Temperament and Creativity: A Proposed Experimental Study

Introduction and Participant Recruitment

Thirty undergraduate students will be recruited to participate in this study. At least one student will represent each academic department at the university. Participants will be recruited via the university's Facebook group, as most students are active Facebook users; a post inviting volunteers will therefore reach the majority of the student body. Each participant will be compensated because they are expected to attend two separate sessions. The study will be carried out in accordance with the ethical standards established by the university.

All participants will complete an informed consent form. The form will inform participants that they are taking part in a study on temperament and creativity, and that their responses will not be used for any purpose other than this study.

The Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) and the Formal Characteristics of Behavior–Temperament Inventory (FCB-TI) will be administered to all participants. The FCB-TI will be delivered first, followed by the TTCT, resulting in two separate sessions. Each measure is described below.

Measures and Procedure

This questionnaire was developed by Strelau and Zawadzki (FCB-TI; Strelau & Zawadzki, 1995). It is used to measure the six temperament traits outlined by the Regulative Theory of Temperament. The traits are: briskness (BR), activity (AC), sensory sensitivity (SS), perseveration (PE), emotional reactivity (ER), and endurance (EN). BR refers to the ability to shift from one activity to another. AC is one's capacity to engage in numerous stimulating activities simultaneously. SS is the capacity to respond to weak sensory stimulations. ER is the tendency to respond intensively to emotional stimuli. PE refers to the tendency to maintain and repeat behaviors that are no longer appropriate. EN is the capacity to behave efficiently in situations that require high levels of external stimulation (Oniszczenko, Stanisławiak, Dembińska-Krajewska, & Rybakowski, 2017).

The FCB-TI is a yes/no questionnaire containing 120 items. Each temperament trait — ER, SS, EN, AC, PE, and BR — is represented by 20 items. The Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficients for each trait have been estimated as follows: BR = 0.77, PE = 0.79, SS = 0.73, ER = 0.83, EN = 0.85, and AC = 0.84 (Oniszczenko et al., 2017). The FCB-TI is therefore a highly reliable and consistent instrument for measuring individual temperament.

This questionnaire will be administered first to all participants in reserved rooms at the university. A score for each trait will be calculated, and the overall temperament score is obtained by summing the six trait scores.

The TTCT was developed by American psychologist Ellis Paul Torrance. It is used to measure a person's creativity (Chavez-Eakle, Lara, & Cruz-Fuentes, 2006). The test comprises several simple subtests or tasks that together make up the overall assessment. Test materials consist of two sections: verbal and non-verbal (figural). Individual subtests can be used to measure specific aspects of creativity or to provide a comprehensive overview of an individual's creative potential. When a participant completes a specific set of tasks, a creativity score can be calculated from their performance on those subtasks alone.

The verbal section contains seven different activities: just suppose, asking, guessing causes, product improvement, guessing consequences, unusual uses, and unusual questions (Torrance, 1998). These activities are scored using three metrics: fluency, flexibility, and originality.

During each of the seven verbal activities, the examinee will be asked one or more questions relevant to the activity under examination. For example, if the examiner is interested in guessing causes, the examinee may be provided with a description of a situation and asked to identify what might have caused it. Similarly, if the examiner is interested in unusual uses, the examinee may be given the name of an object and asked to generate as many unusual uses for it as possible.

The figural section contains three main activities: picture construction, picture completion, and lines or circles (Torrance, 1998). During these activities, examinees are provided with sheets of paper containing abstract or incomplete symbols and shapes, and are asked to make additions or amendments to create something meaningful.

Verbal and Figural Tasks of the TTCT

For example, during the lines and circles activity, an examinee may be given a sheet of paper containing 30 or more circles and asked to draw objects in which circles form a major component. This task is useful for measuring both fluency and flexibility by assessing how many responses and how much variation the examinee can produce.

The figural tasks are scored using five metrics: fluency, elaboration, flexibility, resistance to premature closure, and abstractness of titles (Chavez-Eakle et al., 2006). Flexibility is the capacity to move from one concept to another. Fluency is the total number of relevant responses. Originality refers to the unusualness of answers. Elaboration is the number of details included in each response. Resistance to premature closure refers to the capacity to remain open-minded. Abstractness of titles refers to the degree to which a title captures an abstract concept beyond a concrete description.

The TTCT is useful because it allows comparison of creative potential across individuals. However, the materials are not freely available online. Official TTCT materials will therefore be obtained from the Torrance Center of Creative Studies. Due to time constraints, only the figural tests will be administered. For Activity I (picture construction), participants will be asked to draw a picture based on an apple shape provided as a stimulus. For Activity II (picture completion), participants will be required to complete a set of incomplete figures. For Activity III (lines or circles), participants will be asked to create pictures using 15 circles.

After completing the tests, each participant's Creativity Index (CI) will be calculated. The CI indicates an individual's overall creative potential.

Hypothesis 1. A positive relationship exists between temperament traits and creativity index. It is expected that participants with high creativity scores will also have high temperament scores. Baas, Roskes, Sligte, Nijstad, and De Dreu (2013) conducted a study on the relationship between creativity and personality and concluded that personality is related to creativity. Because personality is closely related to temperament, it follows that temperament should correlate positively with creativity.

Hypothesis 2. Briskness (BR), activity (AC), perseveration (PE), sensory sensitivity (SS), and endurance (EN) each positively correlate with creativity score. It is expected that participants with a high creativity index will score highly on the BR, AC, SS, PE, and EN scales.

Nęcka and Hlawacz (2013) conducted a study on the relationship between creativity and temperament, administering Urban and Jellen's Test for Creative Thinking–Drawing Production and a word categorization task (WCT) to a sample of artists and bank officers, with temperament measured using the FCB-TI. They concluded that creativity is positively correlated with BR, AC, and ER. Because the present study is closely related to their research, Hypothesis 2 predicts a positive relationship between creativity score and BR, AC, PE, SS, and EN.

Hypothesis 3. There is a negative correlation between creativity index and emotional reactivity (ER). It is expected that participants with high ER scores will perform poorly on creativity tests. Nęcka and Hlawacz (2013) concluded that there is a negative relationship between ER and creativity score.