Abstract
Implicit theories can influence learning behavior, the approaches individuals take to learning and performance situations, and the learning goals individuals set, as well as, indirectly, their accomplishments, intelligence, and creativity. For this cross-cultural study, Kenyan and German students were asked to draw a creative person and rate it on a number of attributes. The data indicated considerable differences among the implicit theories according to students’ gender and nationality. Kenyan girls, in particular, frequently ascribed a gender to their prototypical creative person that differed from their own, whereas the gender of the prototypical creative people drawn by German students was more equally spread. The data offer evidence that implicit theories of a creative person are multifaceted. Kenyan students value diligence as an important attribute of a creative person. In addition, social variables were seen as important, followed by talents in languages and mathematics. By contrast, German students valued imagination and talent in artistic areas, followed by diligence and social components. Their lowest rated attributes for creativity were talents in the domains of languages, mathematics and technical areas. Future studies should further examine the influence of implicit theories on the learning behavior of gifted students.
Highlights
In recent years, there has been increasing research interest in the field of implicit theories of creativity
As the perceived gender of a creative person was more frequently male, we investigated whether this result was influenced by the gender of the study participants, that is, those students making the drawings
The perceived gender of a creative person more frequently corresponded to the gender of the person who made the drawing
Summary
There has been increasing research interest in the field of implicit theories of creativity. A classic way to measure folk conceptions of creative people is by asking laypeople to identify the characteristics of highly creative individuals or to select from attribute checklists. The basic findings from such studies have mainly connected with the cognitive skills, personality characteristics or motivational attributes of the highly creative person. In an early study of creativity, MacKinnon [4] asked participants to select the most appropriate adjectives to describe the attributes of a creative person. He found that the participants viewed a creative person as imaginative, determined, independent, individualistic, enthusiastic, hardworking, artistic, and advanced.
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