Creativity, divergent thinking, and openness to experience.

Abstract

Test scores of divergent thinking obtained between 1959 and 1972 were correlated with a variety of personality measures administered since 1980.In this sample of 268 men, divergent thinking was consistently associated with self-reports and ratings of openness to experience, but not with neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, or conscientiousness.Both divergent thinking and openness were also modestly correlated with Cough's (1979) empirically derived Creative Personality Scale.Several other personality variables mentioned in the literature were also examined; those that were associated with divergent thinking were also generally correlated with openness.These data suggest that creativity is particularly related to the personality domain of openness to experience.Although some object that the distinction is artificial (Heim, 1970), cognition and personality have traditionally been seen as distinct domains.Intelligence is construed as a set of aptitudes and abilities; personality is viewed, at least by psychometricians, as a collection of characteristic dispositions.Empirically, there is some justification for the separation.Measures of personality traits typically show very modest correlations with tests of general intelligence (e.g., Eysenck & Eysenck, 1975), and joint factor analyses of personality and cognitive ability variables show that the latter form a distinct factor (McCrae & Costa, 1985b, 1985c).Creativity, however, seems to hold an intermediate position.The novelty and originality of creative productions imply both an ability to think fluently and flexibly and an inclination to do so.A voluminous literature has documented the importance of both these aspects of creativity (Barren & Harrington, 1981).In this article, I attempt to organize the findings on personality characteristics associated with creativity by reference to a wellestablished taxonomy of personality traits.Specifically, I am testing the hypothesis that creativity is uniquely associated with the personality domain of openness to experience. Creativity, Intelligence, and Divergent ThinkingWhether creativity should be considered part of general intelligence or a correlate of it or an entirely independent ability is still disputed.Steinberg (1985), for example, studied implicit theories of intelligence, creativity, and wisdom and concluded that "implicit theories are clearly inconsistent with views such as Guilford's (1967), according to which creativity is an aspect of intelligence" (p.612).Measures of creativity and of intelligence are largely independent within specialized groups (e.g.,