Personality, Creativity, and Aesthetic Preference: Comparing Psychoticism, Sensation Seeking, Schizotypy, and Openness to Experience

Abstract

Three studies examined the relationship between several measures of creativity and aesthetic preference and several established personality scales. Study 1 derived indices of Fluency, Originality, and Preference for Complexity and Meaningfulness using random polygons varying in complexity (turns); the scales of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (Revised) (EPQ-R), the Schizotypal Personality Scale (STA), and the Sensation Seeking Scale, Form V (SSS-V) were the personality measures. Study 2 added Openness to Experience from the NEO Personality Inventory (Revised) to the personality measures; factors derived from the Litle and Zuckerman Music Preference Scale were added to the creativity/preference set. Study 3 replaced the polygons used in Study 2 with two Kogan-Wallach creativity tests, and added a word association task. Canonical correlations suggested a substantial relationship between SSS-V, Openness, and EPQ-R Psychoticism, and a creativity/preference set particularly represented by Preference for Complexity, dislike of “soft popular” music, and originality or number of divergent thinking responses. Subscale analyses implicated willingness to question conventional values as a major component of the “creative personality.”