Comparisons of Creative Styles and Personality Types Between American and Taiwanese College Students and the Relationship Between Creative Potential and Personality Types

The purpose of the study was to compare differences in creative styles (Kirton, 1976) and personality types between Americans and Taiwanese and to examine the relationships among various personality types and creative potential. Creative potential was measured by the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking-Figural, and personality types were measured by the Keirsey Temperament Sorter H. Ninety-three American and 76 Taiwanese college students specializing in teacher education participated in this study. The results indicated that Americans are more adaptively creative than Taiwanese, whereas there is no difference between the two groups in Innovative creative style. The results also indicated that there are significant relationships between Adaptive creative style and Intuition, between Creative Strengths and Intuition, and between Creative Strengths and Perceiving. It is concluded that there is a cultural difference in creative potential and personality types and that there are relationships between particular subscales of creativity and personality types.