Characteristics of the Creative Person

Abstract

Faculty members in colleges and universities offer creativity courses in a variety of fields of study with the goal of infusing greater creativity into their respective professions. Each teacher strives toward this goal with instructional actions defined by a point of view or personal perspective. To what extent is the perspective of those teaching creativity classes influenced by the literature describing what is needed to be creative? The purpose of this study was twofold: First, it was an attempt to identify the relevant characteristics of a creative person and, second, to use this list of characteristics as a point of reference for a comparison between the perceptions of college faculty (N = 101) and the number of citations related to each characteristic identified. The list of potential characteristics was generated from a content analysis of 67 college course syllabi and used to develop the instrument to collect the reactions of a group of professors identified as teachers of creativity in an American college or university. The list of characteristics served as search descriptors to conduct several database searches yielding a citation count for each characteristic. Results indicate an overall Spearman rho correlation of .520, which will account for about 25% of the variance. Rank order of important characteristics of creative persons are imagination, openness to experience, inquisitiveness or curiosity, intuition, idea finding, tolerance for ambiguitym independence, innovation, insight, and others. Implications for the conditions of differences are discussed in terms of an indicative history, current academic themes, and a potential research agenda.