Overexcitability in actors.

Abstract

Overexcitability (OE) is a key term used in the theory of positive disintegration by Kazimierz Da ˛browski (1964). The author distinguished 5 types of OE (psychomotor, sensual, imaginational, intellectual, and emotional) and showed that they are correlated with outstanding talents and creativity. Da ˛browski (1964) believed that OE may be responsible for emotional imbalance, adaptation difficulties, and mental disorders in some artistically and intellectually gifted individuals. The aim of this study was to explore whether there are any differences in OE between artistically talented individuals (here, actors; n ϭ 40) and the control group (n ϭ 30). The Overexcitability Questionnaire-II (OEQ-II) was used to measure OE. We found differences in OE between the study groups: Actors scored significantly higher on sensual, imaginational, emotional, and psychomotor OEs compared to the control group. Because the previous study (Thomson & Jaque, 2016) has shown that emotional and imaginational OEs significantly predicted shame, anxiety, and depression, the actors' results (n ϭ 40) were compared with the sten norms (Standard Ten) for OEQ-II, developed in a normalizing study (n ϭ 784), for these 2 types of OE. It was found that actors scored significantly higher than did the general population.

Openness to experience and overexcitabilities in a sample of highly gifted middle school students

“…Among the art students, dancers had the highest psychomotor OE scores, while students studying drama were higher in sensual, imaginational and emotional OE (Moon & Montgomery, 2005). Martowska, Matczak, and Jóźwik (2020) also found that actors had complex OE profiles, reporting significantly higher levels of sensual, imaginational, emotional and psychomotor OEs than a control group.…”

To map or not to map: Professional actors are capable of validly connecting extremely distant verbal analogues.

“…This conjecture is borne-out in the existing psychological data on expert and professional actors. Since the 1950s, available research has shown meaningful psychological differences between actors and nonactors on a wide variety of mental attributes including personality (e.g., Nettle, 2006; Stacey & Goldberg, 1953), symptoms of mental illness (Davison & Furnham, 2018), experiences of childhood adversity (Thomson & Jaque, 2018), theory of mind (Goldstein et al, 2009), overexcitability (Martowska et al, 2020), and creative thinking (Dumas et al, 2020), among others. From an applied cognitive perspective, it likely is not surprising that creative cognition has been studied in professional actors, given that many currently utilized cognitive tasks meant to stimulate creative thought in study participants or students (e.g., the Alternate Uses Task; Guilford, 1975) bear striking similarities to the theater exercises on which actors are trained and that they use to warm-up for performances and actors might meaningfully be considered experts in creative thinking (at least on verbal tasks).…”

Psychological Predictors of Sense of Quality of Life in a Group of Actors

“…Thanks to this, they are able to enter such a mental state that makes it easier for them to present the appropriate emotions and behavior on stage. Martowska, Matczak, and Jóźwik (2018) examined actors in terms of increased mental excitability-the obtained results showed that actors are characterized by a higher level of this psychological variable (in four out of five dimensions) than people who are not actors. The actors obtained higher scores on the sensory, imaginary, emotional and psychomotor scales.…”