Note 3: General Findings about the Nature of Creative Individuals

I came across some significant general characteristics about creative people that I want to relay. I will be referring to these general characteristics in future writing so I think it is important to list them here. There have been literally thousands of creativity books and articles written. In fact creativity studies pioneer, Dr. Albert Rothenberg, M.D., compiled a bibliography entitled Index of Scientific Writings on Creativity with 9,968 titles of books and articles. Even though there is a huge amount of studies in the area, Dr. Rothenberg found that there hasn’t been a lot of knowledge obtained from these studies. Thus, Dr. Rothenberg spent over 2,000 hours of his own conducting scientific interviews with highly creative people (1990: 7)
As a result of these interviews Dr. Rothenberg was able to reach some very clear conclusions regarding characteristics that underlie all types of creativity. Here are some of his pertinent points (1990: 8)
· There is no specific personality type associated with outstanding creativity. (see my notes in my previous blog: Characteristics of Creativity and Hype)
· Creative people, surprisingly, are not all exceptionally intelligent. Many outstanding creative people are only are only slightly above average in intelligence.
· There is no uniform personality style in a technical, psychological sense. Highly creative people are neither compulsive, nor impulsive. However, many interestingly enough, are somewhat:
o Rigid, meticulous, and perfectionist rather than free and spontaneous
o Some degree of inwardness and self-preoccupation does predominate among many, but
some are surprisingly extroverted.
o Generally highly creative people tend to be idealistic and strive for an ideal in their work.
o There is no particular ideological position or political position; although
authoritarianism is generally despised. This tends to be an inconsistency because many
highly creative people are authoritarian about matters of judgment and taste.

There is only ONE characteristic of personality and orientation to life and work that is found to be common with all highly creative people and that is MOTIVATION (1990: 8).
Dr. Rothenberg points out some characteristics about motivated creative individuals:
· They are extraordinarily motivated to work and produce, and even more than that they
are motivated to produce creations that are both new and valuable.
· The creative process always results from direct, intense and intentional efforts. The
commonly held belief that ideas just spring into creative people’s minds is a misconception.
· Creative people are always on the lookout for new valuable ideas and approaches and
solutions.
· They want specifically to create and be creative, not merely to be successful or effective or
competent.

There will always be a few rare moments of inspiration where creativity appears fully developed. These lightning-bolt types of ideas do not become produced creations unless there has been a great deal of preparation for them, or unless the person is able to elaborate and develop them after they appear. PAINSTAKING WORK IS INVOLVED IN BOTH THE BEFOREHAND PREPARATION AND THE ELABORATION AFTER. (1990: 9)

These characteristics hold true for creative people in the arts as well as the sciences.
Again, according to Dr. Rothenberg, “Creative people want very much – perhaps it may be correct to say need very much – to create, partly because they have the talent to do so and partly because of strong environmental influences that instill such strong motivation. These strong environmental influences consist especially of the early family environment…”(1990: 9).