The Creative Personality: A Synthesis and Development of the Creative Person Profile

Abstract

Several constructs from the research literature on the creative personality were reoperationalized to gain further understanding of the structure of the creative personality and to develop a broad measure of relevant traits (CPP—the Creative Person Profile). From an initial pool of 38 creativity relevant personality constructs, 7 factors were identified and labeled (emotional instability, ambition, associative orientation, motivation, need for originality, agreeableness, and flexibility) in a sample of 481 participants with a mean age of 31.6 years. In a subsample, there were theoretically meaningful correlations between the 5-factor model of personality and 5 of the CPP factors. Moreover, most of the 7 components correlated with at least 1 ability test or self-report criterion of creativity (creative problem solving, remote associates test, ideational fluency, items from a creative activities checklist). Finally, in a discriminant validity study, scores on the 7 factors clearly differentiated between a group of professional artists (n = 69) and the remainder of the sample, and between a group of marketing students (n = 40) and the remainder of the sample.

Notes

Note. Correlation between the two tasks.

^a

Note. Extraction method was principal component analysis with Promax rotation with Kaiser Normalization. Loadings below .30 are omitted from the presentation of the results. The seven factors explained 69.9% of the variance: associative orientation, motivation, ambition, instability, need for originality, agreeableness, and flexibility.

*Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

**Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

*Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

**Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).