Open-mindedness and creativity.

Abstract

In concluding his review of the psychological literature relating to the study of creativity, Golann (1963) states his belief that the use of theoretically derived personality factors as criterion variables has . . . been neglected, yet holds most promise of providing a functional developmental understanding of (p. 561). Specifically, in such an approach our criterion variables might be tolerance for or seeking of ambiguity, openness to experience . . . internal frames of evaluation, or independence of judgment, to name but a few theoretically based descriptive concepts which appear again and again in the literature and deserve further investigation (p. 561). The cluster of traits which Golann cites appears to represent a good thumbnail sketch of the open-minded individual as described by Rokeach ( 1960). Indeed, in a more recent paper, Rokeach (1965) suggests that open-mindedness may be a prerequisite (in the sense of a necessary but insufficient condition) for creativity. Rokeach's and Mednick's Remote Associates Test (RAT) were administered to 24 graduate students enrolled in a course in business administration at George Washington University during the Fall of 1966. The RAT is a test of creativicy based upon Mednick's theoretical interpretation of the creative process as one which involves the forming of associations between mutually remote cognitive elements (Mednick, 1962; Mednick & Mednick, 1964). It was predicted that scores on the Dogmatism Scale would be inversely related to performance on the RAT. The resulting correlation coefficient, -.248, though in the predicted direction, failed to reach statistical significance (9 = .12). However, the results are suggestive and it appears that further research into the relationship between dogmacism and creativity is warranted.