engleski

Creativity, personality and creative self among Croatian a capella singers

Research consistently shows a relationship between creativity and personality traits, primarily openness (Feist, 1998). Recent research has further demonstrated that dimensions of the creative self are associated with personality traits (Karwowski, Lebuda, Wisniewska, & Gralewski, 2013) and various measures of creativity (Karwowski, Lebuda, & Wisniewska, 2018), while acting as a mediator between personality and creative achievement (Chen, 2016). The aim of this study was to examine whether the relationship between personality traits and creativity is mediated by the creative self in a sample of a cappella singers (Pro-c or professional creativity level in the Four C model of creativity ; Kaufman & Beghetto, 2009). Participants were singers from 17 Croatian a cappella groups (N = 120), who filled out a questionnaire comprising the BFI-2 (Soto & John, 2017), the Short Scale of Creative Self (Karwowski et al., 2018), various assessments of creativity and creative achievements, and a few questions about their demographic characteristics. Additionally, each participant was assessed by two other members of the group on openness, creativity and creative achievement. Self-reported openness had a significant direct influence on self-reported (c‘ = .27) and peerreported creative achievements (c‘ = .30) and peer-reported creativity (c‘ = .33 ; all p < .05), while peer-reported openness had a significant direct influence only on peer-reported creativity (c‘ = .60) and creative achievements (c‘ = .32 ; all p < .001), and not on self-reported creativity and creative achievements. The expected mediation of the personality-creativity association by creative self was only found for the association between self-reported openness and self-reported creativity (a*b = .40 ; p < .001). The relationship between openness and creativity is mediated by creative self only for self-reports and when creativity is measured via a subjective evaluation of creativity level. The interpretation of the results should take the overlap of these constructs and possible bias of the self-reports into account. Additionally, different measures of creativity might assess different aspects of creativity that are differently associated with the creative self. As expected, the obtained relationships are greater when constructs are measured via the same method.

personality, creativity, creative self, a capella singers

nije evidentirano