks creativity.
NCERT (2026-27): “CREATIVITY |