خلاقیت، شخصیت، و رفتار جمع اوری

Compulsive hoarding is a debilitating illness that is characterized by excessive collection of and failure to discard items, irrespective of their uselessness or hazardousness. Anecdotal evidence suggests that individuals who hoard may be more creative than individuals without hoarding behavior; however, this hypothesis has never been tested empirically. In the present study, we examined the relationship between hoarding symptoms and performance on a series of creativity measures. We also explored the extent to which hoarding symptoms were associated with factors such as personality, impulsivity, distress tolerance, and attitudes about money and the environment. Our findings revealed no significant associations between hoarding behavior and any measure of creativity. Hoarding behavior was also unrelated to attitudes about money or concern about the environment. However, consistent with previous research, hoarding tendencies were correlated with higher levels of neuroticism and impulsivity, as well as with lower levels of conscientiousness and distress tolerance. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Compulsive hoarding is a debilitating illness that is characterized by excessively collecting and failing to discard items, irrespective of their uselessness or hazardousness. Until recently, hoarding was considered a subtype of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), but is now categorized as its own disorder (“hoarding disorder”) in the DSM-5 (APA, 2013). With a lifetime prevalence of 2–5% (Samuels et al., 2008, Iervolino et al., 2009 and Mueller et al., 2009), pathological hoarding behavior often results in cluttered or uninhabitable living spaces, as well as significant distress or impairment to individuals with this disorder (Frost and Hartl, 1996). Cognitive-behavioral models of hoarding suggest that individuals who suffer from this disorder possess information-processing deficits that adversely affect their attention, decision-making, and memory (Frost and Hartl, 1996). However, Tolin et al. (2007) observed that many of the patients they have treated are “highly intelligent, clever and creative people” (p. 34) and hypothesize that these attributes may, in fact, contribute to their hoarding tendencies. In what they refer to as an example of elaborative processing, the authors explain that individuals who hoard see many uses for a single object, but that this “creativity exceeds [their] physical capacity to carry out the plans…” (p. 34). Indeed, it is possible that people who hoard are more creative than those who do not hoard. However, to our knowledge, this hypothesis has never been tested empirically. In the current study, we examined the relationship between hoarding symptoms and three distinct measures of creativity. We hypothesized that hoarding symptoms would be positively associated with performance on a divergent thinking creativity task that specifically asked about different uses for specific objects. However, we expected that this association would be confined to this one domain of creativity because it is only this aspect that seems directly relevant to the acquisition of or reluctance to discard items. Accordingly, we did not expect to see associations between hoarding tendencies and the two other measures of creativity, which assess creative achievement and creative personality attributes. If this study does identify a link between hoarding behavior and increased creativity, it may have clinical implications for people who suffer from pathological hoarding. Identifying a creative aspect of their personality may help these individuals to see themselves in a more positive light, thus potentially alleviating some of their emotional distress. Although creativity measures were our primary outcome of interest, we also examined the association between hoarding behavior and a number of other variables in an attempt to better understand factors that may contribute to the development or maintenance of this disorder. Prior research has identified increased levels of impulsivity (Timpano et al., 2013) and neuroticism and lower levels of conscientiousness (LaSalle-Ricci et al., 2006) and distress tolerance (Timpano et al., 2009) in hoarding samples relative to people with no hoarding behavior. We therefore included measures of these variables in an attempt to replicate these findings in a different population. Indeed, it is possible that individuals who hoard have a difficult time resisting the impulse to collect items and tolerating the distress they feel when getting rid of objects they deem valuable or important. Moreover, other studies have failed to find evidence for differences between people who do and do not hoard in attitudes about the environment (Frost et al., 1995) or in material deprivation (Frost and Gross, 1993). In the present study, we included measures that have not been previously used in this population to further investigate the association of these variables with hoarding tendencies. Given that the Environmental Conscientiousness questionnaire used by Frost et al. (1995) was developed almost two decades ago, we thought it would be worthwhile to create an updated Environmental Concern Scale that incorporates questions about new environmentally-friendly technology such as electric cars. Likewise, whereas Frost and Gross (1993) included a single question about material deprivation in their study, we wanted to include a more comprehensive measure of early financial hardship that focused on deprivation during childhood. It is possible that both increased concern for saving the environment and a history of financial hardship can contribute to a hoarding sample׳s reluctance to waste (and hence discard) items. Therefore, in the present study, we predicted that hoarding behaviors would be associated with higher levels of both of these variables.