Is creativity going to be what kills us, or what drives our survival? Creativity has allowed the human species to adapt to unique environments, letting us create tools that took us from the dark ages to a time where cars drive themselves. However, creative individuals are often cast outside of social groups and forced into isolation. This raises the question of whether being creative is evolutionarily advantageous or detrimental.

As scientists studied creativity, an evolutionary approach was formed that "relies on a critical assumption that creativity is adaptive”. For a characteristic to be adaptive , it must enhance the individual's survival or reproductive success in their environment. If a characteristic gets in the way of these things, it is considered detrimental and would likely be bred out of the species through natural selection. Organisms with traits best suited to their environment are more likely to survive, reproduce, and pass those traits on to their offspring. Being creative allowed our ancestors to solve novel problems and develop tools, which increased their likelihood of survival. Early humans used their creativity skills to fashion tools for crucial life-sustaining activities. Creativity may also have helped them mate. Ornamental creativity, such as humor, storytelling, and art, may have helped early humans bond, because these behaviors generate pleasurable experiences which facilitate bonding and social closeness and could also signal one's fitness. A similar trend appears today. Creative men are rated as more attractive, and in one study , fertile women preferred more creative men in short-term mating contexts.

On the other hand, some features of creativity suggest it may not have been adaptive, especially for early humans. The main maladaptive feature is that creativity often disrupts social norms and collective ideas of how things should be done. To be creative, individuals often must violate social norms in order to promote change. For early humans, social exclusion could’ve meant death, as ostracism can lead to predation, starvation, and loss of access to group resources. Imagine being pushed away from the only people you know and forced to hunt and fight off predators alone. The same pattern appears in modern life, especially among youth, where being different is more heavily stigmatized.

This challenges the evolutionary theory that creativity is passed on as an adaptive trait, due to its extreme consequences. But as much as social norms provide guidelines for how not to be creative, they also share how creativity can thrive within the constraints of social norms. Research suggests that some norms "establish expectations of preferred creative behaviors" and that innovative behaviors "can respect certain normative boundaries. If creatives are able to properly navigate these social boundaries, knowing which lines to cross and which should be respected, creativity can fully thrive without potential backlash. This allows the creative individual to be supported by their community, being seen as a creative mind instead of a deviant. This support is adaptive allowing for social bonds and connectivity that supports reproduction.

Creativity, then, is not what threatens our survival but what sustains it, provided it is practiced with an awareness of the social bonds that make it possible.