title: Creativity and affective temperaments in non-clinical professional artists: an empirical psychometric investigation.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Manic-depression/bipolar disorder was linked to creativity, with affective temperaments allegedly favoring creative expression and achievement, but a few studies only empirically tested the link.
  
  
  METHODS
  152 undergraduate students attending preparatory courses for creative artistic professions and 152 students in areas expected to lead to a profession mostly requiring the application of the learned rules were invited to fill in the TEMPS-A (Temperament Evaluation of the Memphis, Pisa, Paris and San Diego - Autoquestionnaire), the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) and the Creative Achievement Questionnaire (CAQ). Latent class analysis (LCA) was used to investigate the links between creativity scores and measures of psychopathology.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Creative participants and controls did not differ in terms of sex (males=47%), age (24.5 years, SD=3.8), or socioeconomic status. Creative people scored higher than controls on the CAQ and on the cyclothymic, hyperthymic and irritable subscales of the TEMPS-A, but not on the GHQ. Greater involvement in creative activities rather than being a creative achiever best differentiated those into the "risk for bipolar spectrum" class from the other two classes extracted by the LCA from the TEMPS-A.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The use of self-report measures to evaluate both creative involvement and the risk of psychopathology, and the exclusive focus on artistic creativity limit the generalizability of the findings.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This study confirms that the cyclothymic dimension of the bipolar spectrum is linked to creativity, and this link is likely to result from increased involvement into pleasurable activities, including creative ones.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Cagliari, via Is Mirrionis 1, 09123 Cagliari, Italy.
authors.forename: Marcello
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Vellante
authors.forename: Giulia
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Zucca
authors.forename: Antonio
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Preti
authors.forename: Davide
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Sisti
authors.forename: Marco Bruno Luigi
authors.initials: MB
authors.lastname: Rocchi
authors.forename: Kareen K
authors.initials: KK
authors.lastname: Akiskal
authors.forename: Hagop S
authors.initials: HS
authors.lastname: Akiskal
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D001714:Bipolar Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D003405:Creativity; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007508:Irritable Mood; D008297:Male; D010555:Personality Inventory / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D010556:Personality Tests; D011594:Psychometrics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013694:Temperament; D055815:Young Adult