دانلود مقاله ISI انگلیسی شماره 32049
ترجمه فارسی عنوان مقاله

اسکیزوتایپی و خلاقیت: اتصال تکاملی؟

عنوان انگلیسی
Schizotypy and creativity: an evolutionary connection?
کد مقاله سال انتشار تعداد صفحات مقاله انگلیسی
32049 2001 12 صفحه PDF
منبع

Publisher : Elsevier - Science Direct (الزویر - ساینس دایرکت)

Journal : Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 31, Issue 7, November 2001, Pages 1067–10

ترجمه کلمات کلیدی
- اسکیزوتایپی - خلاقیت - تفکر واگرا - تکامل
کلمات کلیدی انگلیسی
Schizotypy; Creativity; Divergent thinking; Evolution
پیش نمایش مقاله
پیش نمایش مقاله  اسکیزوتایپی و خلاقیت: اتصال تکاملی؟

چکیده انگلیسی

Previous researchers have suggested that there might be an association between psychotic traits and creativity, and that this association might explain the retention of psychosis genes in the gene pool. A multidimensional measure of schizotypal traits, the Oxford-Liverpool Inventory of Feelings and Experiences, and Torrance tests of divergent thinking were administered to humanities and creative arts students. Students in the creative arts scored higher on the unusual experiences dimension of schizotypy in comparison with the humanities students. For the students as a whole, divergent thinking scores were predicted by scores on the unusual experiences dimension of schizotypy. Further analyses suggested that this association was accounted for by degree subject (humanities vs creative arts), and no direct association between schizotypy and divergent thinking could be demonstrated in either group of students. However, the unusual experiences dimension was a significant predictor of engagement in the verbal arts, even when degree subject was controlled for. The findings indicate that schizotypy may play a role in determining creative pursuits, but does not contribute directly to divergent thinking. Future studies should explore both direct and indirect paths linking schizotypy to creativity.

مقدمه انگلیسی

In his celebrated textbook on Dementia Praecox or the Group of Schizophrenias, Eugen Bleuler (1911/1950) observed that: “There is such a thing as latent schizophrenia and I almost believe that it is the most frequently occurring form even though it comes under treatment the least often.... All the symptoms and symptom combinations which can be found in the fully developed illness can appear here in nuce.” This hypothesis of a continuum between psychosis and normal functioning was developed further by Kretschmer (1925), who argued that there are normal personality types associated with both schizophrenia and manic depression. However, modern research on this continuum began with the work of Meehl (1962), who attempted to explain the results of genetic studies of schizophrenia by arguing that a susceptibility to the disorder, known as schizotaxia, was inherited, rather than full-blown mental illness. According to Meehl, schizotaxic individuals show schizotypal personality characteristics in the absence of mental illness, unless exposed to environmental hazards, in which case a psychiatric disorder becomes evident. Subsequent studies in the United States (e.g. Chapman and Chapman, 1980, Chapman et al., 1976, Eckblad and Chapman, 1983 and Eckblad and Chapman, 1986) and in Great Britain (e.g. Claridge, 1985 and Claridge and Broks, 1984) showed that questionnaire measures could identify a substantial proportion of the normal population that has experienced psychotic-like experiences. More recent investigations have revealed that psychotic traits have a multidimensional structure. For example, Bentall, Claridge and Slade (1989) found that scores on schizotypy scales loaded on four main factors: cognitive and perceptual experiences (presumably related to the positive forms of psychotic symptomatology); anxiety and cognitive disorganisation; anhedonia and introversion; and impulsive nonconformity. Similar results have been obtained in other studies, including a much larger sample recruited by Claridge's group ( Claridge et al., 1996), leading Mason, Claridge and Jackson (1995) to devise a new instrument to detect the four dimensions of psychotic traits. The development of models that emphasize a continuum (or continua) between psychotic traits and normal functioning may help to address one of the most puzzling aspects of psychosis, namely the persistence of psychotic traits within populations over many generations. Studies of patient populations indicate that psychosis has grim implications for survival and reproduction. Patients often have difficulty maintaining employment, are relatively poor, are often socially isolated, face a high risk of early death from suicide, and enjoy less reproductive success than normal individuals (Jablensky, 1995). As Huxley et al. (1964) pointed out, unless these social and reproductive disadvantages of psychosis are balanced by advantages, genes that confer vulnerability to psychiatric disorder should be selected out over successive generations. Huxley et al. reasoned that a physiological advantage experienced by the nonaffected relatives of schizophrenia patients, such as resistance to infection, might compensate for the selective disadvantage of lower survival and fertility experienced by patients. Jarvick and Chadwick (1972) noted the lack of corroborative evidence for this hypothesis and argued instead that the behavioural and personality characteristics associated with psychosis might confer advantages in the social rather than the physical domain. They suggested that genes for paranoia encourage a healthy defensiveness in threatening environments. More recently, Stevens and Price (1996) have argued that schizophrenia genes facilitate the splitting of overlarge groups in primitive societies. However, these hypotheses are highly speculative and the only substantial research exploring the possible benefits of madness has focused on creativity. Associations between madness and creative genius have been noted by observers from ancient Greek times through to the modern era, “partly fostered by a notion of creativity as involving divine intervention or dictate, i.e. some kind of mystical, mysterious, and inchoate eruption from the ‘sea of unconsciousness’.... from which madness was also, popularly, thought to emerge” (Brod, 1997, p. 277). More recently, Eysenck (1993) has proposed a detailed and complex model of creativity that attempts to explain this apparent association. He has argued that cognitive characteristics associated with high scores on his psychoticism personality dimension, particularly the tendency towards over-inclusive thinking, would tend to facilitate originality (defined as a trait), which, in optimum circumstances, would lead to creativity (defined as achievement). Some modern investigators have attempted empirical tests of the association between creativity and psychopathology by means of biographical studies, designed to discover the extent to which historically important creative individuals have experienced psychotic or related disorders. These studies have generally demonstrated a closer relationship between creative achievement and mood disorders than between creative achievement and schizophrenia. For example, Jamison (1989) studied 47 British writers and artists and found that 38% had been treated for mood disorders. Ludwig (1995) surveyed data on 1004 people judged to be influential in the twentieth century, and observed high rates of alcoholism, schizophrenia and mood disorders. Post (1996) reported a study of 291 eminent British and American achievers, finding that episodic psychiatric conditions had occurred in the majority although mood disorders were again more evident than schizophrenia. Post also found that the majority of those he studied had close relatives with histories of severe psychiatric conditions, which included mood disorder and schizophrenia. In order to avoid the uncertainties inherent in historical research, other investigators have examined currently living creative individuals. Andreasen (1987) studied members of the University of an Iowa's writer's workshop and their families and found a very high rate of mood disorder compared with controls. Rates of psychiatric illness were also higher in the close relatives of writers compared to the relatives of the controls. Jamison (1993) interviewed award-winning European writers, poets, painters, sculptors and blues musicians and found that approximately half had suffered from a major depressive episode, and that nearly two thirds exhibited recurrent cyclothymic and hypomanic tendencies. Taking a different approach, some researchers have attempted to find evidence of abnormal creativity in psychiatric patients and their relatives. These studies have demonstrated an association between creativity and both schizophrenia and mood disorder. Keefe and Magaro (1980) compared paranoid and nonparanoid schizophrenia patients with psychiatric and normal controls on several measures of creativity. The nonparanoid schizophrenia patients scored higher than the other groups on an ‘unusual uses’ test which required participants to think of novel uses for familiar objects. Karlsson (1984) examined the occupational status of relatives of schizophrenia patients admitted to hospital in Iceland between 1851 and 1940. Using available records to enable a comparison with the general population, he showed that the first-degree relatives of the patients significantly more often entered creative occupations. Richards, Kinney, Lundy and Benet (1988) administered a lifetime creativity scale to manic-depressive patients, hypomanic patients, normal first degree relatives of these patients, and both normal and psychiatric controls. Hypomanic and normal relatives scored higher than either the manic-depressives or the normal controls. Direct comparisons of mentally ill patients with abnormally creative but mentally well individuals have yielded more equivocal results. Dykes and McGhie (1976) tested schizophrenia patients and two groups of students scoring high and low on a measure of creativity on several measures of attention. The schizophrenia patients and the highly creative normal controls both showed evidence of abnormally wide attention. However, the highly creative normals, unlike the schizophrenia patients, were able to ignore distracting information and focus their attention as circumstances demanded. Andreasen and Powers (1975) compared their group of Iowan writers with both manic and schizophrenia patients using an object sorting test. The creative writers appeared to be more similar to the manic patients than the schizophrenia patients. In particular, both the manic patients and the writers showed evidence of overinclusive thinking whereas the schizophrenia patients tended to be underinclusive. The evolutionary hypothesis linking madness to creativity implies that the benefit from psychosis genes will be most felt by those who have the genes without being overtly psychotic. For this reason, studies of the relationship between the full spectrum of psychotic traits and creativity are likely to be especially revealing. Several studies in this area have been inspired by Eysenck's personality theory and his model of creativity. In three studies of faculty and students in a Canadian university, Rushton (1990) found an association between measures based on Eysenck's concept of psychoticism and various measures of creativity, including publication counts (in the faculty) and a measure of divergent thinking (administered to the students). Stavrido and Furnham (1996) found a significant association between psychoticism and divergent thinking in a small student sample. In a series of studies also of undergraduate students, Rawlings et al. (1998) found close associations between psychoticism, openness to experience, sensation-seeking and creativity as measured by divergent thinking and a preference for complex random polygons. Merten and Fischer (1999) found that psychoticism scores were elevated in a sample of writers and actors compared with less creative controls. On a word association task, the creative group showed less evidence of typical responding than the normal controls, but their responses included very few logical errors and therefore differed from those of a psychiatric control group. Two other studies have explored the relationship between creativity and schizotypal traits assessed using measures keyed to the clinical concept of schizotypy developed by Meehl and his followers. In a small study of British Open University undergraduates, Chadwick (1997) observed a strong correlation between the unusual uses test of creativity and scores on Claridge's STA scale, which is based on the DSM-III definition of schizotypal personality disorder. However, the only study published to date which has examined the relationship between creativity across more than one measure of psychotic traits was conducted by Schuldberg (1990) who found that unusual perceptual experiences, hypomanic traits and impulsive nonconformity were related to creativity scores in a large sample of students. In this paper we report a study of the relationship between psychotic traits and creativity conducted with a student population, using the Oxford-Liverpool Inventory of Feelings and Experiences (Mason et al., 1995) designed to assess psychotic traits across the four dimensions of unusual experiences, introverted anhedonia, cognitive disorganisation and impulsive nonconformity. On the basis of the previous research described above we expected to find a positive association between creativity and the unusual experiences dimension of schizotypy. Because of the difficulties of defining and operationalising the concept of creativity, three indices were employed. First, the participants were selected from courses in the creative arts (presumed high on creativity) and the humanities (presumed less creative). Second, we employed a measure of divergent thinking which previous researchers have employed to study creativity. Third, we asked the participants to report the extent to which they were involved in creative activities in their everyday lives.