The secret to creativity may lie in the ‘dark triad’ of personality traits

A new study claims we’ve yet to solve the mystery of creativity because we haven’t explored the role that narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy might play in it

ACreativity, if you have it, is a wonderful gift. With the ability to find fresh solutions to old problems or generate artistic works that entertain and inspire, wealth and fame may await. It’s no wonder that many self-help books promise to tell us how to boost our creativity. The problem is, despite many decades of searching, psychologists still struggle to explain what makes some people more creative than others. The traits that tend to get associated with it are: ‘openness to experience’ (one of the ‘Big Five’ personality dimensions at the core of modern psychology, alongside conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism), which is about how much you’re prepared to try new things and how sensitive you are to aesthetics; intelligence, which is pretty self-explanatory; and ‘divergent thinking’, the ability to think freely and come up with various solutions to a problem. But even taken all together, these factors only explain a small amount of the difference in people’s creativity (less than a fifth by some accounts).

BSome of the remaining difference, according to Dr Marco Giancola, a psychologist at the University of L’Aquila in Italy, may come from the so-called ‘dark triad’ of personality traits. In a study recently published in the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts, he argues that we’ve neglected to look at the contribution that narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy make to creativity. It’s a compelling idea and past research has suggested that these traits are linked with greater creativity, albeit weakly. And anecdotally we can probably all think of single-minded ‘maestros’ who won’t let anyone get in the way of their success. “There’s an old and rather seductive image of the creative individual: brilliant, difficult, unconventional, extremely driven and largely indifferent to what everybody else thinks,” says Giancola. “Like most successful stereotypes, it probably contains a fragment of truth surrounded by a considerable amount of mythology.”

CGiancola believes that exploring why the dark traits are associated with creativity could be revealing. He’s particularly interested in a concept that dates from the 1940s known as ‘field independence’. First investigated by the US psychologists Prof Solomon Asch (of the classic ‘conformity experiments’ fame) and Dr Herman Witkin, field independence is about focusing on what matters without being too distracted by context. “Imagine that I show you a very simple geometrical shape and then hide it inside a complicated drawing. Some people look at the drawing and almost immediately say, ‘There it is’,” Giancola explains. These people have high field independence. “Others can stare at exactly the same picture for quite some time because the whole configuration dominates what they see,” he adds. “They are, so to speak, prisoners of the picture.” People like this are high in field dependence.

DTo test the associations between the dark triad personality traits, field independence and creativity, Giancola gave a series of questionnaires to over 200 university students. These included questions about their personality and their creativity. Crucially, he also tested their field independence via a perceptual task that involved repeatedly locating simple shapes camouflaged in a cluster of other shapes (faster performance was taken as a sign of higher field independence). Giancola found that all three of the triad traits were correlated with high field independence and, in turn, that higher field independence was correlated with greater creativity. The dark triad traits also correlated with creativity and a third of this association was channelled via field independence. “Importantly, that pattern emerged while statistically accounting for several established correlates of creativity, including openness to experience, fluid and crystallised intelligence, divergent thinking and previous creative expertise,” says Giancola.

E“I think the result encourages us to move away from asking whether a trait is simply ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for creativity. That’s probably too crude a question,” he says. “A more interesting question is whether a personality disposition makes certain ways of processing information more likely, and whether those ways of processing information are useful in particular creative contexts. Field independence may be one part of that story.”

FAlthough Giancola’s study measured field independence using a perceptual task, historically, the concept was also considered to have a social dimension. The idea is that the same person who’s able to ignore the irrelevant context in a perceptual task will also be the one who’s willing to shun convention. “In the classical literature, field-dependent people tended to be described as more attentive to social cues and more interpersonally oriented, whereas field-independent people showed greater autonomy from external referents,” says Giancola. Described this way, it doesn’t take a huge leap to see how field independence could be beneficial in situations that require creative or unconventional thinking. “A certain resistance to external influence may make somebody rather difficult around a committee table,” Giancola explains. “But the same resistance may become useful when everybody around that table has accepted the wrong solution.” Thinking about this social aspect of field independence, it also makes sense to see how people who score highly in the dark triad traits might be inclined towards this way of thinking, even if for slightly different reasons. For instance, someone who scores highly for psychopathy might care less about being evaluated by others; the narcissist might have great faith in their own insights; and the Machiavellian could be singularly focused on what’s most useful to them.

GWhat Giancola doesn’t want us to take away from this, is the idea that nurturing the darker sides of our personalities could help us be more creative. “Dark traits are neither necessary nor sufficient for creativity,” he says. “The wider literature doesn’t support the simple idea that having a ‘darker’ personality gives somebody a general creative advantage.” He does believe there could be mileage in training people to achieve greater field independence, however. He points out that there is some older literature that suggests it might be possible for people to improve their field independence scores for perceptual tasks (those akin to locating shapes camouflaged in clusters of other shapes) with practice and spatial training. Giancola’s study didn’t test the feasibility of training, but it’s something that he wants to explore next. “Until then, it’s a hypothesis,” he says. “A promising one, I think, but still a hypothesis.”

HBut before you ask an AI to create a field independence training programme for you using a bunch of geometric puzzles, it’s worth mentioning a few notes of caution surrounding the new research, many of which Giancola acknowledges himself. To start with, the student sample he used displayed only modest scores on the dark triad traits and he relied on the students to report their own creative achievements, which could have been exaggerated. Also, there was only a perceptual measure of field independence (not a social one), and the entire study was cross-sectional, meaning any causal links weren’t established. Furthermore, the dark triad traits were only weakly linked to the students’ track records of being more or less creative. All in all, when it comes to the psychological holy grail of creativity, the hunt is very much still on.

Questions 27–31

Reading Passage 3 has eight labelled sections, A–H.

Which section contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A–H, in boxes 27–31 on your answer sheet.

NBYou may use any letter more than once.

27a comparison of how people with different levels of field independence respond to social cues______

28a reason why participants’ reports of their own creative achievements may be unreliable______

29a comment suggesting that a familiar image of creative people is only partly accurate______

30an estimate of how much variation in creativity can be explained by several established factors together______

31a possible way of improving performance on perceptual tests of field independence______

Questions 32–36

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3?

In boxes 32–36 on your answer sheet, write

TRUEif the statement agrees with the information

FALSEif the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVENif there is no information on this

32More than 200 university students received questionnaires in Giancola’s study.

33Taking longer to find the hidden shapes was interpreted as a sign of greater field independence.

34All three dark triad traits were equally strongly correlated with field independence.

35Giancola suggests that the usefulness of a way of processing information may depend on the creative context.

36Giancola’s study established that greater field independence causes greater creativity.

Questions 37–40

Complete the summary below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 37–40 on your answer sheet.

Field independence and creativity

The concept of field independence dates back to the 37 __________. It describes the ability to focus on relevant details without being overly distracted by 38 __________. In the hidden-shape example, some people take longer because the 39 __________ dominates what they see. In Giancola’s study, field independence accounted for 40 __________ of the association between the dark triad traits and creativity.

解析

27F F 段。原文比较了两类人对外界的反应：场依存者更留意社交线索，场独立者更少依赖外部参照。

28H H 段。创造成就是学生自行报告的，作者指出这些成就可能被夸大，因此自报结果的可靠性有限。

29B B 段。Giancola 说，常见的创意人士形象只有一小部分真实，其余掺杂了大量想象。题干的 partly accurate 对应这层意思。

30A A 段末。开放性、智力与发散思维合起来只能解释一小部分创造力差异，有些估计低于五分之一。

31G G 段。较早的研究提出，练习和空间训练可能提高知觉任务中的场独立性得分。

32TRUE D 段。over 200 university students 与题干的 more than 200 university students 同义。

33FALSE D 段。原文把完成得更快视为场独立性更高的信号。题干把速度方向写反了。

34 NOT GIVEN D 段。原文说三种特质各自都与较高的场独立性相关，但没有比较三者的相关强度。all three 无法推出 equally strongly。

35 TRUE E 段。Giancola 提出，应考察某种信息处理方式在具体创作情境中是否有用。题干把这一点表述为用途可能取决于情境。

36 FALSE H 段。原文明确说这是一项横断面研究，因果联系未能确立，与题干中的 established 相矛盾。

37 1940s C 段。dates from the 1940s 给出概念出现的年代。空格前已有 the，填 1940s。

38context C 段。原文用 distracted by context 说明注意力可能受周围背景干扰，空格保留原词 context。

39whole configuration C 段。寻找较慢的人更受整幅图的构形影响。题干沿用 dominates，空格前已有 the，填写两个词。

40a third D 段。原文说这项关联的三分之一经由场独立性体现。accounted for 对应原文的 was channelled via 所表达的作用。

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