Correlates of Achievement, Dominance, and Creativity

Abstract

A review of literature suggests that creativity and authoritarianism are negatively correlated. Based on a validation study by Ray and Lovejoy in 1983 in which need for achievement and dominance were offered as better predictors of authoritarian behaviors than traditional authoritarianism scales, we examined this relationship using a projective test for Need for Achievement (the Thematic Apperception Test) and a self-descriptive scale (the Adjective Check List) which produced multiple measures of achievement plus scores on dominance and creativity. The anticipated negative relationship between creativity and this operationalization of authoritarianism was not produced by any of the measures. Instead, we replicated Gough and Heilbrun's 1983 data in which dominance and achievement are positively related to creativity. The results are discussed in terms of how researchers might examine the relations between authoritarianism and creativity as the social psychology of creativity.