The relationship between creativity and psychosocial development among college honors students and non-honors students.

摘要

The purpose of this study was to determine if there was a difference in measures of creativity and psychosocial development in college Honors and Non-Honors students and also to determine interaction effects of demographic and academic background data. Additionally, another purpose was to establish any relationship between measures of creativity and psychosocial development. Of the 284 college students participating, 120 were honors students and 164 were non-honors students. Participants were administered the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) Verbal Form B, Activities 4 and 5 and the Student Development Task and Lifestyle Assessment (SDTLA). The TTCT included scales of fluency, flexibility, originality, and average standard creativity score. The SDTLA includes the measurement of three developmental tasks, ten subtasks, and two scales. The participants were volunteers and were tested in four regularly scheduled classes during the 2006 spring and summer semesters.Two-tailed independent t-tests performed on the dependent variables of the TTCT indicated that the Non-Honors student's scores were statistically significantly higher on fluency, originality, and the average standard creativity measures. On the average standard score, which is considered the best overall gauge of creative power, neither Non-Honors nor Honors student groups TTCT scores were considered higher than weak (0-16%) (Torrance, 1990). The results of the two-tailed independent t-tests performed on the dependent variables of the SDTLA resulted in the statistically significant higher development outcome scores in the Honors students. The mean SDTLA scores of both the Honors and Non-Honors scores were not outside of norm group average scores. The MANOVA data produced moderately statistically significant interaction effects between classification level and fluency. However, the post hoc tests did not confirm the difference in classification and fluency. Additional MANOVA data indicated a significant interaction effect between ethnicity and Lifestyle Planning (LP), and post hoc analysis confirmed the interaction with significant differences in Caucasian and "Other" students. Classification level significantly interacted with eight of the fourteen development outcomes, nevertheless the post hoc tests showed inconsistent differences between classification groups within the developmental outcomes. Correlations between the TTCT and SDTLA did not yield statistically significant relationships between the creativity and psychosocial development variables.