Creative Ability, Creative Ideation and Latent Classes of Creative Achievement: What Is the Role of Personality?

Silvia and colleagues (Silvia, Kaufman, & Pretz, 2009) highlighted the advantages of latent class analysis when studying creative achievement. The current study replicates and expands Silvia and colleagues' (2009) findings on creative achievement in a sample of 656 students, of which 223 were also assessed on creative ability and ideation, as well as a broad range of personality traits. A latent class analysis identified three groups of noncreative people, average creative achievers with high interpersonal competence, and high creative achievers; the adequacy of this class solution was further supported by mean differences in divergent thinking, creative ideation, and personality in the expected directions. In a multinomial regression model, hypomania was identified as stable, significant predictor of creative achievement class membership. Overall, creative ability, ideation and achievement were shown to be only loosely interrelated, complicating the evaluation of personality's role in creative competence.