Relating Personality and Creativity: Considering What and How We Measure

Abstract

Creativity is a complex construct that is conceptualized and measured in multiple ways. This study examined the relationship between creativity and personality taking this into account. It was hypothesized that applying different conceptions and measures would cause variation in the creativity–personality relationship. The participants (N = 224) were undergraduate students and completed six creativity measures, a personality inventory, and a demographic questionnaire. Personality predicted more creative production (R2 = .277) than creative potential (R2 = .176) and more self‐reported creativity (R2 = .348) than that which was externally rated (R2 = .149). Openness was most consistently and strongly related to creativity, but other personality factors varied in their influence and some demonstrated suppression effects. Overall, the results suggest that despite relatively small effects of personality on creativity, there appear to be meaningful differences in the relationships depending on conception and measurement. Implications for educational settings and future research are discussed.

Big Five Personality and Creativity: The Moderating Effect of Motivational Goal Orientation

“…Contrary with what was expected, the association between Openness and Creativity is not moderated by GO. Nevertheless, that finding does support previous findings showing that Openness is the strongest predictor of creativity (Dollinger et al., ; George & Zhou, ; McCrae, ; Puryear et al., ). The current findings show that Openness is unconditionally associated with creativity.…”

“…Openness is the personality dimension that is the most strongly tied to creativity (Dollinger et al, 2004;George & Zhou, 2001;Jauk, Benedek, & Neubauer, 2014;McCrae, 1987;Puryear, Kettler, & Rinn, 2017). As Helson (1999) put it: Openness is a "cardinal characteristic" of creativity.…”

The interactive effects of associative response priming and personality traits on insight problem solving over time

“…A few studies in the past decade have tried to investigate the relationship between the Big Five personality traits and two types of creativity, namely, divergent thinking and insight problem solving. However, the results are inconsistent (e.g., Lin et al, 2012;Lin et al, 2013;Puryear et al, 2019). These results suggest divergent thinking and insight problem solving involve different cognitive processes and have a different relationship with personality traits; insight problem solving may involve more conscious cognitive processes than divergent thinking.…”

Creativity and Need for Cognition in Students of Pedagogy

“…"creativity" is a broad term which can be analyzed from the perspective of four paradigms. in its attributive dimension, we are dealing with "creativity" when the result of the act of creation is something new, useful and valuable in a given historical, cultural and political context (Kasof 1995;Runco & Jaeger , 2012;Sethy , 2009;acar & Runco , 2014;Barbot, 2018Barbot, , 2019tien, chang & Kuo, 2019;puryear, Kettler & Rinn, 2019; Education and Self development. Volume 14, № 3, 2019 creative commons by the authors is licenced under cc-BY-N c-N d Runco & Beghetto, 2019).…”