Title: Self‐reported differences in creativity by ethnicity and gender
Authors: Kaufman, J.C.
Source: Kaufman, J. C. (2006). Self‐reported differences in creativity by ethnicity and gender. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 20(8), 1065-1082.
reduced differences by ethnicity; creativity testing might also specifically help reduce stereotype threat.
Recent trends in creativity research point to a domain-specific view challenging the more traditional
generalist view. With these trends in mind, the current study assessed creative self-perceptions of 3553
students and community members in 56 different possible domains distributed across five factors (as
determined by principal components analysis). African Americans were less likely to fall prone to
gender stereotypes in creativity. In addition, African Americans and Native Americans tended to rate
themselves as more creative than other ethnicities. Specific trends in the factors and implications for
future research are discussed.
Notes: Large scale survey asking mainly students "How creative are you?" in 56 domains ranging from travel to woodworking, physics, political science, sports, etc. Interesting to see that after complex statistical pirouettes, some conclusions are built about ethnicity, gender and self-reported creativity, only to admit in the end that: "it is unknown if people conceived of creativity as the same construct across all domains. People may have had a difficult time imagining what it meant to be creative in certain domains (such as the sciences)." Another way of viewing this is based on experience is that no, of course people did not conceive of creativity as the same construct (across people and across domains), a simple word association survey shows evidence. Then, "In addition, some people may have conflated their skill in a domain with their creativity in that domain. Another possibility is that some people or groups simply showed a tendency to use the lower or upper ends of the Likert scale." Anyone involved in grading, and particularly coordinating a group if graders (as in competitions, selection committees, classes) knows that indeed, people interpret differently values in a Likert scale... So, like in many other papers, the "science" seems to rest on the use of statistical measurements and the "validity" on the 'big data', but the essential concepts behind the experiment are incredibly limited, making any claims extremely weak.
Authors: Kaufman, J.C.
Source: Kaufman, J. C. (2006). Self‐reported differences in creativity by ethnicity and gender. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 20(8), 1065-1082.
reduced differences by ethnicity; creativity testing might also specifically help reduce stereotype threat.
Recent trends in creativity research point to a domain-specific view challenging the more traditional
generalist view. With these trends in mind, the current study assessed creative self-perceptions of 3553
students and community members in 56 different possible domains distributed across five factors (as
determined by principal components analysis). African Americans were less likely to fall prone to
gender stereotypes in creativity. In addition, African Americans and Native Americans tended to rate
themselves as more creative than other ethnicities. Specific trends in the factors and implications for
future research are discussed.
Notes: Large scale survey asking mainly students "How creative are you?" in 56 domains ranging from travel to woodworking, physics, political science, sports, etc. Interesting to see that after complex statistical pirouettes, some conclusions are built about ethnicity, gender and self-reported creativity, only to admit in the end that: "it is unknown if people conceived of creativity as the same construct across all domains. People may have had a difficult time imagining what it meant to be creative in certain domains (such as the sciences)." Another way of viewing this is based on experience is that no, of course people did not conceive of creativity as the same construct (across people and across domains), a simple word association survey shows evidence. Then, "In addition, some people may have conflated their skill in a domain with their creativity in that domain. Another possibility is that some people or groups simply showed a tendency to use the lower or upper ends of the Likert scale." Anyone involved in grading, and particularly coordinating a group if graders (as in competitions, selection committees, classes) knows that indeed, people interpret differently values in a Likert scale... So, like in many other papers, the "science" seems to rest on the use of statistical measurements and the "validity" on the 'big data', but the essential concepts behind the experiment are incredibly limited, making any claims extremely weak.
