Difference in Response Time of Creative Persons and Patients with Depressive and Schizophrenic Disorders

Abstract

The mean response time to 99 stimulus words of the Kent-Rosanoff Word Association Test was used to differentiate creative subjects from two homogeneous groups of psychiatric inpatients, one with depressive disorders and another with schizophrenic disorders. The creative group had significantly faster mean response times than the depressive group. While the schizophrenic group did not differ significantly from the creative or depressive groups, speed of responding in the schizophrenic group ranked both slower than the creative group and a good deal faster than the. depressives. These results do not support previous claims of a connection between depressive illness and creativity. The role of level of creative achievement and social success in relation to depressive symptomatology is briefly discussed.

The Janusian Process in Psychoanalytic Treatment

“…Subjects ranging from potentially creative college stu-425 Downloaded by [University of Leeds] at 17:04 05 July 2015 dents to Nobel laureates in science were tested or exposed to ex perimental manipulations, and intergroup and intragroup control comparisons were made. More than 1,000 persons have been sub jects in these experiments, and results have supported interview findings and confirmed hypotheses regarding specific creative processes (Rothenberg, 1973a(Rothenberg, , 1973b(Rothenberg, , 1982(Rothenberg, , 1983b(Rothenberg, , 1986bRothenberg and Burkhardt, 1984;Sobel, 1980, 1981;Sobel and Rothenberg, 1980).…”

The Effects of Musical Mood Induction on Creativity

“…In contrast, Rothenberg and Burkhardt ( 1984).failed to find a connection between depression and creativity in a study comparing creative subjects with groups of depressive inpatients and schizophrenic inpatients. The creative group had significantly faster response times on a word association task than the depressive group, while the schizophrenic group fell between the two.…”

Creativity and Psychopathology: A Systematic Review

“…In spite of being controlled studies, some of them exhibit methodological weaknesses such as unblinded scoring. However, if the test subjects are Nobel Prize laureates [14,15] or famous writers [16,17,18] this is no easy task. Some recent comparative studies show both impressive scope and sound methodology (e.g.…”