Gender Differences in the Distribution of Creativity Scores: Domain-Specific Patterns in Divergent Thinking and Creative Problem Solving.

Wu-Jing He,Wan-Chi Wong

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.626911

Abstract

The present study examined gender differences in the distribution of creative abilities through the lens of the greater male variability hypothesis, which postulated that men showed greater interindividual variability than women in both physical and psychological attributes (Ellis, 1894/1934). Two hundred and six (51.9% female) undergraduate students in Hong Kong completed two creativity measures that evaluated different aspects of creativity, including: (a) a divergent thinking test that aimed to assess idea generation and (b) a creative problem-solving test that aimed to assess restructuring ability. The present findings extended the research of greater male variability in creativity by showing that men generally exhibited greater variance than women in the overall distribution of the creativity scores in both divergent thinking and creative problem solving, despite trivial gender differences in mean scores. The findings further enriched the discourse of the greater male variability hypothesis by showing interesting domain-specific gendered patterns: (1) greater male variability was more likely to occur in figural forms of creativity, with larger effect sizes, when compared to the variability in verbal forms of creativity; and (2) mixed gendered patterns were found in the upper tails of the creativity score distribution with respect to the verbal domain but not the figural one, despite greater male representation being consistently observed in the lower tail of the distribution. Possible underlying mechanisms and implications were discussed.

Highlights

Gender differences in the distribution of ability scores have become a research topic of interest since Ellis’s pioneering thesis on the greater male variability hypothesis, which posits that men show greater interindividual variability than women do in regard to a wide range of physical and psychological attributes (Ellis, 1894/1934), including intellectual abilities (Hedges and Nowell, 1995; Johnson et al, 2008)
Noting the paradoxical patterns of gender differences that tended to emerge in the variability of creativity scores, whereas trivial gender differences were often observed in mean comparisons, researchers argued that an understanding of the gender-creativity link could not be complete, due to the lack of variability analyses
In the remaining two coefficients (11%) that showed statistical significance at p < 0.05, the extent of the correlation was small; figural flexibility demonstrated a weak correlation with figural creative problem solving (r = 0.18), whereas verbal flexibility exhibited a weak correlation with verbal creative problem solving (r = 0.17)

Summary

Introduction

Gender differences in the distribution of ability scores have become a research topic of interest since Ellis’s pioneering thesis on the greater male variability hypothesis, which posits that men show greater interindividual variability than women do in regard to a wide range of physical and psychological attributes (Ellis, 1894/1934), including intellectual abilities (Hedges and Nowell, 1995; Johnson et al, 2008). Noting the paradoxical patterns of gender differences (especially greater male variability) that tended to emerge in the variability of creativity scores, whereas trivial gender differences (or gender similarities) were often observed in mean comparisons, researchers argued that an understanding of the gender-creativity link could not be complete, due to the lack of variability analyses (see He, 2018). Joining this line of research, the present study aimed to investigate whether men show greater variability than women do in the score distributions of two important constructs of creativity; namely, divergent thinking and creative problem solving.

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion