Predicting creativity from personality traits and overexcitabilities: Cross-cultural evidence from Lebanon and the United States

This cross-cultural study examined how demographic factors, the Big Five personality traits, and overexcitabilities predict creativity across five domains: everyday, scholarly, performance, scientific, and artistic. Data were collected from 1020 university students (407 males, 613 females) enrolled at four universities across the United States (n = 505) and Lebanon (n = 515). Using domain-specific self-report measures of creativity, the study investigated the relative contributions of age, gender, country, personality traits, and five forms of overexcitability (psychomotor, intellectual, sensual, emotional, and imaginational). Results showed that creativity is both domain-specific and culturally embedded. Creativity domains were predicted by varying combinations of nationality, personality, and overexcitability factors, with some straightforward relationships. For instance, although scholarly creativity was associated with intellectual overexcitability, performance and artistic creativity were related to greater sensual and imaginational overexcitabilities. Results suggest a new avenue for investigating individual differences in creative domains, along with demographics and personality traits.