Examining Gender with General Creativity and Preferences for Creative Persons in College Students within the Sciences and the Arts

The purpose of the research was to investigate gender similarities and differences in general creativity constructs with their preferences for creative persons. Data were collected from 247 participants (87 engineering, 24 psychology students with a psychology major, 51 psychology students with a major other than psychology, 30 English, and 55 music students) from a large Mideastern Big 10 university. All participants completed measures of general creativity (creative personality, creative temperament and cognitive risk tolerance) and a demographic questionnaire with the request to list 10 creative persons and their given field. Results indicated that males and females tended to have similar levels of general creativity, yet the most frequently listed creative eminent persons tended to be male. The most frequently listed creative person selections were in science and art, with the three most frequently selected eminent persons being in the science domains. The most frequent creative person selections, consistently selected by at least 10 participants, were Caucasian males. (Contains 3 tables.)