The Contribution of Personality Traits, Motivation, Academic Risk-Taking and Metacognition to the Creative Ability in Mathematics

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which personality traits, motivation, academic risk-taking, and metacognition explain the mathematical creative ability of high school students. The participants were 217 9th-grade students that were exceptionally high achievers. The participants responded to a set of measures about personality traits, motivation, academic risk-taking, metacognition, and creative ability in mathematics. The results revealed that although openness to experience and consciousness were significantly correlated with creative ability in mathematics, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism were not correlated with the creativity scores. Moreover, intrinsic goal orientation followed by openness to experience was the most significant predictor of mathematical creative ability. Academic risk-taking was not significantly correlated with creative ability. Although knowledge of cognition and regulation of cognition showed moderate correlations with creative ability in mathematics, they failed to predict creative ability.