INDIAN INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT LUCKNOW

A Project Report On Creativity in Personality Analysis

As part of final project (June 2011-Aug 2011) for

Behavior in Organization
Anup Abhipsit B Praveen Manish Bhatt Manish Verma Prasoon Kumar R. Manika Rajan Gaurav Somwanshi PGP27205 PGP27211 PGP27220 PGP27221 PGP27236 PGP27239 PGP27254

Abstract
The study of creativity and its relationship with human personality has always fascinated researchers in the field of psychology and organizational behavior. It is very important for the human resource managers to identify creative persons for crucial positions in the organization. Different researchers like M. Batey, A. Furnham and T. M. Amabile have done significant work on this field. Our project aims at examining the contribution of fluid intelligence Big Five Personality traits in predicting four indices of creativity: Divergent Thinking (DT) fluency, Rated DT, Creative Achievement and Self-Rated creativity and a combined Total Creativity variable. We have used Eysenck Personality Questionnaire to quantify the personality traits of different respondents and Guilford Alternative Uses Task to measure and quantify the creativeness of the respondents. These two methods are widely accepted methods to measure personality and creativity and are being used since long. Finally we have analyzed the data using ANOVA method to compare the variables and displayed the results using regression analysis of the required two sets of data.

Table of Contents
Acknowledgement Abstracts What is Creativity? What Is the Mechanism Behind Creativity? What Are the Personality Bases for Creativity? Scoring Theory behind Questionnaires Summary Appendix Bibliography 1 2 4 4 5 6 10 15 16 18

What is Creativity?
An act of turning new and imaginative ideas into reality. Creativity involves two processes: thinking, then producing. Innovation is the production or implementation of an idea. If you have ideas, but don't act on them, you are imaginative but not creative. "Creativity is the process of bringing something new into being...creativity requires passion and commitment. Out of the creative act is born symbols and myths. It brings to our awareness what was previously hidden and points to new life. The experience is one of heightened consciousness-ecstasy." - Rollo May, The Courage to Create "A product is creative when it is (a) novel and (b) appropriate. A novel product is original not predictable. The bigger the concept and the more the product stimulates further work and ideas, the more the product is creative." - Sternberg & Lubart, Defying the Crowd

What Is the Mechanism Behind Creativity?

Humankind has always wondered why some individuals are more creative than others, and the five major theories of creativity provide possible explanations.

The Psychoanalytical Theory of Creativity

The main proponents of this theory include Freud, Jung, Kris, Rank, Adler, and Hammer; and the general argument is that people become creative in reaction to difficult circumstances or repressed emotions. For example, as Freud maintained, people repress memories of traumatic episodes or events, and the emotions related to these events are released through creative outlets

The Mental Illness Theory of Creativity The proponents of this theory include Briggs, Eisenman, Goodwin, Jamison, Richards, and Martindale; and the major tenet is that some type of mental illness is actually necessary in order for people to be creative, even if that illness is exceptionally mild.

Eysencks Theory of Psychoticism

The main proponent of this theory was the late Hans Eysenck, who argued that highly creative individuals possessed a quality termed "psychoticism" a disposition for psychotic tendencies. Eysenck also maintained that these psychotic tendencies were the foundation for creative personalities, and he developed a word-association test to measure a persons psychoticism, with results correlated to form a continuum, ranging from psychotic through average and from conventional to highly social to altruistic.

The Addiction Theory of Creativity

The main proponents of this theory are Lapp, Collins, Izzo, Norlander, Gustafson, and Wallas; and its major tenet is that addiction, for example, to drugs and/or alcohol, contributes to and even causes creativity.

The Humanistic Theory of Creativity

The main supporters of this theory include Maslow, Rogers, and Fromm, though the theory is based mainly upon Maslows Hierarchy of Needs, a theory he developed, which maintains that humans have six basic needs that must be met in order for them to thrive and reach maximum potential.

What Are the Personality Bases for Creativity?

There is a great deal of debate for what makes someone creative or not. Because of the mystery surrounding creativity, people were uncertain about what underlying traits made some people highly creative and others not. Researchers have predicted and substantiated with experiments various personality traits are responsible for creativity. - Eysenck (1995) proposed that psychoticism caused creativity. -Rawlings, Twomey, Burns, and Morris (1998) found a relationship between creativity, psychoticism, and openness to experience. -Martindale and Dailey (1996) found that creativity is linked to psychoticism and extraversion.
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- Sternberg (2001) proposed that there is a dialectical relationship between creativity and intelligence and wisdom. However, our primary focus would be on Eysencks Theory of Psychoticism. Hans Eysenck's theory is based primarily on physiology and genetics. Although he was a behaviorist who considered learned habits of great importance, he considers personality differences as growing out of our genetic inheritance. He is, therefore, primarily interested in what is usually called temperament. Temperament is that aspect of our personalities that is genetically based, inborn, there from birth or even before. That does not mean that a temperament theory says we don't also have aspects of our personality that are learned, it's just that Eysenck focused on "nature," and left "nurture" to other theorists.

Scoring (i) Eysenck Personality Questionnaire

When you fill out the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, you get four scores E stands for Extrovert personality trait P stands for Psychotic personality trait N stands for Neurotic personality trait L stands for Social Desirable So different scoring regions will be as such E Score:- Out of 16 and measures how much of an extrovert you are P Score:- Out of 11 and measures how psychotic you are N Score:- Out of 7 and measures how neurotic you are L score:- Out of 3 and measures how socially desirable you are being (Note: - L score not taken into consideration while evaluating the relationship between personality and creativity in our report)

Evaluation of the scores: -

(I) E Score: Check through the responses to the questions mentioned below. If the responses match to the given below answers, place an E in front of the question. Questions Do you stop to think things over before doing anything? Are you a talkative person? Do you lock your apartment carefully for night-time? Are you rather lively? Would you enjoy skydiving? Can you usually let yourself go and enjoy yourself at a lively party? Do you enjoy meeting new people? Do you tend to keep in the background on social occasions? Do you prefer reading to meeting people? Do you have many friends? Would you call yourself happy-go-lucky? Do you throw trashes on the floor if trash can is not available? Do people who drive carefully irritate you? Do you like telling jokes and funny stories to your friends? Do you like doing things in which you have to act quickly? Do you often take on more activities than you have time for? Answers NO YES NO YES YES YES YES NO NO YES YES YES YES YES YES YES

(II) P Score: Check through the responses to the questions mentioned below. If the responses match to the given below answers, place a P in front of the question. Questions Would being in debt worry you? Would it upset you a lot to see a child or an animal suffer? Is making insurance policies a good idea? Do you enjoy hurting people you love? Do you sometimes talk about things you know nothing about? Do you have enemies who want to harm you? Do you always apologize, if you have been rude? Do good manners and cleanliness matter much to you? Have you ever said anything bad or nasty about anyone? Do you like to arrive at appointments in plenty of time? Have you ever taken advantage of someone? Answers NO NO NO YES YES YES NO NO YES NO YES

(III) N Score: Check through the responses to the questions mentioned below. If the responses match to the given below answers, place a N in front of the question. Answer s YES YES YES YES YES YES YES

Questions Does your mood often go up and down? Do you ever feel 'just miserable' for no reason? Do you often worry about things you should not have done or said? Would you call yourself a nervous person? Would you call yourself tense or 'highly-strung'? Does it worry you if you know there are mistakes in your work? Do you suffer from sleeplessness?

(IV) L Score: Check through the responses to the questions mentioned below. If the responses match to the given below answers, place a L in front of the question.

Questions Are all your habits good and desirable ones? As a child were you ever cheeky to your parents? Have you ever cheated at a game? Finally, add the number of Es, Ns, Ps and Ls to get the respective scores.

Answers YES NO NO

(ii)

Guilford Alternative Uses Task

In Guilfords Alternative Uses Task (1967) examinees are asked to list as many possible uses for a common house hold item (such as s brick, a paperclip, a newspaper)

Example Name all the uses for a brick: a paperweight a doorstop a mock coffin at a Barbie funeral to throw threw a window to use as a weapon to hit my sister on the head with Scoring Scoring is comprised of four components: Originality - each response it compared to the total amount of responses from all of the people you gave the test to. Reponses that were given by only 5% of your group are unusual (1 point), responses that were given by only 1% of your group are unique - 2 points). Total all the point. Higher scores indicate creativity* Fluency - total. Just add up all the responses. In this example it is 6. Flexibility or different categories - In this case there are five different categories (weapon and hit sister are from the same general idea of weapon) Elaboration - amount of detail (for Example "a doorstop" = 0 whereas "a door
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stop to prevent a door slamming shut in a strong wind" = 2 (one for explanation of door slamming, two for further detail about the wind).

Theory behind Questionnaires

(i) Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Eysencks theory is based primarily on physiology and genetics. Although he is a behaviorist who considers learned habits of great importance, he considers personality differences as growing out of our genetic inheritance. He is, therefore, primarily interested in what is usually called temperament. Eysenck is also primarily a research psychologist. His methods involve a statistical technique called factor analysis. This technique extracts a number of dimensions from large masses of data. For example, if you give long lists of adjectives to a large number of people for them to rate themselves on, you have prime raw material for factor analysis. Imagine, for example, a test that included words like shy, introverted, outgoing, wild, and so on. Obviously, shy people are likely to rate themselves high on the first two words, and low on the second two. Outgoing people are likely to do the reverse. Factor analysis extracts dimensions -- factors -- such as shy-outgoing from the mass of information. The researcher then examines the data and gives the factor a name such as introversion-extraversion. There are other techniques that will find the best fit of the data to various possible dimensions, and others still that will find higher level dimensions -- factors that organize the factors, like big headings organize little headings. Eysenck initially conceptualized personality as two, biologically-based independent dimensions of temperament: (a) Neuroticism is the name Eysenck gave to a dimension that ranges from normal, fairly calm and collected people to ones that tend to be quite nervous. (b) His second dimension is extraversion-introversion. Eysenck hypothesized that extraversion-introversion is a matter of the balance of inhibition and excitation in the brain itself. Further research demonstrated the need for a third category of temperament:

(c) Psychotism, the third dimension, is associated not only with the liability to have a psychotic episode (or break with reality), but also with aggression. (ii) Guilfords Alternative Task Uses The ability to generate many different possible solutions to a problem is an important aspect of creative thinking and has been specifically addressed in the psychometric tradition by means of divergent thinking tests. Divergent thinking is related to creativity, as usually conceptualized in that both involve the production of a variety of new, original solutions to a problem. Divergent thinking is therefore useful for solving problems that do not have a single, objectively correct solution but rather have several potentially workable solutions whose originality or other kind of value can be assessed. Greater originality is expected if the production of ideas is fluent (many ideas are produced) and flexible (several categories of ideas are produced). Methodology Used:For collection of data we used different methodologies as 1. Face to face interview of persons belonging to different gender, social background and working in different designations in different organizations. 2. Telephonic interview with different people across different part of the country to bring cultural aspect in to consideration. 3. We created a web page so that different people can enter the data by answering the questions whenever they feel convenient about it. The link and look and feel of the web page is given below https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dDM5WmZ5MHpKS2VRS2d fMzc1QTRwNmc6MQ

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Results:Plot of Total Personality Score versus Total Creativity Score

10 9 8 7

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5 4 3 2 1 0 1 3 5 7 9 1113151719212325272931333537394143454749515355575961 Total Personality Score Total Creativity Score

Here we can see that the extrovert, psychotic and Neurotic personality trait have positive relation with creativity. By studying data collected from 62 different people we can see that total personality score and total creativity score are related as they follow each other. As personality traits change their value the creativity also changes. The methodology used to analyze the data is Statistical Regression and ANOVA. The summary of data collected from 62 persons is given in appendix.
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SUMMARY OUTPUT Regression Statistics Multiple R 0.92 R Square 0.8464 Adjusted R 0.93 Square Standard 7.05E-16 Error Observations 61 ANOVA df Regression Residual Total 1 59 60 Coefficients Intercept Total Personality Score -1.8E-15 SS 65.1642 2.94E-29 65.1642 Standard Error 5.19E-16 Significance F 65.1642 1.31E+32 0 4.98E-31 MS F

t Stat

P-value

Lower 95%

-3.42322 0.001131

Upper Lower Upper 95% 95.0% 95.0% -7.4E- -2.8E- -7.4E-2.8E-15 16 15 16 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2

1.2

1.05E-16 1.14E+16

In statistics, analysis of variance (ANOVA) is a collection of statistical models, and their associated procedures, in which the observed variance in a particular variable is partitioned into components attributable to different sources of variation. In its simplest form ANOVA provides a statistical test of whether or not the means of several groups are all equal, and therefore generalizes t-test to more than two groups. Doing multiple two-sample t-tests would result in an increased chance of committing a type I error. For this reason, ANOVAs are useful in comparing two, three or more means.

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In this project we have used this method as we can study the different personality traits in one step, using one graph only. The result table of this analysis is shown here, the regression elements are total personality score and total creativity score. As Coefficient of determination is very close to 1 we can state that the both groups under consideration are strongly correlated. The groups follow the trend and residual is also too low.

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Summary A total of 61 respondents were given the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Guilford Alternative Uses Task and asked to provide their responses. Conscious effort was taken to diversify the respondents with varied educational, occupational, socio-cultural backgrounds and varied age and gender. The responses were then quantified and an absolute score for each parameter as explained earlier was arrived at. Regression analysis and ANOVA analysis were used to compare these two sets of data.

The findings were plotted in the graph showing the relationship between evaluated personality traits and the creativity index. The analysis of the dataset for the two types of variables showed the following results: Regression coefficient was found to be 0.92; it denotes a strong correlation between the selected personality attributes and creativity index. The findings are supported by the initial observations by behavior analysts Adrian Furnham and Mark Batey. The creativity index was found to be positively and significantly related to E-Score and N-Score partially confirming the findings by Furnham and Batey. Self-reported creative achievements and self-rated creativity were found to be unrelated to Social skills. Total creativity also demonstrated positive trend to the observed results by Furnhams study. Before considering the implications of the this study, it is important to note that care should be taken when generalizing from the results, because the respondent sample was small and the measure of personality was very brief. However, the study did demonstrate that when creativity is assessed by a performance measure like DT, that intellectual variables are most heavily involved. However, when creativity is assessed by self-report measures (creative achievement and self-rating), cognitive variables are unrelated, whilst personality variables explain the most variance.

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Appendix

Data collected from 62 people are given below, E Score 12 4 7 10 13 10 5 6 14 9 12 12 11 10 8 9 9 10 8 13 12 8 9 12 15 9 10 11 10 13 7 P Score 5 1 3 4 2 4 5 2 2 1 2 6 2 5 6 3 2 5 1 4 4 2 1 2 4 5 2 7 3 3 5 N Score 7 5 5 5 2 4 5 6 4 7 3 6 2 1 5 3 1 4 4 2 1 5 5 5 3 2 4 3 3 5 2 L Score 1 2 1 1 2 1 1 2 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 2 3 2 2 1 2 3 3 1 1 2 2 2 0 2 1 Total Personality Score 6.34469697 4.30465368 4.394615801 5.090638528 4.866747835 4.733495671 4.536661255 5.201569264 4.903950216 4.966856061 4.234307359 7.048160173 3.720914502 3.889339827 5.232683983 4.82616342 4.717938312 5.794101732 4.572510823 4.487959957 4.807900433 5.99025974 5.919237013 4.948593074 5.157602814 4.923566017 5.11228355 6.047754329 3.315746753 6.165449134 3.777732684

Total Creativity 7.34469697 5.30465368 5.394615801 6.090638528 5.866747835 5.733495671 5.536661255 6.201569264 5.903950216 5.966856061 5.234307359 8.048160173 4.720914502 4.889339827 6.232683983 5.82616342 5.717938312 6.794101732 5.572510823 5.487959957 5.807900433 6.99025974 6.919237013 5.948593074 6.157602814 5.923566017 6.11228355 7.047754329 4.315746753 7.165449134 4.777732684
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12 8 7 7 10 11 8 14 8 13 10 7 11 8 13 13 10 8 7 12 9 10 11 10 8 10 11 8 10 11

1 4 5 1 7 5 4 7 4 3 3 4 4 2 2 4 4 3 4 4 2 1 2 3 4 2 5 1 4 5

1 6 6 4 3 1 3 3 3 2 6 4 4 1 3 3 3 5 3 4 7 4 5 5 4 2 4 4 4 3

1 2 1 2 1 1 2 3 1 2 2 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 2 1 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

3.292748918 5.968614719 5.206304113 4.416260823 5.058170996 4.045589827 4.897186147 7.349837662 4.063852814 5.094020563 6.053841991 4.264745671 4.889745671 2.895021645 4.390557359 5.678436147 4.376352814 4.550865801 3.907602814 5.879329004 5.194128788 4.885010823 5.625676407 4.863365801 4.420995671 3.564664502 5.117018398 3.739177489 4.733495671 4.759875541

4.292748918 6.968614719 6.206304113 5.416260823 6.058170996 5.045589827 5.897186147 8.349837662 5.063852814 6.094020563 7.053841991 5.264745671 5.889745671 3.895021645 5.390557359 6.678436147 5.376352814 5.550865801 4.907602814 6.879329004 6.194128788 5.885010823 6.625676407 5.863365801 5.420995671 4.564664502 6.117018398 4.739177489 5.733495671 5.759875541

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Bibliography Books:

1. Intelligence, general knowledge and personality as predictors of creativity

Journals: 1. www.elsevier.com Webliography: http://www.creativityatwork.com/blog/2008/09/04/interview/ http://creativity-leadership.com/tag/innovation/ http://www.ratamatata.com/creativity-innovation-whole-brain-thinking/ http://routergenie.xanga.com/577192968/what-is-creativity/ http://www.suite101.com/content/the-five-major-theories-of-creativity-a157568 http://thereversedprocess.blogspot.com/2010_10_01_archive.html http://www.personalityresearch.org/papers/dickhut.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eysenck_Personality_Questionnaire http://www.indiana.edu/~bobweb/Handout/d1.uses.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creativity (The judging process is given as in the weblink http://www.indiana.edu/~bobweb/Handout/d1.uses.htm) https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dDM5WmZ5MHpKS 2VRS2dfMzc1QTRwNmc6MQ

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