Analogy’s straddling of analytical and creative thinking and relationships to Big Five Factors of personality

Abstract

This research study examined how the analogy test items in both the multiple-choice and the non-multiple-choice forms related to analytical thinking, creative thinking, and the five major personality domains. Five hundred eighty-two 6th graders were recruited from 12 public elementary schools located across Taiwan. Both ready-made and self-constructed instruments were used in this study. The major findings are shown as follows. The three analogy subscales in the multiple-choice form were all significantly correlated with analytical and creative thinking, with their correlations with analytical thinking stronger than those with creative thinking. In contrast, the analogy subscales in the non-multiple-choice form, the simile sentence completion, had a much stronger correlation with creative thinking than that with analytical thinking. The traditional analogical-verbal items in the multiple-choice form and the analogy test items in the form of simile sentence completion could significantly predict creative thinking independent of analytical thinking and also significantly predict analytical thinking independent of creative thinking. In addition, the simile sentence completion, openness to experience, and analytical thinking could significantly explain the variance of creative thinking. Discussions of the findings, with a special focus on the two types of novel analogy items, were presented in the context of the existing literature.