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).
Thus the lines of live-gaming and real-life creativity are blurred.
Especially intrinsic motivation is assumed to be closely related to real-life creativity (Hennessey, 2003, 2010).
This study investigated the relationships between different aspects of the multifaceted construct of creativity and specifically aimed at linking real-life creativity with common indicators of trait creativity.
Measures of real-life creativity (activities and achievements) showed significant positive correlations with all other variables including openness, ideational fluency, and originality, as well as intelligence.
Besides these two approaches, a complementary line of research has emerged that is concerned with real-life creativity within the general population, referred to as everyday creativity (Richards, 1993, 2010).
The picture looks differently for creative achievement: In an early study, King, Walker, and Broyles (1996) instructed participants to freely list their creative accomplishments and subjected these lists to peer ratings, thus considering not only quantitative but also qualitative aspects of real-life creativity.
