Trait Number 1 - Energy
Energy manifestations of the creative personality type
The creative person has a wide range of energy potential, yet they are often found to be resting quietly. They might work for hours and hours on end while focusing on a creative endeavor, yet feel overly exhausted after only a few hours of shopping. They can focus their energy with great concentration on projects that foster their creativity, sometimes with an amazing degree of enthusiasm and freshness. The same is true in their intimate relationships. When they are "turned on", its white hot. When they are not, it is cold as ice. And both situations feel perfectly normal and comfortable for the creative mind!
Trait Number 2 - Intelligence
Creative personality types tend to be naïve yet smart at the same time. Their degree of "smartness" is in question. More than likely, a "g factor" or core general intelligence, is high in creative people. In turn, they are able to use their general intelligence in a cooperative and highly creative way, thereby gleaning every morsel of intelligence from their minds. Through this intelligence, they are able to make remarkable, important, noteworthy creative contributions.
Trait Number 3 - Self-Discipline
The creative mind combines discipline and playfulness, or irresponsibility and responsibility. It goes without saying that a light, playful attitude is standard among creative individuals. Yet this certain playfulness does not do well without an antithesis of endurance, doggedness, and perseverance.
Playful, willy-nilly ideas are the foundation for many of the world's most famous works of art, yet the artist is often firm about dedication and hard work. When the creative person mentions that they are a painter, sculptor, beadwork artist, or any other type of artist, the response is often, "Oh how wonderful! Your work must be very exciting." The artist therefore might reply, "What is so great about it? Its like being a carpenter, or a mason, at least half of the time." The other party does not want to hear these facts, because to them, the world of art represents a fantasy realm, where time and space do not exist, and creative juices flow unhindered. In reality, the creative person knows that art is hard work, and sometimes, this hard work takes a great deal of energy out of them.
Trait Number 4 - Imagination
The creative personality type tends to alternate between fantasy and imagination, and a solid sense of reality. Great science and great art require a leap of the imagination, exploring a realm where things are quite different from the present world. The bulk of society thinks of these new ideas or thoughts as mere fantasy, which has nothing to do with current reality. Perhaps they are right, a degree.
The point of science and art, however, is to stretch ourselves beyond our current level of understanding, thereby forming a new sense of reality. Despite this "escape from reality," the journey is not to never-never land. Instead, the creative mind is able to keep one foot firmly planted in the real world while poking their heads through the looking glass of fantasy. Creative personality types crane their necks to see beyond the boundaries of reality, then snap back to the world as we know it and share their insight.
Most non-creative people assume that painters, poets, writers, musicians, and all other types of artists are drenched in fantasy. Likewise, they may believe that businesspeople, politicians, and scientists are realists, sticking with the facts and the figures. Perhaps these ideas are accurate when it comes to daily routines. But when it comes to working creatively, all bets are thrown to the side.
Trait Number 5 - Introversion and Extroversion
Creative people are both introverted and extroverted. At any given point in time, they could be one or the other. Sometimes they might enjoy being is huge crowds, watching a show, engaging in a whirlwind of activity with others, or yelling at the top of their lungs on the sidelines of a ballgame. In other cases, they might prefer to sit quietly and listen to the ballgame from their car stereo.
When it comes to the research in psychology, introversion and extroversion are considered highly stable and reliable personality traits. These traits differentiate people one from another. It is assumed that these two personality traits will, for the most part, remain the same throughout one's lifetime. For the creative person, however, both traits can be exhibited simultaneously. A trained psychologists knows this phenomenon and is able to recognize it accordingly. However, to the outsider looking in, the creative mind could appear a little off-center. Do they like people, or don't they? Why did they enjoy going out to a party last week, but this week seem to have an aversion to it.
Trait Number 6 - Pride
Creative personality types are proud and humble at the same time. It is interesting to meet some famous artist, expecting them to be superficial or arrogant, only to find that they are rather shy and will not accept praise for what they do. When a renown painter is celebrated for his work, he may stand before the crowd and say, "All I did was splatter a little paint here and there and put a frame around it." A great Native American beadwork artist, while receiving accolades by admirers of her work, may reply, "My things have lots of mistakes in them. I am not perfect by any means! There are many artists much more talented than I am."
Creative people know that, when compared with other artists, they might stand out in the crowd. They also know that their accomplishments mean a lot to other people. This knowledge gives them a certain sense of pride, and even security. Yet, at the same time, they are humbled by the thought that many people are better than they, and in reality, perhaps their accomplishments are a grain of sand in the desert.
Trait Number 7 - Gender Roles
Creative personality types, to a certain extent, escape the rigorous stereotyping of gender roles. When a test of feminine and masculine roles are administered to young people, there emerges a trend of opposites among the creative minded. Girls who are talented and creative tend to be tougher and more dominant than other girls, while creative boys show less aggression and more sensitivity than their peers.
Androgyny is common in this sense of the word among the creative population. Sadly, the non-creative population miscategorizes these traits, thereby labeling them in purely sexual ways. The dominate, creative girl might be misunderstood and labeled "lesbian", while the shy and sensitive artistic male is labeled "gay."
Trait Number 8 - Conservation and Rebellion
The creative person has a tendency to be both conservative and rebellious, traditional and extraordinary, "normal" and "abnormal." These individuals recognize that failing to stretch one's boundaries causes stagnation, leaving the world unchanged or unimproved. At the same time, they know that constant risk-taking without consideration for past values rarely fosters novelty or improvement. The creative person might be a bit rebellious, but only to an extent. They might lean toward folk traditions in their paintings, calling this their "home," but yet venture into abstract art, pottery, or ceramics on the side.
The creative person feels that going against the grain is not only desired, but necessary for the creative process. After all, if everyone did everything exactly as it has always been done, nothing would ever change, nor would there by anything new or inspiring. Imagine if the first stained glass artists never tried their hand at putting pieces of glass together because it was "abnormal." What if Mozart never wrote his famous works because it was unorthodox to play anything but religious-related music? What if the civil rights movement or the right to vote never became manifest, simply because it went against the traditions of the past?
Trait Number 9 - Passion
The majority of creative individuals are exceptionally passionate about what they do, but at the same time, they can display an extreme degree of objectivity as well. Without passion, the artist loses interest in difficult creative tasks. Without objectivity, the creation lacks credibility and may not be very good.
Creative people feel that it is important to detach themselves from their work. In this way, they do not so deeply identify with their work that they are unable to accept criticism or response. Likewise, during the creative process artists remain deeply passionate, throwing all of themselves into their work.
Trait Number 10 - Sensitivity and Openness
The sensitivity and openness of creative people often sets them up for pain and suffering, while at the same time rewarding them with a huge amount of enjoyment. They are often lone rangers at the front of their artistic discipline, leaving them vulnerable and exposed. Eminence often invites vicious attacks and criticism. When a creative person has invested a large amount of their time and energy into creating a masterpiece, or a medical researcher in creating a breakthrough vaccine for AIDS, it hurts them deeply when nobody cares.
Deep involvement and interest in obscurity and unusual subjects is often unrewarded, and may induce ridicule. Divergent thinkers are often viewed as deviant individuals by the rest of society. For this reason, the creative personality type might feel misunderstood and isolated.
Perhaps most difficult of all is bearing a sense of emptiness and loss when, for one reason or another, the creative person cannot work. This can happen when they feel like their creative juices are drying up, or when physical ailments prevent them from expressing themselves artistically.
When these same individuals are working in the area that they love, which often tends to be their area of expertise, cares and worries fall to the wayside, thereby replaced by bliss and happiness.
Trait Number 11 - Creation
On a final note, perhaps the most noteworthy, important characteristic of all, the one which is consistently found in every creative person, is creation for the sake of creating. They enjoy making things just so they can say that they did something and to feel joy in the creation process. If this trait were not present, poets would stop reaching for the goal of perfection and churn out commercial jingles instead. Economists would stop teaching at public universities and turn their attention toward banking endeavors, where their incomes would at least triple. Talented physicists would join with industrialized laboratories and throw their basic research projects away.
