Personality Characteristics of Creative Women

Abstract

Women authors who were listed in Who's Who in America, and women artists in Who's Who in American Women responded to the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire. Both groups were found to be more aloof, intelligent, emotional, aggressive, adventurous, imaginative, radical, and self-sufficient, and less group-dependent and controlled than women in the general population. Although the women artists did not score beyond the average on sensitivity and self-control, the authors were more sensitive and less controlled than women in general.

Creativity, Intelligence, and Personality

“…STUDIES OF CREATIVE WOMEN Studies and reviews of creative women focused on women engaged in art (Nochlin 1971(Nochlin , 1979Greer, 1979); writing (Olsen 1970(Olsen , 1978Spacks 1972;Showalter 1971;Helson 1973b); art and literature (Anastasi & Schaefer 1969;Schaefer 1969aSchaefer ,b, 1970bSchaefer , 1971bSchaefer , 1972bSchaefer ,c, 1973Bachtold & Werner 1973); science (Walberg 1969b;Bach told & Werner 1972); mathematics (Helson 197 1); psychology (Bachtold & Werner 1970); elementary school teaching (Torrance, Tan & Allman 1970); college teaching (Groth 1975); and other assorted activities (Helson 1966a(Helson ,b, 1967a(Helson , 1968bTorrance 1972a;Suter & Domino 1975;Yu 1977;Blaubergs 1978;Morse & Bruch 1978;Lemkau 1979). It is clear that those wishing to examine the psychology of creative women have far more empiri cal evidence to look at today than they did 15 years ago.…”

“…Studies of creative adult artists, scientists, mathematicians, and writers find them scoring very high on tests of general intelligence (e.g. Barron 1969;Bachtold & Werner 1970;Helson & Crutch field 1970b;Cattell 1971;Helson 1971;Bachtold & Werner 1973;Gough 1976a), though rs between tested intelligence and creative achievement in these samples range from insignificantly negative (r = -.05, Gough 1976a) to mildly and significantly positive (r = +'31, Helson 1971 Milgram, Yitzhak & N. A. Milgram 1977;Frederiksen & Ward 1978;and Hocevar 1980) and sometimes modestly positive (e.g. McDermid 1965;Helson 1971;Vernon 1972b;Torrance 1972b;Schmidt 1973;Kogan & Pankove 1974;Gough 1976a;and Hocevar 1980).…”

“…ART Studies of personality characteristics associated with artistic activity and creative achievement involved preschool children ( Bachtold & Werner 1973, Amos 1978, Gotz & Gotz 1979a. Personality correlates of architectural creativity were studied using students of architec ture (Karlins, Schuerhoff & Kaplan 1969, Schmidt 1973) and professional architects (Hall & MacKinnon 1969, Gough 1979.…”

Personological Research on Creativity in the Performing and Fine Arts

“…The dropouts were perhaps lacking in discipline or seeking immediate gratification. Bachtold and Werner (1973) attempted to detect personality traits of women authors and artists who were listed in Who's Who in America. Citing the lack of in depth studies of women up to that time, Bachtold and Werner investigated 273 female authors and 254 artists.…”

Personality Model of Fine Artists

“…Several previous investigations of the creative personality (Amos, 1978;Bachtold & Werner, 1973;Cross, Cattell, & Butcher, 1967;Gotz & Gotz, 1979) uncovered characteristics that differed significantly between artists and nonartists. Cross et al (1967), for example, used Cattell's 16PF test and found that 10 personality factors discriminate artists from controls (lecturers and students of both sexes).…”