This study investigated the significance of different well-established psychometric indicators of creativity for real-life creative outcomes.
Therefore, this study aims at investigating the relationship between common psychometric indicators of creativity and real-life creative achievement by means of structural equation modelling.
Scores on divergent thinking tests show positive correlations with involvement in real-life creative activities, self-rated creativity [3], as well as objective measures of creative achievement, even when controlling for IQ [4].
The concept of everyday creativity emerged from the study of real-life creative activities within the general (noneminent) population.
Trait creativity in terms of psychometrically tested ability can generally be distinguished from real-life creative achievement (Eysenck, 1993, 1995).
Thus, a number of different traits are thought to determine the potential for real-life creative accomplishments, but so far, only few attempts have been made to examine their conjoint influence on actual creative achievement.
Creative achievement refers to actual real-life creative accomplishments (such as composing a piece of music, making a scientific discovery, or writing a book; cf. Carson et al., 2005) and is commonly assessed by means of biographical measures.
A structural equation model was established in order to analyse the latent relationships between real-life creativity measures (creative activities and creative achievements), creative potential (ideational fluency and originality), openness to experiences, and intelligence.
The aim of this study was to disentangle several aspects of the multifaceted construct of creativity: We tested to which extent real-life creativity, in terms of everyday creative activities and actual creative achievement, is determined by creative potential, openness to experiences, and intelligence.
In line with this distinction, creativity research used to sort into two poles, focusing either on the study of psychometrically tested creative potential or on eminent real-life creativity (also called 'little-C' vs 'big-C'; cf. Kaufman & Beghetto, 2009).
The former concept is hereby often labelled creative potential, highlighting that it reflects rather a predictor of real-life creativity than creativity per se (Runco & Acar, 2012).
