Creativity: A Survey of Popular Misconceptions

Creativity is a sub-field of cognitive psychology with a long history of empirical study. Some of the results of these investigations are at odds with popularly held beliefs about creativity, especially in the general population. This study was designed to gather information about the types of misconceptions people generally endorse, the rates at which misconceptions are held, and to determine if certain demographic or personality variables are related to knowledge of creativity. We used a short survey to examine this topic. We collected demographic and personality information, and also asked participants to rate their own creativity. In addition, we asked participants an open-ended question—to provide their own definition of creativity. We then asked participants to rate a series of statements regarding creativity as true or false. This research is ongoing, but we expect to see several misconceptions frequently marked as true, and will provide breakdowns of these results by age, gender, personality, and major.