Creativity and Openness: Further Validation of Two Creative Product Measures

Abstract

This study sought to further validate two measures of creative imagination, and studied their relation to other creativity and personality measures. 151 college students completed the Urban and Jellen (1996) Test of Creative Thinking-Drawing Production (TCT-DP), an inventory of past creative accomplishments, a Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) story, and scales for creative personality and the 5-factor model. 86 of these participants also created autophotographic essays depicting themselves, scored for individuality/richness by consensual assessments. TCT-DP protocols were scored according to the manual, and also consensually assessed by teams of artist- and psychologist-judges. Factorial validity and relations to consensual assessments supported convergent and discriminant validity of the TCT-DP. The TCT-DP also correlated significantly with other creative products-the individuality of photo essays and rated creativity of TAT stories. Photo individuality correlated with past creative accomplishments in several areas. Adjective Check List-based creative personality scales related to most creativity measures, as did the "big 5" openness to experience domain, although the latter results seemed particularly compelling. Results support the domain generality rather than specificity position in an ongoing controversy in creativity research.