Personality traits and life experiences influencing highly creative people: Six life stories

Throughout qualitative methods this work examines life stories of six highly creative men (puppeteer, social scientist, painter and electrical engineering) and women (dancer & biologist) from both scientific and artistic fields. Salient life events and their own accounts of external and internal influences that they considered crucial in developing their high creative potential were analyzed in order to discern the degree in which experiences, education, personality and genetics combined to explain their highly creative performances. Differences between artistic and scientific creativity were found. Artistic creativity onsets earlier in life in a rather spontaneous fashion, whereas scientific creativity emerges later in life, and it is related to educational experiences. Likewise, scientific personality tended to be more stable over time whereas artistic creative productivity is episodic and rather inspirational. Familiar influences over their actual professional life were explained better by contextual rather than genetic influences, since none of their parents had the same profession. Activities in the family fostered the like and orientation for their work. Challenges and limitations in studying creative personalities are discussed in light of the procedures and results. It is argued that by studying life stories of highly creative people, may yield relevant information on how to foster creativity and understand highly creative individuals.