Personality and creativity in realistic,investigative, artistic,social, and enterprising college majors

Despite much research on how interests are related to personality and creativity, comparatively little work has focused on how different college majors as categorized by the RIASEC model compare on these constructs. In this study, 3295 college students (207 Realistic, 1945 Investigative, 447 Artistic, 480 Social, and 216 Enterprising) completed a five-factor personality measure, a brief self-report of creativity, and the Compound Remote Associates Task (CRAT). Investigative and Artistic majors scored higher on openness and self-assessed creativity than Realistic and Social majors, and Investigative majors were much more agreeable than other majors.     

The Role of Long-Term Memory in Digit–Symbol Test Performance in Young and Older Adults

ABSTRACT

The psychological functions assessed by substitution tests, and the age-related performance decline, are not well understood. Here several aspects of long-term memory were manipulated across younger and older adults. A 45-page Digit–Symbol test was employed. Each page contained a 9-item digit symbol code-table and 9 response items. There were 9 study conditions with each condition deployed across 5 pages, or trials, of the test. The conditions were formed by crossing two within-subjects factors, each with 3 levels. The first factor, Digit Order, pertained to having the code table digits in numerical order vs. a pseudo-random order fixed across trials vs. a pseudo-random order that varied across trials. The second factor, Symbol Pairing, pertained to having a fixed digit–symbol pairing across trials vs. having a varying digit–symbol pairing across trials vs. having a novel set of 9 symbols introduced on each of the 5 trials. Including the additional factor, Age, resulted in a 2 × 3 × 3 mixed randomised block design. The older group was slowed, F(1, 22) = 17.267, p < .001, and overall-performance was poorer when the digits were arranged non-numerically, F(1,44) = 55.403, p < .001. An Age by Symbol–Order interaction indicated that use of novel symbols disadvantaged only the older participants, F(1, 44) = 6.577, p = .014. While there was no evidence that incidental paired-associate learning or spatial memory affect digit–symbol performance, symbol familiarity may be important to digit symbol test completion in older adults. The benefit of ordinally arranged digits in the coding table highlights a fundamental process difference between Digit–Symbol and Symbol–Digit test formats.     

Rejoinder to Commentaries on Malevolent Creativity: A Functional Model of Creativity in Terrorism and Crime,Cropley, Kaufman,and Cropley

In this rejoinder Cropley et al. respond to commentaries made regarding the article “Malevolent Creativity: A Functional Model of Creativity in Terrorism and Crime.” Each commentary adds valuable additional insight into the issue of creativity that does harm.     

Research Productivity and Performance of Journals in the Creativity Sciences: A Bibliometric Analysis

A bibliometric approach was employed to analyze the research productivity and performance of creativity studies between 1965 and 2012. A dataset was constructed using all publications and citations retrieved from four key journals that publish creativity research: Journal of Creative Behavior (JCB), Gifted Child Quarterly (GCQ), Creativity Research Journal (CRJ), and Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts (PACA). Major findings in this study include: (a) During the study period, the four journals have published 1,891 articles on creativity and they have been cited 11,709 times; (b) the impact factors of the four journals increased from lower than .50 in 2002 to over 1.0 in 2012; in 2012 PACA had the highest impact factor, followed by CRJ; (c) JCB published the most creativity papers and CRJ had the most citations; (d) about a third of the articles published in the four journals have never been cited. Implications for the field of creativity are discussed.     

Images of God as They Relate to Life Satisfaction and Hopelessness

The purpose of the present study was to (a) re-evaluate a model of God images based on masculine and feminine characteristics and (b) examine how God images relate to hopelessness and life satisfaction, while controlling for additional religious variables. Participants were 254 college students. A factor analysis indicated that God images did not fall into primarily masculine or feminine factors, rather into Loving, Controlling, and Permissive God factors. Individually, these factors were not found to be significant predictors of hopelessness in a regression analysis, when religious service, participant gender, and religious orientation were controlled. However, an interaction between participant gender and the Controlling God factor indicated that women with more controlling images of God experienced more hopelessness, whereas men with more controlling images of God experienced less hopelessness. Results are discussed in relation to parental styles and gender differences as contributing factors in determining one's image of God.     

Self‐reported differences in creativity by ethnicity and gender

Creativity assessment has been proposed as a supplement to intellectual testing, in part because of reduced differences by ethnicity; creativity testing might also specifically help reduce stereotype threat. Recent trends in creativity research point to a domain‐specific view challenging the more traditional generalist view. With these trends in mind, the current study assessed creative self‐perceptions of 3553 students and community members in 56 different possible domains distributed across five factors (as determined by principal components analysis). African Americans were less likely to fall prone to gender stereotypes in creativity. In addition, African Americans and Native Americans tended to rate themselves as more creative than other ethnicities. Specific trends in the factors and implications for future research are discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Replication of the Self-Concept and Identity Measure (SCIM) Among a Treatment-Seeking Sample

Identity distress occurs within a variety of psychiatric conditions. Reliable tools for assessing identity-related functioning among clinical populations are greatly needed. The Self-Concept and Identity Measure (SCIM) is a brief self-report scale designed to assess healthy and disturbed identity dimensions. This measure has been validated within normative but not treatment-seeking samples. The present study used an a priori confirmatory approach to replicate the SCIM’s factor structure among disadvantaged women enrolled in treatment for chemical dependence (N = 216). The original three-factor structure and item loadings generally replicated within this diagnostically diverse, significantly impaired sample. Higher SCIM scores were also associated with other problems, such as emotion dysregulation and depression. Results support the SCIM’s use and scoring with clinical populations.     

Child and Family Team Meeting Characteristics and Outcomes in a Statewide System of Care

Systems of care (SOC) have relied on the wraparound care process to individualize community‐based services for children and youth with serious emotional and behavioral difficulties. A core element of wraparound care is Child and Family Team meetings (CFTs), which are designed to give youth and families a leadership role in developing and guiding their plan of care. The National Wraparound Initiative (NWI) has identified Practice Standards regarding CFT implementation. This study examined CFT characteristics and the association between those characteristics and youth and family outcomes in a statewide SOC. Participants were 363 youth (M_age = 10.89, SD = 3.72) and their caregivers. Families completed measures of youth and caregiver functioning and symptoms at enrollment and 6‐month follow‐up. Care coordinators completed a survey assessing CFT implementation and characteristics following each meeting. Multiple regression analyses were used to examine the relationship between CFT characteristics and youth and caregiver outcomes. Results indicated that a higher number of CFTs was associated with poorer outcomes, while a higher percentage of natural supports at meetings was associated with better youth outcomes. Number of days to the first CFT was associated with greater caregiver strain. Implications for CFT implementation within wraparound are discussed.