Are androgynous people more creative than gender conforming people?

Abstract

Psychological androgyny refers to possessing both masculine and feminine characteristics. Sandra Bem (1974) proposed that androgynous people are more creative, because they are less limited by gender boundaries. This so-called androgyny-creativity effect contributes to the gender equality movement by ameliorating stereotypes about people who stepped out of gender boundaries. However, the evidentiary value of the available research testing this hypothesis has been limited by suboptimal (by current standards) methodology, such as small samples, antiquated statistical analysis, and inconsistent measurement. The current study attempted to replicate the androgyny-creativity effect in a large sample (N = 672), with both self-report and behavioral measures of creativity, and following both original and optimized statistical analyses. We found that androgynous group reported themselves to be more creative than the gender conforming group, but they did not score higher than the latter on behavioral creativity. This suggests that the androgyny-creativity effect (a) could be just a popular lay theory, (b) might only hold for certain types of creativity, and (c) might be a true effect but no longer exist due to societal changes in gender roles.