David Bridges and his co-author Haline Schendan just published the article “The sensitive, open creator.” in Personality and Individual Differences. This was a correlation study that aimed to establish relationships between temperament, personality and creative potential and achievement. This laboratory study with a large, diverse sample used multiple recently established sensitivity and creativity measures while controlling negative-affect and Big-Five personality traits. The authors found that only sensitivity and openness correlate positively with three creativity measures and independently predict two (achievement, ideation). Openness predicts creative products and achievement more strongly as sensitivity rises above average, and conversely. The authors conclude that sensitivity and openness primarily determine diverse creative abilities and demonstrate vantage-sensitivity, making reference to the new model presented in their recent review paper, also published in Personality and Individual Differences, explaining that developmental environment interacting with neurosensitivity mechanisms (especially lower inhibition), and automatic attention may explain why sensitive, open people are more creative.
This study was an outcome of Project 15 “Predicting creativity from spatial ability & personality”, and David's first study from his PhD thesis “Neurosensitivity: Implications for cognition and creativity.”