title: Do dimensional psychopathology measures relate to creative achievement or divergent thinking?
abstract: Previous research provides disparate accounts of the putative association between creativity and psychopathology, including schizotypy, psychoticism, hypomania, bipolar disorder, ADHD, and autism spectrum disorders. To examine these association, healthy, non-clinical participants completed several psychopathology-spectrum measures, often postulated to associate with creativity: the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire, the Psychoticism scale, the Personality Inventory for DSM-5, the Hypomanic Personality Scale, the Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder scale, the Beck Depression Inventory, and the Autism-Spectrum Quotient. The goal of Study 1 was to evaluate the factor structure of these dimensional psychopathology measures and, in particular, to evaluate the case for a strong general factor(s). None of the factor solutions between 1 and 10 factors provided a strong fit with the data based on the most commonly used metrics. The goal of Study 2 was to determine whether these psychopathology scales predict, independently, two measures of creativity: 1. a measure of participants' real-world creative achievements, and 2. divergent thinking, a laboratory measure of creative cognition. After controlling for academic achievement, psychoticism and hypomania reliably predicted real-world creative achievement and divergent thinking scored with the consensual assessment technique. None of the psychopathology-spectrum scales reliably predicted divergent thinking scored with the manual scoring method. Implications for the potential links between several putative creative processes and risk factors for psychopathology are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Northwestern University Evanston, IL, USA.
authors.forename: Darya L
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: Zabelina
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Northwestern University Evanston, IL, USA.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Condon
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Northwestern University Evanston, IL, USA.
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Beeman
keywords: creative achievement; creativity; divergent thinking; individual differences; psychopathology