Shared genetic and environmental influences on self-reported creative achievement in art and science

Abstract

Artists and scientists have been the most frequently investigated groups in the literature of creative achievement. We previously found that genetic influences on the artistic and the scientific creative achievement were substantial. Using a self-report measure of creative achievement, the present study estimated the phenotypic relationship between scientific and artistic creative achievements, and investigated shared genetic and environmental sources for the relationship between the two creative achievements. Three hundred and thirty-eight adult Italian twins [79 monozygotic (MZ) pairs & 90 same-sex dizygotic (DZ) pairs] completed the Artistic Creative Achievement (ACA) and the Scientific Creative Achievement (SCA) scales developed from the Creative Achievement Questionnaire. The mean age of the sample was 26.3years. The phenotypic correlation between the ACA and the SCA was .54. Cross-twin cross-trait correlation was .45 for MZ and .15 for DZ twins. Bivariate Cholesky models were applied to the raw twin data. In the best-fitting model, the genetic and unique environmental correlations between ACA and SCA were .71 and .36, respectively. These results suggest that common sets of genes are largely responsible for the association between ACA and SCA.