JOURNAL OF

RESEARCH IN
Journal of Research in Personality 38 (2004) 24–31
PERSONALITY
www.elsevier.com/locate/jrp

Neuropsychological evidence for dimensional

schizotypy: Implications for creativity
and psychopathologyq
Joscelyn E. Fisher, Aprajita Mohanty, John D. Herrington,
Nancy S. Koven, Gregory A. Miller, and Wendy Heller*
Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, MC 716,
603 East Daniel Street, Champaign, IL 61820, USA

Abstract

Schizotypal personality is characterized by a variety of traits, such as magical thinking, un-

usual perceptual experiences, and anhedonia. Factor analytic studies have shown that these
characteristics tend to cluster into at least two separate dimensions (positive and negative
schizotypy). Schizotypy is associated with vulnerability to schizophrenia. However, it is also
related to higher scores on measures of creativity and increased right-hemisphere brain activ-
ity. In a series of recent studies investigating the behavioral, neuropsychological, and neuro-
imaging correlates of positive and negative schizotypy, positive schizotypy was associated
with better performance on measures of creativity, enhanced responsivity to threatening emo-
tional stimuli, and more right-prefrontal cortical activity. These results support earlier psycho-
logical studies suggesting that positive schizotypy is related to patterns of cognitive and
emotional function (e.g., divergent thinking, heightened emotion) that are common to both
creativity and psychopathology.
Ó 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

q
This research was supported by National Institute of Drug Abuse (R21 DA14111), National Institute
of Mental Health (R01 MH61358, T32 MH14257, T32 MH19554, F31 MH068123), Intercampus
Research Initiative in Biotechnology of the University of Illinois, Carle Clinic, and the Beckman Institute.
We thank Joseph Barkmeier, Tracey Wszalek, Holly Tracey, and Elizabeth Wenzel for their contributions
to this project.
*
Corresponding author. Fax: 1-217-244-5876.
E-mail address: wheller@s.psych.uiuc.edu (W. Heller).

0092-6566/$ - see front matter Ó 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2003.09.014
 J.E. Fisher et al. / Journal of Research in Personality 38 (2004) 24–31 25

Creativity has been associated with mental illness for centuries. Biographical ac-
counts of famous musicians, philosophers, scientists, writers, artists, and poets de-
scribe psychotic episodes and suicides (Brod, 1997). In addition, psychological
studies have shown that, on average, highly creative people have higher scores on
measures of psychopathology than less creative people (for a review, see Andreasen,
1996). Relatives of schizophrenic or other psychotic patients have a higher incidence
of creative achievement (for a review, see Brod, 1997). However, the relationship be-
tween characteristics of ÔgeniusÕ and symptoms of ÔmadnessÕ is not straightforward.
The majority of people who suffer from chronic mental illness experience a wide
range of symptoms and deficits that interfere with the production of substantive
work. Moreover, creativity is often defined as the ability to produce new ideas
and adapt, improve, or create new functions for existing products (Kirton, 1989),
skills that are impaired in most patients with schizophrenia. Indeed, the productive
periods of most famous creative individuals occurred when their symptoms of men-
tal illness were less severe (Brod, 1997). It therefore seems useful to examine whether
creativity is associated with certain emotional, cognitive, or personality traits that
may also predispose one to mental illness.
Research focused on the traits that may be associated with both creativity and
mental illness has identified schizotypal personality as a candidate for vulnerability
to schizophrenia as well as a potential contributor to creativity. Much of this work
emerges from the study of schizophrenia and its predispositions and hence is biased
to represent the relevant personality traits as pathological.
Schizotypal personality consists of traits that lead to a variety of cognitive, emo-
tional, and social behaviors that are perceived by others to be unusual. For instance,
individuals with schizotypal personality are often described as ‘‘odd’’ or ‘‘eccentric’’
and they may report an elevated rate of unusual perceptual experiences. Odd ideas or
magical beliefs, inappropriate or constricted affect, and social and/or physical anhe-
donia are also commonly observed in schizotypal individuals. Many of these charac-
teristics are thought to be milder versions of symptoms observed in schizophrenia
that could lead to significant impairment in emotional, social, and vocational func-
tioning, even if they do not manifest as psychosis. Indeed, schizotypal personality
disorder includes a constellation of characteristics whose link to schizophrenia has
been theoretically and empirically supported (e.g., Chapman, Chapman, Kwapil,
Eckblad, & Zinser, 1994; Fernandes & Miller, 1995).
However, other researchers have argued that at least some schizotypal traits are
continuously distributed throughout the population and may be associated with en-
hanced adaptive functioning (McCreery & Claridge, 2002). In particular, unusual
perceptions and magical beliefs may be linked to enhanced spirituality and creativity.
For example, schizotypy scale items such as ‘‘It has seemed at times as if my body
was melting into my surroundings’’ and ‘‘Sometimes I have had the feeling that a
part of my body is larger than it usually is’’ are both common experiences of people
who practice meditation (Kabat-Zinn, 1990). Items such as ‘‘It is not possible to
harm others merely by thinking bad thoughts about them’’ belie a growing belief
among scientists, scholars, and physicians that thoughts can influence events and
objects in the material world (e.g., Dossey, 1993). Jung wrote extensively about
26 J.E. Fisher et al. / Journal of Research in Personality 38 (2004) 24–31

synchronicity, the idea that events co-occur in a meaningful way, a topic that has
been taken up by more recent writers (Hopke, 1997). Individuals who believe in
the concept of synchronicity might endorse items such as ‘‘I have felt that there were
messages for me in the way things were arranged, like in a store window.’’ Studies
have suggested that a spiritual propensity, as reflected in such beliefs, can provide
an adaptive advantage to individuals when dealing with stress, such as change and
loss (for a review, see Levin & Vanderpool, 1987; McFadden, 1999). Along these
lines, high scorers on an Ôaberrant perceptions and beliefsÕ factor reported having
out-of-body experiences but did not find them distressing. This group tended to have
lower scores on anhedonia scales, suggesting more pleasurable perceptual experi-
ences than the general population. Such unusual perceptual experiences were inter-
preted as adaptive and consistent with out-of-body experiences leading to greater
tolerance in instances of post-operative pain and reports of Ôreassuring apparitionsÕ
serving to relieve people during times of stress (McCreery & Claridge, 2002). It can
be noted that the importance of these empirical relationships does not depend on as-
sumptions about the reality basis of such events or experiences.
Unusual perceptions and magical thinking have also been associated with diver-
gent thinking and creativity in students, professors, writers, and actors (e.g., Brod,
1997). Divergent thinking is considered to be an important component of the crea-
tive process. Although it cannot be equated with creativity, it can predict creative po-
tential (Runco, 1991). Schizotypy has also been associated with a greater number of
unique responses on divergent thinking measures (Green & Williams, 1999). Other
evidence illustrating ÔcreativeÕ traits in a nonclinical population comes from family
histories. For instance, first-degree relatives and offspring of people with schizophre-
nia tend to be more creative and enter more creative occupations than controls (e.g.,
Karlsson, 1984), implying that such traits may be genetically mediated.
Schizotypy is thus a complex construct that seems to be related to maladaptive as
well as adaptive functioning. Early on, schizotypy was often conceptualized via the
positive/negative symptom dichotomy used in the schizophrenia literature. Positive
traits are characteristics that the general population presumably does not experience
(e.g., delusions, hallucinations, etc.), and negative traits (e.g., anhedonia, flat affect,
etc.) are the absence of experiences that are normally present in the general popula-
tion. More recent factor-analytic studies have yielded three to four factors to account
for the dimensions of schizophrenia and schizotypy (Reynolds, Raine, Mellingenm,
Venables, & Mednick, 2000). The three-factor models include dimensions related to
positive schizotypy, disorganization, and negative schizotypy (e.g., Vollema & Hoijt-
ink, 2000), whereas four-factor models include an additional asocial behavior/non-
conformity dimension (e.g., Vollema & van den Bosch, 1995). Despite these
refinements, the positive and negative dimensions continue to be fundamental to
the construct.
Dimensions of schizophrenia and schizotypy have also been consistently associ-
ated with other personality traits. Schizophrenia has been associated with high pecu-
liarity and neuroticism and with low extraversion (Berenbaum & Fujita, 1994).
Positive schizotypy has been associated with high neuroticism and openness to expe-
rience and with low agreeableness, whereas negative schizotypy has been associated
 J.E. Fisher et al. / Journal of Research in Personality 38 (2004) 24–31 27

with high neuroticism and with low extraversion, openness, and agreeableness (Ross,
Lutz, & Bailley, 2002).
The association of schizotypy with both adaptive and maladaptive functioning is
clarified, to some degree, by examining how positive and negative schizotypy relate
to cognitive and emotional variables. The majority of the literature suggests that as-
pects of positive but not negative schizotypy are associated with creativity. For in-
stance, in a series of studies enrolling 1108 college students, positive symptoms
were positively correlated with creativity, whereas negative symptoms were nega-
tively correlated (for a review, see Schuldberg, 2001).
Given the links between schizotypy and creativity, it is not surprising that there
has been interest in investigating the neural correlates of schizotypy, as a diagnostic
category, in addition to its specific personality dimensions. Theoretical and empirical
studies of creativity have consistently linked functions of the right hemisphere to
greater creativity (for a review, see Heller, 1994). Neuropsychological studies indi-
cate that schizotypal individuals display an asymmetry in hemispheric processing fa-
voring the right hemisphere. For example, a relative deficit in verbal functions
(Voglmaier et al., 2000) and a tendency to show right hemispatial inattention (Tay-
lor, Zach, & Brugger, 2002) have been documented, suggesting either left-hemisphere
dysfunction or a right-hemisphere bias in cognitive processing. In addition, people
who had high scores on Magical Ideation (MI, Eckblad & Chapman, 1983) made
more correct responses on a lexical decision task when words were presented to
the right hemisphere (Leonhard & Brugger, 1998). As the right hemisphere is in-
volved in holistic processing of information, this right-hemisphere bias may also ac-
count for the tendency of schizotypes to make remote or ÔlooseÕ associations among
concepts. For instance, high scorers on MI judged unrelated words to be more clo-
sely related than lower MI subjects (Mohr, Graves, Gianotti, Pizzagalli, & Brugger,
2001). Belief in paranormal phenomena has also been associated with producing
more original associations to unrelated stimuli (Gianotti, Mohr, Pizzagalli, Leh-
mann, & Brugger, 2001). Linking uncommon ideas, which is facilitated by right-
hemisphere activation, may be part of creative thinking, but in extreme cases it could
foster delusions (Leonhard & Brugger, 1998). Along these lines, schizotypal subjects
scored better on nonverbal creative tests than did controls (Poreh, Whitman, &
Ross, 1994). Furthermore, within the schizotypal group, those with a left-ear
(right-hemisphere) preference in a dichotic listening task had higher scores on both
the schizotypy scale and on the verbal tests.
In a series of studies, we investigated the behavioral, neuropsychological, and neu-
roimaging correlates of positive and negative schizotypy. In the first study (Fisher,
Heller, & Miller, in preparation), 20 participants with schizotypal personality
(who scored at least 2 SD above the mean on either the Perceptual Aberration,
(Chapman, Chapman, & Raulin, 1978) or the Magical Ideation scales or at least
1.5 SD above the mean on both scales) and 16 controls were administered a battery
of questionnaires (including the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire, SPQ; Raine,
1991), neuropsychological measures (verbal and nonverbal information processing),
and a semantic association task. Regression analyses across all 36 participants indi-
cated that the combination of magical ideation, perceptual aberration, odd beliefs
28 J.E. Fisher et al. / Journal of Research in Personality 38 (2004) 24–31

(SPQ), and unusual perceptions (SPQ) significantly predicted scores on figural flu-
ency, a design fluency task sensitive to right-hemisphere functioning (Ruff, Light,
& Evans, 1987). As fluency tests are firmly rooted in the neuropsychological tradi-
tion and have been considered the best single indices of creativity (Dudek, 1993),
these figural fluency data support the association of right-hemisphere functioning
and creativity in positive schizotypy.
The right hemisphere is also involved in emotional information processing (for a
review, see Heller, 2004). An aspect of emotion processing that engages the right
hemisphere involves monitoring for and responding to threatening information
(for reviews, see Nitschke & Heller, 2002; Nitschke, Heller, & Miller, 2000). We em-
ployed an emotional Stroop task that has been well validated by previous studies in
our laboratory as a measure of emotional responsivity (e.g., Compton, Heller, Ba-
nich, Palmieri, & Miller, 2000; Compton et al., 2003). The emotional Stroop task
consists of blocks of positive, negative, and neutral words, and the participant is
asked to respond as quickly as possible to the color of the word, ignoring its mean-
ing. As this task requires the inhibition of task-irrelevant information (the emotional
meaning of the word) to respond accurately to task-relevant information (the color
of the word), prefrontal cortical functions of selective attention and the maintenance
of contextual information are involved (for a review, see Banich, 2004).
A behavioral study of 169 undergraduates investigated the relationship between
dimensions of schizotypy, personality traits, emotional dispositions, and interference
on the Emotional Stroop test (Mohanty et al., 2001). Positive but not negative
schizotypy was associated with interference on the emotional Stroop task for nega-
tive words. Importantly, this relationship was not mediated by anxiety or depression.
These results suggest that positive schizotypy is associated with a heightened re-
sponse to emotional information, particularly information that could be perceived
as threatening.
In a subsequent study, 16 individuals who had high scores on Perceptual Aberra-
tion and/or Magical Ideation and 16 controls participated in a neuroimaging study
(Mohanty et al., submitted). Consistent with findings from behavioral and neuropsy-
chological studies, participants high on positive schizotypy showed greater activity in
right prefrontal cortex and less activity in left prefrontal cortex than did controls (see
Fig. 1).
These neuropsychological, neuroimaging, and behavioral findings are consistent
with studies indicating that aspects of schizotypal personality are associated with
better performance on tasks related to divergent thinking and creativity. Across
studies, higher scores in figural fluency and increased right prefrontal cortical activity
for emotional compared to neutral words in the Stroop task were associated with po-
sitive schizotypy, providing support for increased right-hemisphere activity in indi-
viduals with characteristics of positive schizotypy. These findings are also
consistent with a more intense emotional response to negative words in positive
schizotypy.
The fact that specific subscales of schizotypy rather than a global measure were as-
sociated with right-hemisphere function provides support for a multidimensional per-
spective regarding schizotypal personality. Without this perspective, characteristics of
 J.E. Fisher et al. / Journal of Research in Personality 38 (2004) 24–31 29

Fig. 1. Compared to controls, individuals with schizotypal personality show increased right frontal brain
activity for negative vs. neutral words. Highlighted voxels are those with z-scores > 2.3 (p < :01, two-
tailed).

schizotypy cannot be readily differentiated and understood. In addition, this ap-

proach will lead to a better understanding of the multiple factors involved in the
development of schizophrenia.
These data and those examining the association with creativity suggest the possi-
bility of a Ôhealthy schizotypyÕ (McCreery & Claridge, 2002), which may explain the
persistence of genes related to schizophrenia in the population despite its many
maladaptive aspects. The link between mental illness and creativity is likely due to
common cognitive features involving the right hemisphere. To confirm this, it will
be important in future research to examine the relationship between schizotypy,
creativity, and right-hemisphere activity in the same experimental manipulations.
This hypothesized process may be adaptive in some circumstances but may become
problematic at extreme levels when other cognitive, social, emotional, or environ-
mental resources are diminished. As such adaptive and maladaptive characteristics
are investigated and better understood, the construct of schizotypy will be better
defined, leading to improved methods of diagnosis and treatment, as well as a greater
appreciation for what lies behind creative inspiration.

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