Temperament, Personality, and Creativity: A Literature Review
This literature review investigates the relationship between temperament and creativity, two constructs that resist precise definition but have been linked through multiple empirical studies. Drawing on research by Necka and Hlawacz, Batey and Furnham, Helson, and Puryear and colleagues, the paper identifies personality traits — including openness to experience, independence, emotional stability, and risk-taking — that appear to predict creative potential. The review also highlights the mediating role of profession, noting that artists tend to show stronger temperament–creativity correlations than bank officers. The paper concludes by applying these findings to a practical hiring strategy for a videogame design company, arguing that recruiting for personality rather than skills or experience may yield more consistently creative employees.
- Introduction and Definitions: Defining temperament and creativity using key sources
- Measuring Creativity and Its Challenges: Why creativity remains difficult to measure reliably
- Temperament and Creativity Across Professions: Artists vs. bank officers in temperament–creativity studies
- Traits of the Creative Personality: Personality traits linked to high creative potential
- Practical Significance and Application: Applying findings to personality-based hiring strategies
- References: Full citations for all sources consulted
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper anchors an abstract discussion in concrete examples — comparing artists and bank officers — which gives the theoretical claims tangible grounding.
- Multiple definitions of both key terms are presented and evaluated before one is adopted, demonstrating careful scholarly framing.
- The review moves purposefully from broad conceptual discussion toward a practical application, giving the argument a clear direction and real-world relevance.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper exemplifies comparative synthesis: rather than summarizing each source in isolation, it groups findings from multiple studies around shared themes (e.g., personality traits common to creative individuals) and notes where authors agree or diverge. This approach produces a coherent argument rather than a list of annotations.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with dual definitions of each key term, then addresses the measurement problem that complicates all temperament–creativity research. It moves into empirical findings, first on professional contexts, then on specific creative traits. A final applied section bridges theory to a workplace hiring strategy. The structure follows a classic funnel: broad concept → empirical evidence → practical implication.
Introduction and Definitions
In seeking to establish the relationship between temperament and creativity, it is prudent to define both terms at the outset. It should be noted, however, that neither term carries a single universally agreed-upon definition. Temperament, in the words of Necka and Hlawacz (2013), could be "conceptualized as the biologically rooted, mostly inborn, foundations for personality and other individual traits" (p. 183). Hilda and Sneha (2017), on the other hand, define temperament as "an individual's characteristic level of emotional excitability or intensity" (p. 803). As the authors further point out, an individual's temperament becomes apparent some weeks after birth. Temperament is thus understood as a biological and largely innate dimension of individual difference that precedes the full development of personality.
When it comes to creativity, the focus is on the individual's ability to formulate ideas that can be deemed original. Creativity is therefore also concerned with innovation and imagination. A more precise definition is offered by Parkhurst (as cited in Batey and Furnham, 2006), who defines creativity as "the ability or quality displayed when solving hitherto unsolved problems, when developing novel solutions to problems others have solved differently, or when developing original and novel (at least to the originator) products" (p. 359). These are the definitions of creativity and temperament adopted throughout this review. It is also important to note that in this discussion, personality and temperament are used largely synonymously, consistent with the literature reviewed.
Various studies have been conducted in an attempt to chart the relationship between personality and creativity. In one such study, it was found that creativity can be predicted and explained via certain personality traits (Batey and Furnham, 2006). The five-factor model of personality has frequently served as a framework for such investigations, with openness to experience emerging as the dimension most consistently linked to creative behavior.
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