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Activities and Accomplishments in Various Domains:

Relationships With Creative Personality and Creative
Motivation in Adolescence
a a b
Eunsook Hong , Yun Peng & Harold F. O’Neil Jr.
a
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
b
University of Southern California
Published online: 07 Apr 2014.

To cite this article: Eunsook Hong, Yun Peng & Harold F. O’Neil Jr. (2014) Activities and Accomplishments in Various
Domains: Relationships With Creative Personality and Creative Motivation in Adolescence, Roeper Review, 36:2, 92-103, DOI:
10.1080/02783193.2014.884199

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 Roeper Review, 36:92–103, 2014
Copyright © The Roeper Institute
ISSN: 0278-3193 print / 1940-865X online
DOI: 10.1080/02783193.2014.884199

Activities and Accomplishments in Various Domains:

Relationships With Creative Personality and Creative
Motivation in Adolescence
Eunsook Hong, Yun Peng, and Harold F. O’Neil, Jr.

This study examined relationships between five personal traits and adolescents’ creative
activities and accomplishments in five domains—music, visual arts, creative writing, science,
Downloaded by [University of Waterloo] at 17:49 29 October 2014

and technology. Participants were 439 tenth graders (220 males and 219 females) in China. The
relationships were examined using confirmatory factor analysis. Openness to experience was
related to activities in music, visual arts, and creative writing but not to science and technology.
Creative self-efficacy was related to all but technology-related activities. Intrinsic motivation
was related to visual arts and science creative activities. Conscientiousness and perceived intel-
lectual ability were not associated with creative activities in any domain. Finally, none of
the personality or motivational attributes were related to creative activities in the technology
domain. Personal traits appear to introduce some variability in the developmental trajectory of
potential talents in various domains.
Keywords: conscientiousness, creative accomplishments, creative activities, creative domains,
creative self-efficacy, intrinsic motivation, openness to experience, perceived intellectual ability

Activities and accomplishments during adolescence have
been shown to predict future accomplishments, espe-
cially when adult occupation and adolescence activity
domains match (Milgram & Hong, 1994; Park, Lubinski, &
Benbow, 2007; Wai, Lubinski, & Benbow, 2005). Various
individual and contextual variables influence adolescents’
creative activities and accomplishments. Although research
on measurements of creative activities and achievements
has long been conducted (Carson, Peterson, & Higgins,
2005; Hocevar, 1981; Hong, Whiston, & Milgram, 1993),
research on factors that contribute to adolescents’ creative
activities and accomplishments is scarce (Delcourt, 1993;
Starko, 1988). In this study, we focused on personal traits,
specifically personality and motivational attributes, to deter-
mine whether they are related to creative activities and
accomplishments in adolescence.
RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN PERSON
VARIABLES AND CREATIVE ACTIVITIES
Talent development occurs when individuals have an interest
in intellectual or creative activities and an intention to act
Accepted 28 August 2012.
Address correspondence to Eunsook Hong, Department of Educational
Psychology, University of Nevada, Box 453003, Las Vegas, NV 89154-
3003. E-mail: eunsook.hong@unlv.edu
on the opportunities that the environment affords. Creative
activities in adolescence in the course of talent development
are an indication of complex interactions of cognitive abil-
ities, personal–psychological attributes, and environmental–
social factors, with varying degrees of impact on talent real-
ization (Amabile, 1996; Hong & Milgram, 2008). Although
high levels of creative accomplishments are presented by
a small number of individuals (Eysenck, 1993), adolescent
creative accomplishments may exhibit a less skewed distri-
bution than adult creative accomplishments, because adoles-
cents are still developing their creative potentials (Hong &
Milgram, 2008).
Whether adolescents show their interests and engage in
activities in many domains or focus on one domain has
been a topic of research on gifted and talented students.
Although authorities and professionals in gifted education
often cite multipotentiality (i.e., high interests and abilities
in many areas) as a critical factor of talent development of
children and adolescents (Emmett & Minor, 1993; Greene,
2006; Kerr & Sandro, 2003), this widely held view that
highly gifted adolescents are multipotential in their interests
and abilities has not been supported by empirical stud-
ies (Achter, Lubinski, & Benbow, 1996; Milgram & Hong,
1999). Talented children and adolescents rather demon-
strate early intensive, concentrated interest in a single talent
domain and persevere in the chosen domain by engaging in
challenging activities and demonstrating accomplishments
 PERSONALITY AND CREATIVE ACTIVITIES IN ADOLESCENCE
at various levels, depending on the opportunities that the
individual and contextual conditions afford (Bloom, 1985;
Cox, Daniel, & Boston, 1985; Wai, Lubinski, Benbow, &
Steiger, 2010). Most, if not all, measures of creative achieve-
ments are domain specific (Baer, 1994, 1996, 1998; Carson
et al., 2005; Hocevar, 1981). With this background, we posit
that personal traits and contextual factors contributing to tal-
ent development differ across individuals who show interests
in their selected creative activity domains.
Of the many attributes influencing talent development,
the current study focused on person-level traits and their
relationships with adolescents’ creative activities and accom-
plishments in a number of domains. Personalities, specif-
ically creative personalities, have been considered key
attributes for the development of creative talent. Feist (1998),
in his early meta-analytic study, indicated that creative indi-
Downloaded by [University of Waterloo] at 17:49 29 October 2014
viduals behave consistently over time and situation and
asserted the existence of creative personality. This assertion
was supported by creative individuals differing in age and in
talent domains who shared certain traits such as broad inter-
ests, attraction to complexity, self-confidence, autonomy, and
intuition (Barron & Harrinton, 1981; Batey & Furnham,
2006; Feist, 2006; Treffinger, Young, Selby, & Shepardson,
2002).
Whereas personal traits such as commitment, tolerance,
independence, responsibility, nonconformity, and risk-taking
have long been evidenced to influence the makeup of creative
talent (Cropley, 2006; Neihart, 1999; Piirto, 2004; Renzulli,
2002; Torrance, 1993; Wickes & Ward, 2006), we exam-
ined five person constructs that have been the subjects of
more recent research interest: openness to experience, cre-
ative self-efficacy, intrinsic motivation, conscientiousness,
and perceived ability. Personality traits are often represented
in terms of the five higher-order constructs, also called the
Big Five—extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness,
neuroticism, and openness to experience (Costa & McCrae,
1992; McCrae & Costa, 1999). Of these, two factors have
been prominent in their relationships to creativity in that
creative people tend to be more open to new experience
and are less conscientious than their less creative counter-
parts (Dollinger, 2007; Prabhu, Sutton, & Sauser, 2008).
Beyond the Big Five personalities, creative people also have
shown tendencies to be highly self-efficacious and intrin-
sically motivated (Bandura, 1997; Beghetto, 2006; Gong,
Huang, & Farh, 2009). Although these trends appear to be
evident, whether these relationships are consistent across
various domains is to be further examined.
As the meta-analytic studies of creative personalities
illustrate (Barron & Harrinton, 1981; Feist, 1998), there are
some common personality characteristics in creatively tal-
ented people across science and art domains. Even within
one domain, however, the findings about creative personal-
ities are sometimes in conflict; for example, the artistically
talented can be impulsive or not impulsive. It is also likely
that creative artists or scientists across different specialties
93
or even within one specialty (e.g., fine art, creative writing)
might exhibit different personality traits. For example, suc-
cessful women creative writers as a group were independent,
intuitive, risk-taking, resilient, introverted, empathetic, and
humorous (Piirto, 1998). In contrast, some creative writers
were depressed, self-destructive, alienated, and marginalized
(Jamison, 1989; Ludwig, 1998).
With the understanding of those caveats regarding person-
ality inconsistencies found within domains and specialties
that are more pronounced in adults, the current study exam-
ined five person variables in order to determine whether
their relationships differ across five activity domains that
represent three artistic (music, visual arts, and creative writ-
ing) and two nonartistic (science and technology) activi-
ties. In the section that follows, literature on two of the
Big Five personality traits (openness to experience and
conscientiousness), two motivational orientations (creative
self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation), and a variable not
often studied in creativity research (perceived intellectual
ability) was reviewed with respect to their contributions to
understanding adolescents’ creative accomplishments.
PERSONALITIES: OPENNESS TO
EXPERIENCE AND CONSCIENTIOUSNESS
One of the personality traits that has demonstrated a strong
relationship to creativity is openness to experience (e.g.,
Furnham & Chamorro-Premuzic, 2004). Openness has been
consistently found to be positively related to creative think-
ing and creative performance across domains (Dollinger,
Urban, & James, 2004; Feist & Barron, 2003; Furnham,
Zhang, & Chamorro-Premuzic, 2006; Silvia, Kaufman, &
Pretz, 2009). Openness has been related to art activities
(e.g., visits to art galleries, listening to classical music,
reading poetry; Ivcevic & Mayer, 2009), verbal creativity
(King, McKee-Walker, & Broyles, 1996), creative stories
(Wolfradt & Pretz, 2001), and visual and performing arts
(Silvia et al., 2009). It is also related to team creativity
(Schilpzand, Herold, & Shaley, 2011) and creative behav-
iors throughout life (Soldz & Vaillant, 1999). A higher level
of creative accomplishment was shown in individuals who
are creative as well as open to experience compared to those
who are creative but not as open (King et al., 1996). Not
surprisingly, creative scientists were more open to experi-
ence than less creative scientists, and artists are more open
than nonartists (Feist, 1998). However, research also demon-
strates that varying personalities are not equally related to
creative success across domains. For example, Ivcevic and
Mayer (2009) were able to distinguish artistic creativity (e.g.,
fine arts) from intellectual creativity (e.g., technology).
Conscientiousness revealed strong domain effects,
although less conclusive findings are also present (Batey
& Furnham, 2006; Feist, 1998). In arts, conscientiousness
had a negative relationship with creative accomplishments,
 94 E. HONG ET AL.
documented in studies such as creativity ratings on sto-
ries (Wolfradt & Pretz, 2001), biographical data (Walker,
Koestner, & Hum, 1995), arts-based creativity measures
(Furnham et al., 2006), and advertising and design workers
(Gelade, 1997). Conscientiousness was negatively related to
creative thinking (Funham et al., 2006) and was not related
to any domains of creative accomplishments (Dollinger
et al., 2004). Artists were less conscientious than nonartists,
and scientists were more conscientious than nonscientists
(Feist, 1998).
In the current study, these two Big Five personalities—
openness to experiences and conscientiousness—that have
shown opposite relational trends with creativity were exam-
ined to determine whether their relationships with ado-
lescents’ creative behaviors differ across five domains of
creative activities and accomplishments.
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CREATIVE MOTIVATION: CREATIVE
SELF-EFFICACY AND INTRINSIC MOTIVATION
Creative self-efficacy is a rather late arrival in creativity
research, especially in education (Beghetto, 2006). Building
on the self-efficacy construct of social–cognitive frame-
work (Bandura, 1997), creative self-efficacy is defined as
a self-judgment of one’s ability to produce creative out-
comes (Tierney & Farmer, 2002). Bandura (1986, 1997)
strongly suggested that self-efficacy, inherent in motivational
processes, is essential for innovation and creative think-
ing. Creative self-efficacy has shown a positive relationship
with creativity in workplaces (Jaussi, Randel, & Dionne,
2007; Tierney & Farmer, 2002, 2004) and educational set-
tings (Beghetto, 2006, 2007; Mathisen & Bronnick, 2009).
Creative self-efficacy also mediates the effects of individual
and contextual factors on creative performance (Gong et al.,
2009) and is strongly related to perceived science compe-
tence (Beghetto, 2007). Adolescents creatively talented in
mathematics reported being more self-efficacious than typ-
ical students (Hong & Aqui, 2004). In the present study, we
define creative self-efficacy as a trait-like characteristic that
is not domain or situation specific but rather domain general.
However, whether this trait-level creative self-efficacy still
demonstrates differential relationships with creative activi-
ties and accomplishment across domains needs to be exam-
ined. Because a strong, positive relationship between trait
and state attributes has been found in anxiety, self-regulation,
and test anxiety (Hanton, Mellalieu, & Hall, 2002; Hong,
1998a, 1998b), it is expected that trait creative self-efficacy
would have positive relationships with creative activities in
various domains.
Intrinsic motivation has been viewed as essential for suc-
cess in all areas of creative endeavors (Amabile, 1983, 1996;
Csikszentmihalyi, 1996; Hennessey & Amabile, 1998).
Intrinsically motivated individuals engage in an activity pri-
marily for its own sake, because they perceive the activity
as interesting, satisfying, or personally challenging, whereas
extrinsically motivated individuals engage in an activity pri-
marily to meet some goal external to the work itself, such
as attaining an expected reward, winning a competition, or
meeting requirements of some kind (Collins & Amabile,
1999; Deci, Koestner, & Ryan, 1999). Intrinsic motivation
is an important foundation of creativity, and the relation-
ship of intrinsic motivation to creativity has been empirically
established (Amabile, 2001; Amabile, Hill, Hennessey, &
Tighe, 1994; Tierney, Farmer, & Graen, 1999). When extrin-
sic rewards are contingent on creative thinking or creative
performance, however, the relationship between extrinsic
motivation and creative performance was found to be pos-
itive in some instances (Amabile, 1997; Eisenberg, 2011;
Eisenberger & Aselage, 2009; Eisenberger & Shanock,
2003). In the current study, we examined whether creative
self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation are related to adoles-
cents’ creative activities across five domains.
PERCEIVED INTELLECTUAL ABILITY
How individuals perceive their own ability affects their aca-
demic performance (Weiner, 1994). Unlike the other four
personal traits to be examined in this study, perceived intel-
lectual ability and its relationship to creative activities has
not been studied. There have been numerous studies that
examined the relationships between intelligence test scores
and creativity that demonstrated conflicting results (Batey &
Furnham, 2006; Furnham & Bachtiar, 2008; Silvia, 2008).
For example, intellectual ability was related strongly to
academic achievement but weakly related to creative per-
formance in literature and mathematics domains (Hong &
Milgram, 1996; Livne & Milgram, 2006). However, stud-
ies of the relationships between the perception of one’s own
intellectual ability and creative accomplishments are scarce.
A couple of literature reports were found that examined this
relationship, although they were not closely related to the
current research. In an industrial setting, employees’ per-
ceived utilization of abilities and expertise was positively
related to innovative performance (Länsisalmi, Kivimäki, &
Elovainjo, 2004). Chinese students rated as “supersmart”
engaged in more creative and leadership activities than stu-
dents who were viewed as socioemotionally or artistically
gifted (Chan, 2008). The current study examined whether
and to what extent students’ perceived intellectual ability has
a relationship with involvement in creative activities in vari-
ous domains. The findings of the study will begin to fill the
research gap in this area.
THE STUDY
The purpose of this study was to examine relationships
between five person variables and adolescents’ activities
 PERSONALITY AND CREATIVE ACTIVITIES IN ADOLESCENCE
and accomplishments in five domains as discussed above.
Based on conceptual and empirical work, it is predicted
that openness to experience, creative self-efficacy, and
intrinsic motivation will have positive relationships with
activities and accomplishments in five domains, whereas
conscientiousness is predicted to have no relationships with
creative activities. Due to the lack of research on the rela-
tionship of perceived intellectual ability with creative activ-
ities, this examination was exploratory. These relationships
among five personal attributes and five activities domains
were tested simultaneously using confirmatory factor anal-
ysis, where factor correlation coefficients are disattenuated
of measurement errors.
METHOD
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Participants and Procedure
Participants were 456 tenth-grade students from a high
school in Guangzhou, a major metropolitan city in south-
ern China, the capital of Guangdong province, and the
third largest city in China. This school serves Grades
10 through 12. Of the 18 classes of Grade 10, students from
seven classes were invited to participate in this study. These
classes were formed before the beginning of the school year
with the goal of achieving similar achievement levels in the
major subjects across classes.
The data were collected during the afternoon homeroom
period on the same day and time for each measure. The
participating homeroom teachers were informed of the pro-
cedure and were provided with written directions, which
included the purpose of the study, approximate time required
for data collection, and a description of the questionnaire.
Teachers and students were assured of confidentiality. Due to
using different dates for data collection for various question-
naires, not all students were able to complete questionnaires
required for this research, resulting in 439 students for the
study (220 males and 219 females).
Out-of-School Activities in China
After-school programs have become popular in China in
recent years (Boom of After-School Education in China,
2004). These programs are operated by public or private
institutes to meet students’ developmental needs (Education
Bureau, 2012). Such programs enable students to dis-
cover their interests and develop their creative potential.
In Guangzhou, for example, a public organization pro-
vides after-school classes such as music (e.g., string, vocal),
fine arts (e.g., painting, calligraphy), science (e.g., science
experiments, computer programming), literature, foreign
languages, and sports classes. With the intense pressure
for academic success, Chinese parents send their children
to after-school programs to prepare them to become more
competitive (Zhang, 2012). These programs are often geared
95
toward academic subjects, although parents are also inter-
ested in helping their children to experience creative activ-
ities (Yi & Mo, 2012). The information provided here is
from newspapers and government websites; to date, there
have been no research studies that examined out-of-school
activities in China.
Measures
Self-Assessment Questionnaire
The five person variables were measured using the Self-
Assessment Questionnaire (Hong, 2010). Items for openness
to experience and conscientiousness were adapted from
the Big Five Inventory (John, 1990; John, Naumann, &
Soto, 2008) and modified for the current study. Sample
items were “I like to come up with new ideas” (open-
ness; six items) and “I am thorough when completing my
work” (conscientiousness; six items). To assess creative self-
efficacy, four items were developed based on the definition of
creative self-efficacy (Tierney & Farmer, 2002). An exam-
ple of these items, “I am good at generating new ideas,”
illustrates that it measures students’ self-judgment of their
ability to generate new ideas. Intrinsic motivation was mea-
sured using four items developed for assessing participants’
motivational inclination for work involving creativity (Hong,
Hartzell, & Greene, 2009). A sample item was “I prefer the
kind of work for which I can use my imagination or creative
thinking.” For self-perceived intellectual ability, six items
were developed that measure how participants view their
intellectual ability. Examples include “I am smart” and “I
always get very high scores on tests.”
For all items, participants were asked to read each state-
ment and indicate how much it is like them by circling one
of the five options that best describes them. The options were
as follows: 1 (not true at all), 2 (slightly true), 3 (halfway
true), 4 (often true), and 5 (very true). Reliability estimates
(coefficient alpha) for subscales ranged from 0.77 to 0.87.
Activities and Accomplishments Inventory
Participants’ activities and accomplishments in 5 domains
were measured using the Activities and Accomplishments
Inventory (AAI; Hong & Milgram, 2009) short form devel-
oped for adolescents. Five domains included in this form
were music, visual arts, creative writing, science, and tech-
nology. Some domains (e.g., dramatic arts) were not included
in the questionnaire because the out-of-school activities
related to those domains are not as prevalent yet in adoles-
cents in China.
The AAI is a self-report measure of current activities and
accomplishments in talent domains. The AAI is based on
the earlier work of Milgram (1990). Various forms of the
AAI have been used, with adjustments for age with chil-
dren as young as 7 years old (Hong, Milgram, & Gorsky,
1995), adolescents who represent a wide range of intellectual
 96 E. HONG ET AL.
abilities (Milgram & Hong, 1994), and highly intellectually
gifted young adults (Milgram, Hong, Shavit, & Peled, 1997).
Over the years, studies have provided moderate to strong evi-
dence of construct validity of scores from previous versions
of this inventory (Hong & Milgram, 1996; Hong, Whiston, &
Milgram, 1993) and predictive validity utilizing longitudinal
studies (Hong, Milgram, & Whiston, 1993; Milgram et al.,
1997).
Participants were asked to read each sentence and indi-
cate how much it is like them by circling one of the four
options that best describes them. Due to differences in
frequency, intensity, and difficulty of activities and accom-
plishments, several sets of options were used throughout
the inventory. The four options representing the level of
frequencies were not at all, sometimes, very often, and
almost every day or not at all, once, twice, and three or
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more times, depending on the items. When appropriate, the
last anchor almost every day or three or more times was
replaced by more than once a month or almost all the time.
These scales were used to minimize participants’ subjective
interpretations of items and to have scores represent partici-
pants’ levels of activities and accomplishments as closely as
possible.
Each domain included 10 items, with the last item solic-
iting participants’ descriptions of other activities, if any, that
were not listed in the 10 items. The items were listed from
least challenging to most challenging creative activities, and
the last three or four items were regarded as creative accom-
plishments at the high-school level. Provided are sample
items in the creative writing domain: The first item describes
the least challenging writing activities of all the items in
this domain (“I wrote, not as part of required coursework,
a literary piece such as a story, an article, a play, a poem,
or something else that was not published”), whereas the
last item describes the most challenging activity (“I won
a prize in a writing contest”). Item 10 (other activities) in
each domain was discarded from the study because partic-
ipants did not report enough activities that could be used
to elicit categories. Reliability estimates for each domain
ranged from 0.75 to 0.86.
Data Analysis
Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to examine the
covariance structure of the data using EQS 6.1 (Bentler,
2011). Score distributions in music and science indicators
were slightly kurtotic (5.11 to 7.31) and positively skewed
(1.85 to 2.50) compared to the other three domains (visual
arts, creative writing, and technology): kurtosis 0.38 to
2.83 and skewness 0.77 to 1.64. Because scores were also
multivariately kurtotic (Mardia’s coefficient = 35.52), the
evaluation of model adequacy was based on a corrected
nomal-theory test statistic (Yuan-Bentler residual-based test
statistic) of the maximum likelihood estimation and cor-
rected fit indices—comparative fit index (CFI), incremental
fit index (IFI), and root mean square error of approximation
(RMSEA) and its 90% confidence interval. In addition,
standardized residuals and the results of Lagrange multiplier
tests and Wald tests were inspected along with the inves-
tigators’ knowledge of the data and theoretical aspects of
research. Items were parceled to create indicators for each
of the 10 constructs using the information of means and
correlations of items: three indicators each for openness
to experience, conscientiousness, and perceived ability; two
indicators for creative self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation;
and two indicators for each domain activity. Assumptions of
linearity, homoscedasticity, and multicollinearity were met
satisfactorily.
RESULTS
Means and standard deviations and correlation coefficients of
the 23 indicators are presented in Table 1. In general, mean
scores of personal attributes were between 3 (halfway true)
and 4 (often true) on the 5-point scale, with the indicator
scores of openness to experience being slightly higher than
those of the other constructs. Average scores of the activities
were low (all less than 1, between not at all and some-
times). The mean of creative activities for each participant
was computed for all domains together and thus low scores
were expected. That is, most participants were involved in
one or two domains of creative activity, if at all. In addition,
most items measured highly challenging creative activities
or accomplishments. Of the domain activity scores, the tech-
nology indicators showed the highest means, likely due to an
item about engaging in activities on the Internet, which has
become more ubiquitous in recent years.
Correlations among the indicators of a construct within
personal attributes ranged from 0.60 to 0.78 and within the
activities domains from 0.66 to 0.81. Correlations among
personal attributes ranged from 0.06 to 0.77 (median =
0.45) and among activity domains from 0.11 to 0.47
(median = 0.29). Correlations between personality attributes
and activities domains ranged from 0.00 to 0.19 (median =
0.10). These correlation ranges and patterns within, among,
and across personal attributes and activity domains are rather
expected. How these correlation patterns simultaneously
describe relationships among these constructs was tested
next using confirmatory factor analysis.
The measurement model specified 10 latent variables, five
person variables (openness, creative self-efficacy, intrinsic
motivation, conscientiousness, and perceived ability), and
creative activities in five domains (music, visual arts, cre-
ative writing, science, and technology). Each indicator was
constrained to load only on the factor that it was desig-
nated to measure, residual terms for all indicators were fixed
to be uncorrelated, and no equality constraints on factor
loadings were imposed. Factor covariances were free to be
estimated except that covariances of conscientiousness and
perceived intellectual ability with the five domain activities
were constrained to have no relationships.
 Downloaded by [University of Waterloo] at 17:49 29 October 2014

TABLE 1
Means and Standard Deviations and Correlations Among the 23 Indicators
Indicators M (SD) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
1. Open1 3.58 (0.89) —
2. Open2 3.51 (0.86) 0.71∗∗ —
3. Open3 3.58 (0.89) 0.68∗∗ 0.70∗∗ —
4. CSE1 3.37 (0.82) 0.68∗∗ 0.70∗∗ 0.68∗∗ —
5. CSE2 3.40 (0.95) 0.76∗∗ 0.77∗∗ 0.67∗∗ 0.73∗∗ —
6. IM1 3.32 (0.93) 0.16∗∗ 0.21∗∗ 0.18∗∗ 0.24∗∗ 0.18∗∗ —
7. IM2 3.46 (0.93) 0.14∗∗ 0.19∗∗ 0.13∗∗ 0.18∗∗ 0.15∗∗ 0.64∗∗ —
8. Cons1 3.39 (0.78) 0.41∗∗ 0.51∗∗ 0.46∗∗ 0.53∗∗ 0.45∗∗ 0.12∗ 0.13∗∗ —
9. Cons2 3.37 (0.82) 0.40∗∗ 0.50∗∗ 0.48∗∗ 0.50∗∗ 0.45∗∗ 0.11∗ 0.11∗ 0.63∗∗ —
10. Cons3 3.30 (0.81) 0.41∗∗ 0.49∗∗ 0.44∗∗ 0.46∗∗ 0.44∗∗ 0.10∗ 0.11∗ 0.60∗∗ 0.62∗∗ —
11. Pabil1 3.00 (0.82) 0.55∗∗ 0.53∗∗ 0.55∗∗ 0.55∗∗ 0.53∗∗ 0.13∗∗ 0.08 0.47∗∗ 0.43∗∗ 0.45∗∗ —
12. Pabil2 3.31 (0.97) 0.49∗∗ 0.61∗∗ 0.62∗∗ 0.58∗∗ 0.57∗∗ 0.16∗∗ 0.09 0.49∗∗ 0.46∗∗ 0.45∗∗ 0.70∗∗ —
13. Pabil3 3.35 (0.87) 0.57∗∗ 0.65∗∗ 0.71∗∗ 0.65∗∗ 0.62∗∗ 0.14∗∗ 0.06 0.51∗∗ 0.52∗∗ 0.51∗∗ 0.68∗∗ 0.74∗∗ —
14. Music1 0.39 (0.45) 0.09 0.04 0.07 0.01 0.11∗ 0.16∗∗ 0.07 0.04 0.05 −0.02 0.05 0.03 −0.04 —
15. Music2 0.40 (0.50) 0.14∗∗ 0.10∗ 0.09 0.10∗ 0.16∗∗ 0.09 0.07 0.05 0.07 0.00 0.04 0.04 0.00 0.76∗∗ —
16. Art1 0.50 (0.57) 0.16∗∗ 0.17∗∗ 0.14∗∗ 0.14∗∗ 0.19∗∗ 0.17∗∗ 0.18∗∗ 0.06 0.04 0.04 0.04 0.05 0.03 0.38∗∗ 0.36∗∗ —
17. Art2 0.50 (0.67) 0.09 0.13∗∗ 0.09 0.08 0.13∗∗ 0.10∗ 0.11∗ 0.04 0.00 −0.02 −0.02 −0.01 −0.04 0.36∗∗ 0.35∗∗ 0.81∗∗ —
18. CrWrite1 0.37 (0.49) 0.13∗∗ 0.11∗ 0.15∗∗ 0.08 0.16∗∗ 0.10∗ 0.05 0.06 0.03 0.01 0.05 0.09 0.04 0.40∗∗ 0.45∗∗ 0.30∗∗ 0.28∗∗ —
19. CrWrite2 0.39 (0.51) 0.12∗ 0.11∗ 0.14∗∗ 0.07 0.14∗∗ 0.14∗∗ 0.13∗∗ 0.07 0.03 0.00 −0.01 0.05 0.01 0.38∗∗ 0.41∗∗ 0.39∗∗ 0.33∗∗ 0.67∗∗ —
20. Sci1 0.28 (0.51) 0.15∗∗ 0.16∗∗ 0.12∗ 0.18∗∗ 0.19∗∗ 0.16∗∗ 0.13∗∗ 0.10∗ 0.10∗ 0.05 0.07 0.10∗ 0.15∗∗ 0.18∗∗ 0.18∗∗ 0.33∗∗ 0.29∗∗ 0.26∗∗ 0.30∗∗ —
21. Sci2 0.32 (0.43) 0.11∗ 0.14∗∗ 0.10∗ 0.18∗∗ 0.16∗∗ 0.19∗∗ 0.16∗∗ 0.06 0.07 0.04 0.04 0.08 0.12∗ 0.18∗∗ 0.17∗∗ 0.37∗∗ 0.32∗∗ 0.27∗∗ 0.35∗∗ 0.77∗∗ —
22. Tech1 0.76 (0.54) 0.12∗ 0.11∗ 0.12∗ 0.07 0.16∗∗ 0.10∗ 0.01 0.09 0.09 0.03 0.13∗∗ 0.12∗ 0.13∗∗ 0.26∗∗ 0.28∗∗ 0.27∗∗ 0.25∗∗ 0.21∗∗ 0.28∗∗ 0.43∗∗ 0.43∗∗ —
23 Tech2 0.76 (0.74) 0.16∗∗ 0.14∗∗ 0.16∗∗ 0.11∗ 0.19∗∗ 0.12∗ 0.01 0.08 0.10∗ 0.03 0.10∗ 0.16∗∗ 0.16∗∗ 0.19∗∗ 0.16∗∗ 0.18∗∗ 0.15∗∗ 0.11∗ 0.15∗∗ 0.47∗∗ 0.41∗∗ 0.66∗∗ —

Note. Open = openness to experience; CSE = creative self-efficacy; IM = intrinsic motivation; Cons = conscientiousness; Pabil = perceived intellectual ability; Art = visual arts; CrWrite = creative
writing; Sci = science; Tech = technology. N = 439.
∗ p < .05. ∗∗ p < .01.
 98 E. HONG ET AL.

The measurement model fit the data well: Yuan-Bentler
residual-based χ 2 = 226.36, p = .06, CFI = 0.975; IFI =
0.975; RMSEA = 0.035 (95% confidence interval, 0.026,
0.042). Factor loadings were all statistically significant, ps <
.001, with coefficients ranging from 0.77 to 0.95. The relia-
bility coefficient (rho) for the indictors was 0.95 for the 10-
factor model. Variances (R2 ) of the indicators accounted for
by their corresponding constructs ranged from 0.59 to 0.90
(median = 0.70), demonstrating that explained variances
were substantive. The correlations between the latent vari-
ables in the measurement model indicated that quite a
few coefficients, notably those involving conscientiousness,
perceived intellectual ability, and technology, were not
significant.
The modified measurement model with these nonsignif-
icant factor correlations removed fit the data as well as the
initial model: Yuan-Bentler residual-based χ 2 = 233.60, p =
Downloaded by [University of Waterloo] at 17:49 29 October 2014
1. Openness to experience was related to activities and
accomplishments in music, visual arts, and creative
writing but not to activities in science and technology.
2. Creative self-efficacy was related to all but technology-
related activities.
3. Intrinsic motivation was related to visual arts and
science activities.
4. None of the personality or motivation variables were
related to technology activities.
5. Conscientiousness and perceived intellectual ability
were not related to any domain activities (see Table 2).
Effect sizes were small.
DISCUSSION

Adolescents’ activities and accomplishments may represent

.06, CFI = 0.974; IFI = 0.974; RMSEA = 0.035 (95% con-
fidence interval, 0.027, 0.042). Again, factor loadings were
statistically and substantively significant and the coefficients
ranged from 0.76 to 0.95, indicating that all indicators repre-
sent the corresponding constructs well. Variances (R2 ) of the
indicators accounted for by their corresponding constructs
were large, ranging from 0.58 to 0.90 (median = 0.70).
Factor correlations are presented in Table 2. Correlations
among the five person-related constructs were all statisti-
cally significant, with those involving intrinsic motivation
being small to medium in strength and those involving open-
ness to experience and creative self-efficacy demonstrating
strong relationships. Likewise, correlations among activities
domains were statistically significant, with the largest corre-
lation between science and technology and low to medium
strengths in the relationships involving technology.
The correlations of our main interest—that is, the rela-
tionships between five person variables and five domain
activities—demonstrated the following statistical results:
an early stage of creative talent manifestation. Adolescents
select participation activities mostly to satisfy their own
interests and curiosity, although young children’s activities
are largely guided by their parents. Out-of-school activi-
ties that talented adolescents engage in are often highly
challenging, frequently leading to competitions in areas of
their choice. Out-of-school activities can be nonchallenging,
nonintellectual, or noncreative (e.g., watching television).
Creative activities in adolescence are indications of young
people engaged in the process of talent development; their
activities and accomplishments accrue when their cognitive
ability, personal attributes, and environments work together
optimally in the realization of potential talent (Hong &
Milgram, 2008). In the current study, the activities examined
were challenging and of high quality.
The findings indicate that there are some personal
attributes that are common to individuals interested and
active in certain domains, whereas other attributes are not
related to activities in some or any domains. Openness

TABLE 2
Factor Correlations Among the 10 Latent Variables

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

1. Openness — 0.99∗∗∗ 0.23∗∗∗ 0.69∗∗∗ 0.85∗∗∗ 0.08∗ 0.13∗∗∗ 0.11∗∗ NA NA

2. CSE — 0.24∗∗∗ 0.69∗∗∗ 0.82∗∗∗ 0.10∗ 0.14∗∗ 0.09∗ 0.07∗ NA
3. IM — 0.17∗∗ 0.14∗ NA 0.14∗ NA 0.14∗ NA
4. Conscien — 0.73∗∗∗ NA NA NA NA NA
5. Perceived ability — NA NA NA NA NA
6. Music — 0.43∗∗∗ 0.57∗∗∗ 0.20∗∗ 0.31∗∗∗
7. Visual arts — 0.43∗∗∗ 0.40∗∗∗ 0.28∗∗∗
8. Creative writing — 0.39∗∗∗ 0.29∗∗∗
9. Science — 0.60∗∗∗
10. Technology —

Note. Openness = openness to experience; CSE = creative self-efficacy; IM = intrinsic motivation; Conscien = conscientiousness; Ability =
perceived ability; Writing = creative writing. N = 439. NA = Not applicable due to the constraints (no correlations) imposed on these
relationships. Significance levels reflect the corrected test statistics.
∗ p < .05. ∗∗ p < .01. ∗∗∗ p < .001.
 PERSONALITY AND CREATIVE ACTIVITIES IN ADOLESCENCE
to experience, recognized as a creative personality trait
(Dollinger et al., 2004; Feist, 1998; Feist & Barron, 2003;
Furnham & Chamorro-Premuzic, 2004; Silvia et al., 2009),
demonstrated strong relationships with activities in all arts
domains examined in this study but not with science and
technology activities, distinguishing artistic creative activi-
ties from nonartistic creative activities in adolescents. A sim-
ilar pattern was demonstrated in Ivcevic and Mayer (2009),
where artistic creativity (e.g., fine arts) was distinguished
from intellectual creativity (e.g., science, technology) in the
analysis of participants’ personalities and activities.
The lack of relationships of conscientiousness with
all domains of creative activities in adolescents found
in this study support previous findings (Dollinger et al.,
2004; Feist, 1998; Reiter-Palmon, Illies, & Kobe-Cross,
2009). Conscientiousness consistently demonstrated a
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negative or no relationship with art activities (e.g., Furnham
et al., 2006; Wolfradt & Pretz, 2001). Some art-related
activities such as playing musical instruments, however,
demonstrated positive, although negligible, relationships
(McManus & Furnham, 2006). This is not surprising because
conscientiousness might be helpful for those individuals
participating in activities such as learning to play an instru-
ment. Furnham and Chamorro-Premuzic’s (2004) findings
that openness to experience was related to art experience
(i.e., preference) but not to art judgment (i.e., ability) and
that intelligence was significantly related to art judgment
but not to art experience also supports the contention that
relationships of openness and conscientiousness to creative
art activities show reverse trends.
Similarly, perceived intellectual ability was not
related to any of the creative domain activities in ado-
lescence. Significant relationships of intelligence and
conscientiousness with academic achievement have been
evidenced (Deary, Strand, Smith, & Fernandes, 2007; Laidra,
Pullmann, & Allik, 2007). The current findings explicitly
demonstrated that “perceived” intellectual abilities—that
is, whether students thought they are smart or make good
grades or not—had little to do with engagement in creative
activities in any domains examined in this study. Although
gifted students viewed their own ability as contributing
to their self-assessed academic and nonacademic success
in another study (Siegle, Da Visa Rubenstein, Pollard, &
Romey, 2010), this relationship was not extended to chal-
lenging creative activities and accomplishments. However,
research involving perceived intellectual ability with creative
activities is limited, warranting more investigation.
Interestingly, creative self-efficacy was found to be related
to all domain activities examined in this study, except for
technology. Self-confidence is one of the many traits (e.g.,
independence, autonomy, attraction to the complex) found in
creative individuals (Batey & Furnham, 2006; Feist, 2006).
That is, the importance of self-efficacy in creative accom-
plishments continues to be supported by research includ-
ing the current study (Beghetto, 2006; Gong et al., 2009;
Jaussi et al., 2007). The lack of a relationship of creative
99
self-efficacy with technology activities may indicate the wide
availability of the Internet and computers to adolescents all
over the world in recent years, thus not distinguishing adoles-
cents demonstrating different levels of creative interest and
competence in this domain. That is, the number of activi-
ties in the technology domain may not consistently relate
to the degree of adolescents’ creative self-efficacy. Similar
speculations apply to all other personality and motiva-
tional traits that demonstrated no link to technology domain
activities.
Intrinsic motivation demonstrated interesting results in
this study. It was the only person-related construct that was
significantly related to both art and science creative activi-
ties, although in only two domains (visual arts and science).
The participants in this study were adolescents. Although
some high-school students were engaged in creative activ-
ities and some may be highly accomplished in certain
domains, some of these adolescents were likely participat-
ing in activities still under the influence of their parents,
who pressure their children to participate in out-of-school
activities with the intention of helping them advance talent
development efforts. That is, although intrinsically motivated
individuals tend to be engaged in activities because they per-
ceive them as interesting and enjoyable (Deci & Ryan, 1985),
intrinsic motivation is yet to be developed fully in some
adolescents even if they might have been active in certain
domains.
In summary, Chinese adolescents who are active and/or
accomplished in arts-related domains (music, visual arts,
creative writing) viewed themselves as open to experience,
confident at producing creative work, and/or intrinsically
motivated, largely replicating previous work on artistically
talented individuals. Conscientiousness and perceived intel-
lectual ability were not related to activities and accomplish-
ments in any creative domains investigated in the study.
Conscientiousness has been found to have no or a negative
relationship with creative performance, although there are
some inconsistent findings. The current findings contribute to
the recognition that although intellectual and creative ability
are both cognitive ability and related, they are distinguish-
able. Adolescents involved in this study were typical 10th
graders in a large metropolitan area in China, where mod-
ernization is taking place rapidly. However, the activities data
with low means in all domains indicate that challenging cre-
ative activities are yet to be common to these adolescents.
The patterns of relationships demonstrated in this study did
support previous understandings, with an additional clar-
ification regarding the relationship between self-perceived
intellectual ability and creative activities.
Limitations and Future Research
The current study examined only five domains of creative
activities. The relationship between person variables and cre-
ative activities is dependent on domain and field. Sung and
Choi (2009), for example, found that in business extrinsic
 100 E. HONG ET AL.
motivation was one of the important traits that predicted
creative performance. Thus, it is important that various age-
appropriate representative domains should be tested simulta-
neously to fully understand the relationship. Likewise, other
personal–psychological traits may be included in research
examining this relationship. For instance, effort and per-
severance are important resources for the development of
creativity (Perkins, 1994; Torrance, 1988). These and other
variables such as goal orientation in talent development
warrant future research.
Although the trait–activity relationship was not expected
to be large—that is, why students engage in certain activ-
ities is explained by numerous variables, and personality
trait is just one of the many variables impacting adoles-
cent activities—readers are cautioned that the sizes of the
relationships in this study were small. The correlations of
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openness and creative self-efficacy indicators were between
0.67 and 0.77, and the factor correlation was close to 1.
The two constructs are conceptually distinct, requiring fur-
ther research with different samples to determine conceptual
as well as empirical distinctions between the two constructs.
A structural equation model of relationships among person
variables and activities in various domains would be an inter-
esting future research endeavor for determining causal links
among these variables.
Empirical studies examining relationships of person or
motivation variables with creative activities and accomplish-
ments in adolescents and young children are limited. The
current research studied 10th graders in China. More stud-
ies are warranted with samples representing various cultures
to determine whether the findings hold in other populations.
Cross-sectional research with different age groups would be
an interesting study for understanding when the trait–activity
relationship begins to emerge.
CONCLUSIONS
Creative activities are stimulating, challenging, and require
serious involvement and perseverance. With these charac-
teristics of creative activities, personality traits will play an
important role when children and adolescents begin to find
areas of interest and get involved in creative activities. The
current findings support this conjecture and provide initial
evidence for a theory of trait–activity relationships in adoles-
cent. The link between personal attributes and creative activ-
ities is only one aspect of personal–psychological factors
contributing to the development of talent potential. However,
the findings help us understand that creative personality and
motivation may matter in the early pursuit of creative activi-
ties and that some traits such as conscientiousness and ability
perception may not be as pertinent to the development of
creative talent as they are to the development of intellec-
tual excellence. That is, creative personal traits appear to
introduce some variability in the developmental trajectory
of creative talents. The current findings help make this
relationship more explicit.
The fields of design and the arts value creativity explicitly,
whereas in science, technology, or engineering the place for
creativity is less explicit. Because the current study shows a
strong tie between creative personality and artistic domains,
it is all the more important to give serious thought to how we
extend creativity into nonartistic domains, where creativity
is sorely needed for generating creative ideas and products
to advance human endeavors.
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AUTHOR BIOS

Eunsook Hong is professor of educational psychology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her areas of research
interest include creativity, giftedness, motivation, self-regulation, and homework. Books published include Preventing
Talent Loss and Homework: Motivation and Learning Preferences. E-mail: eunsook.hong@unlv.edu

Yun Peng is a doctoral student of educational psychology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her research
focuses on three primary areas: creative thinking, study strategies, and homework. Research methodology is another
area of concentration, including qualitative and quantitative research design with advanced statistics such as structural
equation modeling. E-mail: pengy@unlv.nevada.edu
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Harry O’Neil is Professor of Educational Psychology and Technology at the University of Southern California and
a project director at the UCLA National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing. He
is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Educational Research Association. His
research includes workforce readiness, measures of creativity, self-regulation, and training effects on games. E-mail:
honeil@usc.edu