Overexcitabilities as Predictors of Creative ‎Personality among Gifted and Ordinary Students in ‎the State of Kuwait

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the contributions of ‎overexcitabilities to the creative personalities of gifted and ‎ordinary secondary school students in the State of Kuwait. ‎Furthermore, to determine the significance of the differences in ‎overexcitability‏ ‏and creative personality, according to the ‎student's classification, gender, and the interaction between ‎them. To achieve the research objectives, the research measures, ‎namely: overexcitabilities, and creative personality, were ‎validated and administered to a sample of 545 secondary school ‎students (545, of whom 176 are gifted and 369 are ordinary), ‎during the second semester of the academic year 2019- 2020. ‎They were selected using the available sampling method (for the ‎gifted) and the cluster method (for the normal). A two-way ‎Anova revealed that there are statistically significant effects of ‎student’s classification on their estimations of creative ‎personality in favor of gifted students, while there is no ‎statistically significant effect of gender, or the interaction ‎between gender and student’s classification on their estimations. ‎A two-way Manova revealed that there is a statistically ‎significant effect of the student’s classification on the student’s ‎practice of overexcitabilities in favor of gifted students, while ‎there is no statistically significant effect of gender or the ‎interaction between gender and the student’s classification on ‎the student’s practice of overexcitabilities. Multiple regression ‎analysis revealed that mental overexcitability contributes to the ‎creative personalities of gifted students while sensory ‎overexcitability contributes to the creative personality of ‎ordinary students. It was observed that the contributions of ‎sensory overexcitability to the creative personality of the gifted ‎students are statistically stronger than those of their ‎counterparts. In light of the results of the study, a similar study ‎might be conducted on different samples, and policy-makers ‎attention might be directed to the inclusion of the research ‎variables in the educational curricula.‎ ‎(Keywords: Overexcitability, Creative Personality, Gifted ‎Students, Ordinary Students, State of Kuwait)‎