John C. Houtz

The Creative Personality

The study of the creative personality has established itself as a major avenue of research on creativity and creative problem solving, other areas being creative process, product, and environment (or press). With respect to personality research, over the past 50-plus years, many studies have examined characteristics, attitudes, preferences, styles, and other personal qualities that appear to distinguish highly creative individuals. The purposes of this article are to review the accumulated body of creative personality research; describe the works of a few major researchers and their methods; briefly review theories that have been offered to explain why these personal qualities are causes, correlates, and/or outcomes of the creative process; and examine the relatively new construct of creative and problem-solving styles. Style assessment builds upon traditional personality research but holds substantial promise for talent identification and development for all individuals, not just those recognized as creatively gifted.

Assessment of Creativity: Resolving a Mid-Life Crisis

Assessment of creativity is reviewed with special focus on applications to education and instruction. A variety of existing instruments are described along with general criticisms of creativity measurement. A view to the future is offered which attempts to look beyond creativitys “mid-life crisis.” In addition to continued psychometric development of cognitive and affective tests, surveys, and inventories, alternative assessment methods and models derived from modern cognitive theories of learning and memory have much to offer the field. We end our analysis with a set of guidelines for teachers and other education professionals to use to assess creative thinking skills and with several recommendations for future research and development in creativity assessment.

Play and social skills in maltreated and non-maltreated preschoolers during peer interactions

OBJECTIVE The goal of the study was to investigate whether maltreated children differ from nonmaltreated children with regard to their social skills and play behaviors. METHOD The social skills and free-play behaviors of 30 3- to 5-year-old maltreated and nonmaltreated children were compared. Fifteen children with a range of maltreatment experiences drawn from a hospital-based therapeutic nursery treatment program and 15 demographically similar children drawn from a home-based Head Start program participated in the study. All children were of low socioeconomic status. Childrens free-play peer interactions were videotaped during the first 3 months of attendance in either program and analyzed along social and cognitive dimensions. Teachers and therapists rated childrens social skills in peer interactions. RESULTS Maltreated children were found to have significantly poorer skill in initiating interactions with peers and maintaining self-control, as well as a greater number of problem behaviors. Significant differences were not found between groups with regard to social participation or cognitive level of play. Significant correlations of moderate strength were found between social participation in play and social skills for the sample as a whole: total social skills score was positively related to interactive play, and negatively related to solitary play. CONCLUSION The results suggest that the experience of maltreatment has a negative impact on childrens developing interpersonal skills above and beyond the influence of factors associated with low socioeconomic status and other environmental stressors.

Creativity Styles and Personal Type

Sixty-two student teachers enrolled in an initial teacher education program in a medium-sized, metropolitan university completed the Kirton (1976) Adaption-Innovation Inventory (KAI), the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory (MBTI; Briggs & Myers, 1976), and Khatena and Torrances (1976) What-Kind-of-Person-Are-You checklist. Path analyses revealed a strong causal link between KAI innovator style and creative self-perceptions. Of the MBTI introversion, intuitive, thinking, and perceiver types, only intuitiveness exhibited a total causal link to creative self-perception that came close to the KAI. Creativity, personality, and cognitive style literatures are diverse and more research is suggested, although the KAI instrument appeared to be an effective predictor of scores on a creative self-perception measure.

Effects of incubation and imagery training on creativity

Abstract: One hundred five business school students were given anagram and open‐ended ideational tasks under one of several conditions. One group of students received an incubation interval prior to problem solving. A second group received no such interval. A third group received imagery training to aid problem solving in addition to an incubation interval. A fourth group received imagery training but no incubation interval. The fifth and sixth groups received imagery training, incubation or no incubation, respectively, and deliberate instructions to use imagery in problem solving. Results showed significant effects for incubation on originality of ideas and imagery training on anagram solving, but the latter were inhibitory. Results are discussed in terms of incubation and imagery theories.

The creative skills of culturally and linguistically diverse gifted students

Abstract The purpose of this study was to explore the creative abilities of culturally and linguistically diverse students. The relationships among creativity and achievement, intelligence, nonverbal reasoning, and instructional climate were also examined. For the pupils in this study, moderate correlations were found between creativity and intelligence and between creativity and reading achievement. A low correlation was found between creativity and nonverbal‐reasoning skills. Significant relationships were found between creativity and several classroom variables. Results are discussed in terms of the importance of identifying gifted youth from culturally and linguistically different backgrounds.

Classification and evaluation of problem-solving tasks

Abstract Problem-solving tasks are classified on the basis of four task characteristics (ambiguity, number of solutions, complexity, and experience), three process categories (preparation, production, and evaluation), and four general outcome categories (number of solutions, time to solution, quality, and process measures). The classification scheme is compared with recent attempts to define “ideal” characteristics of measures, and seven general criteria are proposed for evaluating problem-solving tasks. Twelve categories of tasks commonly used in research are classified and evaluated. Concept identification, switchlight problems, verbal mazes, and simulations are concluded to be tasks that most closely satisfy all evaluation criteria, although each has some problems. Implications for improvement of measures of problem-solving are indicated.

Problem Solving and Personality Characteristics Related to Differing Levels of Intelligence and Ideational Fluency.

Abstract Eighty intellectually gifted fourth, fifth, and sixth graders were given divergent thinking and problem solving tasks and measures of tolerance for ambiguity, locus of control, and self-esteem. Four comparison groups included: (1) higher fluency and higher IQ; (2) higher fluency but lower IQ; (3) lower fluency but higher IQ; and (4) lower fluency and lower IQ. Higher-fluency children were more tolerant of ambiguity, internally oriented, positive in self-esteem, and better problem solvers and school achievers. In agreement with several writers, these results emphasize the consistency which can be found among the cognitive and affective dimensions associated with divergent or creative thinking.

The Role of Affective Traits in the Creative and Problem-Solving Performance of Gifted Urban Children.

Problem-solving and creativity measures were administered to 127 gifted New York City school children from grades 4–6, in an attempt to relate these cognitive variables to the affective traits of locus of control, self-esteem, and tolerance of ambiguity. A canonical correlation analysis indicated one significant canonical set (p <.05) in which 46% of the variability in a set of cognitive measures was explained by a set of affective measures. A factor analysis was performed on the creativity and problem-solving tasks, with two factors emerging: Fluency and Rearrangement. Factor scores were used to analyze sex and grade differences. Sex differences on the cognitive tasks were consistent with those reported in the literature. No sex differences were obtained on the affective tasks. Grade 4 students differed significantly from grade 6 students on the Rearrangement factor only. On the affective tasks, grade 4 students differed from both grade 5 and grade 6 students only on tolerance of ambiguity. Results were discussed in terms of the importance of affective personality traits in the creative and problem-solving process.

Relationship among Measures of Evaluation Ability (Problem Solving), Creative Thinking, and Intelligence.

Abstract Tasks designed to assess childrens verbal abilities to define problems, ask questions to clarify the problem, guess causes, foresee consequences, and generate possible solutions were administered to 156 fourth graders. These tasks were graded in terms of the childrens fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration of responses. The purpose of the present analyses was to identify relationships among these measures of creative thinking, intelligence, and evaluation skills. Evaluation ability was measured by the Purdue Elementary Problem Solving Inventory. With intelligence controlled by means of partial correlations, the relationship between creative thinking scores and evaluation ability was near zero. Results were discussed in terms of the role of evaluation in creative thinking and problem solving.