The Language of the Creative Person

Abstract

Creativity is most commonly assessed through methods such as questionnaires and specific tasks, the validity of which can be weakened by scorer or experimenter error, subjective and response biases, and self-knowledge constraints. Linguistic analysis provides researchers with an automatic, objective method of assessing creativity, free from human error and bias. This study used 419 creativity text samples from a wide range of creative individuals (Big-C, Pro-C, and Small-c) to investigate whether linguistic analysis can, in fact, distinguish between creativity levels and creativity domains using creativity dictionaries and personality dimension language patterns in the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) text analysis program. Creative individuals used more words on the creativity dictionaries as well as more Introversion and Openness to Experience Language Pattern words than less creative individuals. Regarding creativity domains, eminent artists used more Introversion and Openness to Experience Language Pattern words than eminent scientists. Text analysis through LIWC was able to successfully distinguish between the three creativity levels, in some cases, and the two creativity domains with statistical significance. These findings lend support to the use of linguistic analysis as a partially valid form of creativity assessment.