Personality and Creativity in Art and Writing: Innovation Motivation, Psychoticism, and (Mal)Adjustment

Abstract

Undergraduates (N = 68) completed inventories measuring innovation motivation (need to be different and innovation expectancy), psychoticism, extraversion, neuroticism, and symptomatic distress, as well as a sentence completion measure of adjustment. They also wrote lyric poems using an associative procedure and completed house–tree–person drawings. Poems were scored for originality and arousal potential and independently judged for quality by two college writing instructors. Drawings were scored for original features and independently judged for quality by two art therapists. The need to be different and current adjustment problems correlated significantly with both originality scores and judged creativity on both tasks, often interacting to explain much of the variance in creativity. Innovation expectancy and psychoticism displayed significant correlations with some creativity measures. Originality scoring and expert judgment correlated well on both tasks. Originality and judged creativity correlated significantly across creative domains, supporting a domain-general view of creativity.

Grateful thanks are extended to Pat Corsetti, John S. Joy, Sarah Julian, and Paul Robichaud for lending their time and expertise to the task of judging the poems and drawings used in this study.

Notes

∗p < .05; ∗∗p < .01; ⁺ p < .10.

Note. Word Count = # of words in poem; Unique Words = # of words used only once; Repeated = # of words used more than once; Unique: Repeat = ratio of unique words to repeated words; Word Infreq. = Infrequency of use in written English (sum for all words in poem); Infreq./Count = Mean infrequency of use in written English (i.e., controlling for word count); Word Length = mean length of words used in poem.

∗p < .05; ∗∗p < .01; ⁺ p < .10.

Notes. Nouns = concreteness/imagery value of nouns used in poem; Verbs = concreteness value of verbs used in poem; Adjectives = imagery value of adjectives used in poem; 1st Ass. = unusualness of the first association to the stimulus word ‘Door;' All Ass. = unusualness of all five associations; Contrasts = number of pairs of words with contrasting meanings used in poem (e.g., open-shut).

∗p < .05; ∗∗p < .01; ⁺ p < .10

Note. vDiff = vDiffer scale score; geInn = geInnova scale score; Psych = EPQ-R Psychoticism score; Extra = EPQ-R Extraversion score; Neur = EPQ-R Neuroticism score; Lie = EPQ-R Lie score; RISB = Rotter Incomplete Sentences Blank Adjustment score; SCL-90 = global severity index of the SCL-90; Comp. = poetic arousal/originality composite.

∗p < .05; ∗∗p < .01; ⁺ p < .10.

∗p < .05; ∗∗p < .01; ⁺ p < .10.

¹Originality composite summing z-scores for all three drawings (see text).

²Number of common outside details included in House drawing (see text).

∗p < .05; ∗∗p < .01.

∗p < .05; ∗∗p < .01; ⁺ p < .10.

¹Originality composite summing z-scores for all three drawings (see text).

²Number of common outside details included in House drawing (see text).