Abstract
Risk taking is often associated with creativity, yet little evidence exists to support this association. The present article aimed to systematically explore this association. In two studies, we investigated the relationship between five different domains of risk taking (financial, health and safety, recreational, ethical and social) and five different measures of creativity. Results from the first (laboratory-based) offline study suggested that creativity is associated with high risk taking tendencies in the social domain but not the other domains. Indeed, in the second study conducted online with a larger and diverse sample, the likelihood of social risk taking was the strongest predictor of creative personality and ideation scores. These findings illustrate the necessity to treat creativity and risk taking as multi-dimensional traits and the need to have a more nuanced framework of creativity and other related cognitive functions.
Highlights
The great sculptor, painter, and architect, Michelangelo frequently depicted the sensual form of human bodies in religious contexts such as in his masterpiece, ‘David’
We investigated whether creativity is associated with risk taking; more importantly, we examined the link between creativity and risk taking in five different domains or content areas
We found that the likelihood of risk taking in recreational, financial-investment, health and safety and ethical domains showed no supported correlations with measures of creativity (BF10 < 2.1)
Summary
The great sculptor, painter, and architect, Michelangelo frequently depicted the sensual form of human bodies in religious contexts such as in his masterpiece, ‘David’. Michelangelo responded by painting the official’s face into the mural and covering his nude figure with a snake Anecdotes such as this have provided support for the notion that creative individuals are risk takers. Other writers have expressed similar views (Sternberg and Lubart, 1995; Sternberg, 1997; Runco, 2015; Steele et al, 2016), calling a creative act a risk (Haefele, 1962), as well as referring to the willingness of creative individuals to risk the uncertainty of the unknown (Getzels and Jackson, 1962) Despite these suggestions, most of the literature is speculative in nature and little empirical data exists to support such claims. We investigated whether creativity is associated with risk taking; more importantly, we examined the link between creativity and risk taking in five different domains or content areas
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