Creativity, personality, and family variables in gifted children, their parents, and siblings

Abstract

The process of creativity is difficult to define or measure. Many home and family variables have been examined in an effort to add to our creativity information cache. This research looked at the dimension of parental-sibling-gifted child creativity as measured by the Torrance Test of Creative Thought, Verbal, Form A, and personality factors using the Thomas. Chess, and Birch (1970) categories of easys, difficults, and slow-to-warm-ups, in a population of gifted children. Special attention was paid to subjects who fell within Gowan's (1975) cells of Initiative and Intimacy, which he believed to be the creative energy release time periods. Corroborating other studies, the results showed mothers' creativity somewhat more like their sons, and fathers' more like their daughters. Birth order interaction showed a significant difference between both parents and onlys and both parents and third/fourths. Comparing onlys with all children across birth orders showed a great difference on creativity variables, with the onlys being far less creative, suggesting perhaps that they do not have as rich an environment for the development of creativity. Among siblings third/fourths appear to have the greatest edge. When broken into upper and lower 25% groups, fathers differ from the highs, except on the variable of flexibility. Mothers differences did not seem to be significant except on originality. Fathers were extremely different from the lows, showing much higher scores on the subtests, except for the fluency score. Mothers also differed from the lows on all variables. Both mothers and fathers of the lows had a higher mean score than the low children. Mothers' elaboration and originality correlated highly with fathers' flexibility, perhaps underlining Gowan's Stage 6 in the adults. Children in Stage 3 and Stage 6 did not seem to be highly correlated with each other or with parents. Temperament variables did not appear to be correlated among siblings and was not highly correlated tih parents. Temperament, in this study, did not seem to be a correlate of creativity.