What are creative people like? As we saw in my prior post, various creativity researchers tend to converge on the same conclusion: creative people are complex. Creative people have a great deal of physical energy, but often need their rest. They tend to be both introverted and extroverted at the same darn time. And perhaps most strikingly, their high levels of openness to experience and sensitivity expose them to great suffering and pain as well as intense joy and euphoria.
But wait a minute: isn't that everyone? For instance, tell me if this description applies to you:
You have a need for other people to like and admire you, and yet you tend to be critical of yourself. While you have some personality weaknesses you are generally able to compensate for them. You have considerable unused capacity that you have not turned to your advantage. At times you have serious doubts whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing.
What do you think? Did I peer into your soul and observe the real you? Do I understand you like no one else? Well, maybe (mwhahah), but this example doesn't prove it. This description was taken right from the Skeptic's Dictionary definition of the Barnum Effect: "the name given to a type of subjective validation in which a person finds personal meaning in statements that could apply to many people."
So is over 50 years worth of creativity research on the complexity of the creative personality all one big Barnum Effect? I don't think the situation is quite so simple (ha!). In fact, the more research I conduct on this topic, the more I become convinced there really are a particular set of personal characteristics that distinguish people in creative professions, as well as people who are making innovative and valuable contributions in their respective fields (whatever the field).
Most crucially to the complexity issue, many of these traits do often contradict each other, giving the appearing of greater complexity. Which is why in recent years, I've become particularly interested in looking at creativity across domains-- from the arts to the sciences to business. Once we look at how creativity operates in different domains, and the kinds of minds that are attracted to different professions, I think personality differences become more pronounced.
Consider a hot off the press study just published in Creativity Research Journal. Edward Necka and Teresa Hlawacz recruited 60 visual artists and 60 bank officers in Poland, and administered a variety of tests of temperament and divergent thinking (one component of creativity requiring the ability to generate many different possibilities). How did the artists differ from the bank officers?
Bank officers were about as good at divergent thinking as the general population, whereas artists were amazingly good at flexibly generating original pictures and words. In fact, they were almost at ceiling! What about temperament? This is where things get really interesting. On the whole, artists didn't substantially differ from bank tellers in their temperament. To get to the bottom of this finding, the researchers looked at the relationships between the various measures within each group.
Surprisingly, consistent relationships between divergent thinking and temperament were found only in the sample of artists. Among bank tellers, temperament was not related to divergent thinking. But among the artists, those scoring higher on the tests of divergent thinking tended to display higher levels of the following:
- Briskness ("quick responding to stimuli, high tempo of activity, and the ability to switch between actions")
- Endurance ("an ability to behave efficiently and appropriately in spite of intense external stimulation or regardless of the necessity to pay attention during prolonged periods of time")
- Activity ("the generalized tendency to initiate numerous activities that lead to, or provoke, rich external stimulation; it is conceived as the basic regulator of the need for stimulation").
What's more, artists who scored higher in divergent thinking also scored lower in emotional reactivity. This might not be surprising, considering the ability to do well on a decontextualized, timed test requires a cool head. When all of the temperamental factors were considered at the same time, activity remained the best positive predictor of divergent thinking, and emotional reactivity remained the best negative predictor of divergent thinking.
What's going on here? Why was temperament related to divergent thinking among the artists but not the bank officers? One possibility is that the bank officers were more intimidated by the demands of the divergent thinking tests than the artists, who might be more comfortable expressing their wacky ideas.
Another possibility is that the bank officers shun creativity. Indeed, as my colleague James C. Kaufman has pointed out repeatedly, creativity is not always such a good thing in every domain! Would you rather have an efficient accountant or a creative accountant? If you'd like to stay out of jail, I hope you chose efficient! So perhaps the diminished value bank officers place on creativity (at least, the kind of creativity artists embrace) may have influenced their tests scores on both the temperament measures as well as the divergent thinking measures.
Regardless of why artists seem to differ from bank officers, I think these results highlight a more general point about creativity: the interconnectedness of temperament and creative production. As the researchers speculate,
"temperament works as the foundations for development and expression of one's creative potential. People scoring high on activity tend to have many diverse experiences that may be used as a substrate for divergent thinking and creative activity."
Which takes us back to the complexity issue. I believe creative people are less afraid of displaying seemingly contradictory traits and behaviors if they think it will increase their chances of making an immensely creative connection. Which is why I think tolerance for ambiguity, complexity, engagement, openness to experience, and self-expression are all so essential to creative production in any field of human endeavor. Although whether we necessarily want such creativity in any field-- do we really want creative pilots?!-- is an altogether different question!
© 2013 Scott Barry Kaufman, All Rights Reserved
For more on different kinds of creative minds, check out my new book “Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined"!
Image 1 credit: Designs-n'-Deal; Image 2 credit: Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp
