INDIVIDUAL-DIFFERENCES IN NONCONSCIOUS PROCESSING - THE ROLE OF CREATIVITY

Differences in the manner in which high- and low-creative subjects used conscious and nonconscious clues to solve anagrams were investigated. During tachistoscopic presentation, high- and low-creative subjects solved anagrams in three primed-clue conditions: conscious, nonconscious (individual threshold levels) and control (no clues). During the establishment of the presence/absence word-detection thresholds (Experiment 1), it was noticed that the low-creatives gave almost no false alarms, while all the high-creatives produced false alarms. Experiments 2 and 3 replicated the thresholding procedure. In addition, Experiment 2 employed double-blind procedures, and in Experiment 3 psychometric function curves were generated. It was found that high-creatives had significantly faster threshold times, and used more nonconscious clues and nonconsciously primed solutions than did low-creatives. These findings demonstrate that individual differences related to creativity may strongly influence the processing of nonconsciously presented information. © 1990.