Psychoticism and Creativity: A Meta-analytic Review

Quite a few studies have examined the association of creativity with psychoticism. The present article reports a meta-analysis that was intended to clarify the strength of the association and to explain variation in effects sizes reported in 32 previous studies. These 32 studies involved 6,771 participants, most of them college students. Results indicated that the effect sizes were heterogeneous, but the overall mean effect size was small (r =.16, k = 119, 95% CI [.12, .20]). Of most importance was that the analyses examining 8 moderators (gender, age, the type of sample, the particular measure of creativity, the content of the particular creativity test, the index of creativity, the particular measure of psychoticism, and the domain of creativity) and 2 interaction terms (Creativity Measure X Measure of Psychoticism and Creativity Measure X Content of Creativity Test) showed that the relationship between creativity and psychoticism is large (r = .50, 95% CI [.39, .60]) but only when psychoticism is measured by the Eysenck personality Questionnaire and uniqueness is the index of creativity. Results are discussed with respect to their theoretical implications.