The Disposition Toward Originality

What I read

In this article, Barron explores the nature of personality traits related to creative activity. Through a variety of experimental measures, Barron concludes that originality is related to independence, a preference for complexity, dominance, and rejection of suppression.

Barron starts by noting the tendency in psychological research to focus on creative output—and often “genius” output—rather than the people who produced the output; however, there is evidence, often from biographies, that these people produce many things that are never remembered as important. Barron indicates that some people are regularly original and some regularly unoriginal, and so there must be traits that are related to this level of originality, and this is the focus of the study described in the paper.

Barron describes a “basic assumption of this study, that acts are original only in relation to some specified commonality. The original must be defined relative to the usual, and the degree or originality must be specified statistically in terms of incidence of occurrence.” Based on this, he identifies criterion for what constitutes originality: an original response has uncommonness in the group being studied, and must be “adaptive to reality” (as considered here to mean not-random.)

Next, Barron describes the eight measures used to identify originality. These included tests that measure infrequency, obviousness, cleverness, originality based on imagery (Rorschach) and the story-telling of that imagery, number of uncommon words generated, a rated composition from random words, and common responses within a group. Barron indicates that the measures are selected in order to cover a wide variety of diverse media, including visual, language, and so-on.

Barron identifies that “A dual criterion was now established for calling a given subject regularly original: (a) he had to be at least one standard deviation above the mean on the test composite; (b) he had to be at least two standard deviations above the mean on at least one of the eight measures.”

Barron then identifies a number of hypotheses that were tested in the study. Some of these include that original people prefer complexity, are more complex, are more independent, are more self-assertive, and reject impulse suppression.

Finally, Barron discusses the findings. He proposes that original ideas may be a function of the freedom of the creator, given the relationship they have with the context around them (such as a totalitarian state, or organizations that are private); as a result, originality benefits from contexts where “suppression is at a minimum.” It is likely that creators are self-centered and focus on self-regulation; this is attributed to the socialization they encountered when they were children. This type of person “often likes things messy, at least at first; the tendency is toward a final order, but the necessary preliminary is as big a mess as possible.” The conclusion is that the “disposition toward originality may thus be seen as a highly organized mode of responding to experience, including other persons, society, and oneself.”

What I learned and what I think

I appreciate this article a great deal, although I disagree with much of it, particularly on the data collection methods and the focus on measurement, and on the partial definition of creativity as newness, but that’s my old drum that I’ve beaten to death.

The piece of this that most resonates with me is the suggestion at the end, that creative people may be creative not because they are born with some sort of magic trait, but because they’ve adapted to the circumstances around them. It’s the only reference I’ve encountered so far in the cognitive psychology research (as compared to any other discipline’s explorations) that acknowledges the context in which creativity occurs, and that someone who is creative has developed skills as a necessary response to bring creative ideas to life. Craft aside, that makes a ton of sense, whether it’s defenses that are broadly stood up against society at large, or specifically in the space of grade school, or college, or a job.

An aside; I found it amusing how creativity at a young age is framed. It’s clear that creative capabilities are fostered (or ignored) during childhood, but when this was written (1954), Freud’s terminology was still being used, and Barron explains that “the most crucial developmental crisis in relation to control of [creative] impulse comes at the anal stage of socialization.”

I found my way to this paper because it’s one of three that Runco indicates is at the foundation of creativity research, and in defining what makes a creative idea “count.” I’m confused at how Runco views this as one of main sources for a standard definition of creativity. Barron doesn’t define creativity at all, and Runco acknowledges that directly in his paper.