Creativity
can quite simply be defined as the capacity to come up with new ideas to serve
a purpose. Creativity is thus one of the most important sources of
renewal. Creativity contributes to innovation and improvements in working life,
commerce and industry.
No wonder employers want creative employees in areas where
it is essential to come up with proposals for new products and services, and
new ways of doing things.
The creative personality
Professor Øyvind L. Martinsen at BI Norwegian Business
School has conducted a study to develop a personality profile for creative
people: Which personality traits characterise creative people?
The study was conducted with 481 people with different
backgrounds. The segment consists of various groups of more or less creative
people.
The first group of creative people consists of 69 artists
working as actors or musicians in a well-known symphony orchestra or are
members of an artist's organisation with admission requirements.
The second group of creative people consists of 48 students
of marketing.
The remaining participants in the study are managers,
lecturers and students in programmes that are less associated with creativity
than marketing.
The creativity researcher mapped the participants'
personality traits and tested their creative abilities and skills through
various types of tasks.
Seven creativity characteristics
In his study Martinsen identifies seven paramount
personality traits that characterise creative people:
- Associative orientation: Imaginative, playful, have a
wealth of ideas, ability to be committed, sliding transitions between fact and
fiction.
- Need for originality: Resists rules and conventions. Have
a rebellious attitude due to a need to do things no one else does.
- Motivation: Have a need to perform, goal-oriented,
innovative attitude, stamina to tackle difficult issues.
- Ambition: Have a need to be influential, attract
attention and recognition.
- Flexibility: Have the ability to see different aspects
of issues and come up with optional solutions.
- Low emotional stability: Have a tendency to experience
negative emotions, greater fluctuations in moods and emotional state, failing
self-confidence.
- Low sociability: Have a tendency not to be very
considerate, are obstinate and find faults and flaws in ideas and people.
Among the seven personality traits, associative orientation
and flexibility are the factors that to the greatest extent lead to creative
thinking.
"Associative orientation is linked to ingenuity. Flexibility
is linked to insight," says the professor. The other five characteristics
describe emotional inclinations and motivational factors that influence
creativity or spark an interest in creativity.
"The seven personality traits influence creative
performance through inter-action," Martinsen points out.
Less sociable
The study shows that the artists who participated scored
much higher on associative orientation than the other participants. They have a
substantial need for originality and are not particularly stable emotionally.
The personality profile of the marketing students was quite
similar to the artist profile and also differs from the other participants in
the study. The artists in the study also scored lower values for ambition than
the others and are not particularly sociable either.
"An employer would be wise to conduct a position
analysis to weigh the requirements for the ability to cooperate against the
need for creativity," Martinsen believes. He also emphasises that creative
people may need help to complete their projects.
"Creative people are not always equally practical and
performance-oriented, which is the reverse side of the "creativity
medal.
Journal Reference:
Øyvind L. Martinsen. The Creative Personality: A Synthesis
and Development of the Creative Person Profile. Creativity Research Journal,
2011; 23 (3): 185 DOI:
10.1080/10400419.2011.595656
