Characteristics of Creative People

Cognitive Rational Creative Individuals

• Self-disciplined, independent, often antiauthoritarian
• Zany sense of humor
• Able to resist group pressure, a strategy developed early
• More adaptable
• More adventurous
• Greater tolerance for ambiguity and discomfort
• Little tolerance for boredom
• Preference for complexity, asymmetry, openendedness
• High in divergent thinking ability
• High in memory, good attention to detail
• Broad knowledge background
• Need think periods
• Need supportive climate, sensitive to environment
• Need recognition, opportunity to share
• High aesthetic values, good aesthetic judgment
• Freer in developing sex role integration' lack of stereotypical male, female identification

Affective/Emotional-Social Creative Individuals

• A special kind of perception
• More spontaneous and expressive
• Unfrightened by the unknown, the mysterious, the puzzling; often attracted to it
• Resolution of dichotomies: selfish and unselfish; duty and pleasure; work and play; strong ego and egolessness
• Able to integrate
• More self-accepting; lack fear of own emotions, impulses, and thoughts
• Have more of themselves available for use, for enjoyment, for creative purposes; waste less of their time and energy protecting themselves
• Involved in more peak experiences, integration within the person and between the person and the world, and transcendence
• Capacity to be puzzled
• Ability to concentrate
• Ability to experience self as creative, as the originator of one's acts
• Willingness to be born every day
• Ability to accept conflict and tension rather than avoiding them
• Courage to let go of certainties, to be different, to be concerned with truth, to be certain of one's own feelings and thoughts and trust them
• Identify closely with the feelings and expectations of others
• Less repressed and defensive
• More curious
• More maturely autonomous and less dependent on views of others

Physical/Sensing Creative Individuals

• Openness to experience, new ideas
• An internal locus of evaluation
• An ability to toy with elements and concepts
• Perceiving freshly
• Concern with outside and inside worlds
• Ability to defer closure and judgment
• Skilled performance of the traditional arts
• High theoretical and aesthetic values