Personality and Individual Differences 152 (2020) 109555

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Personality and Individual Differences

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/paid

Short Communication

Connections between curiosity, flow and creativity T

Nicola S. Schutte , John M. Malouff
⁎

University of New England, Australia

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: Previous research has shown that greater curiosity, the desire to know, is associated with more creativity, which
Creativity entails generating new or useful ideas or products. The intense concentration and absorption that characterises
Curiosity the phenomenon of flow may connect curiosity with creativity. The present study investigated the connections
Flow between three dimensions of curiosity, namely joyous exploration-related curiosity, knowledge-deprivation
sensitivity, and stress tolerance. Fifty-seven participants, with a mean age of 35, engaged in the novel task of
designing a water conservation program. Participants judged their experience of designing the program on scales
that assessed their curiosity and flow during the activity. Two raters independently coded each participant's
program description on creativity, and the mean of the two ratings produced the creativity score for that par-
ticipant. Higher joyous exploration curiosity, knowledge-deprivation sensitivity, and tolerance of stress were all
associated with more flow. More experience of flow, as judged by participants after engaging in the activity, was
significantly associated with greater creativity. Even though the direct relationships between curiosity and
creativity did not reach statistical significance, flow linked each of the dimensions of curiosity with creativity.
These findings may provide a basis for programs intended to increase flow or creativity.

1. Introduction to flow. Flow gives rise to optimal performance of a task

(Csikszentmihalyi, 2014). According to Csikszentmihalyi's (1997)
Curiosity, the desire to know, is a motivating characteristic (Litman, theory of creativity, flow is a person aspect of the generation of creative
2005; Loewenstein, 1994). Curiosity consists of several related dimen- ideas and products, and some research supports the link between flow
sions (Kashdan et al., 2018), including desiring exploration for its own and creativity (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997). For example, Zubair and
sake (Kashdan et al., 2018; Litman, 2005), deprivation sensitivity or Kamal (2015) found that flow among employees was associated with
wanting to decrease gaps in knowledge (Litman, 2005; Loewenstein, their work-related creativity. Byrne, MacDonald, and Carlton (2003)
1994) and stress tolerance when faced with novelty (Kashdan et al., found that higher levels of flow were associated with more creative
2018). musical compositions.
Creativity involves generating new and useful ideas or products
(Sternberg, 2006). According to the process model of creativity 1.1. Aim of Study
(Mumford & McIntosh, 2017) information gathering precedes crea-
tivity, and some research (Kashdan & Steger, 2007) supports this pro- The objective of the study was to investigate whether flow may link
position. Curiosity may prompt that information gathering. curiosity with creativity. The hypotheses were that:
Several studies have found associations between higher curiosity
and greater creativity (Celik, Storme, Davila, & Myszkowski, 2016; 1. The dimensions of joyous exploration curiosity, knowledge-depri-
Hardy, Ness, & Mecca, 2017; Peljko, Jeraj, Săvoiu, & Marič, 2016; vation sensitivity curiosity, and stress tolerance in relation to curi-
Puente-Díaz & Cavazos-Arroyo, 2017). Other variables linking curiosity osity would be associated with more flow during a novel activity, as
to greater creativity remain to be investigated. The phenomena of flow judged by participants after engaging in the activity.
may be a path between curiosity and creativity. Flow is characterized 2. The dimensions of joyous exploration curiosity, knowledge-depri-
by intense concentration and absorption (Csikszentmihalyi, 2014). vation sensitivity curiosity, and novelty tolerance in relation to
Kashdan et al. (2009) proposed that high levels of curiosity and the curiosity would be associated with more creativity.
engagement associated with such high levels of curiosity may give rise 3. Greater flow experienced during the activity, as judged by

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: [email protected] (N.S. Schutte).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2019.109555
Received 27 March 2019; Received in revised form 30 July 2019; Accepted 7 August 2019
0191-8869/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
N.S. Schutte and J.M. Malouff Personality and Individual Differences 152 (2020) 109555

participants after engaging in the activity, would be associated with Table 1

greater creativity. Descriptive statistics and correlations.
4. Flow would be a process, or mediator, connecting curiosity and Variable 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
creativity.
a
1. Gender –
2. Age 0.15 –
2. Methods and materials
3. Joyous 0.08 0.14 –
Exploration
2.1. Participants 4. Deprivation −0.19 −0.14 0.58** –
Sensitivity
A power analysis for multiple regression analysis with two predictor 5. Stress Tolerance −0.07 0.12 0.36** 0.04 –
6. Flow −0.12 0.05 0.71** 0.45** 0.47** –
variables, relating to the planned mediation analysis to test whether
7. Creativity 0.11 0.22 0.23 0.06 0.22 0.38** –
flow connects curiosity with creativity, with power set at 0.80 and a M – 35.33 21.31 16.74 10.81 40.37 3.46
medium estimated effect size (Cohen's f2 of 0.15), indicated a sample SD – 9.41 6.39 5.14 6.22 14.07 1.48
size of 55 would be needed. Fifty-seven traditional and mature aged
university students from Australia (45 women and 12 men, mean age of Note. n = 57. *p < .05, **p < .01. aDummy coded (Male = 1; Female = 2).
35.33, SD = 9.41) participated. The participants were all enrolled in an Pearson r correlations run with 2000 bootstraps. Bootstrapped correlations do
not require normal theory assumptions (Lunneborg, 1985).
introductory psychology course. The project was approved by the in-
stitution's human-research ethics committee and all participants pro-
were significantly associated with flow. The second hypothesis was not
vided informed consent.
supported, as the associations between dimensions of curiosity and
creativity were in the hypothesized direction but did not reach statis-
2.2. Procedure
tical significance. Supporting the third hypothesis, greater experience of
flow was significantly associated with greater creativity in designing
Participants were asked to engage in a task novel for them, namely
the water conservation program.
to design a program encouraging residents in a local community to
conserve water using psychological principles and to record the ele-
ments of their program in writing. Participants were then asked to rate 3.2. Mediation analyses
their experience as they developed and wrote about their program.
Hypothesis four was supported. Even though the direct relationships
2.3. Measures between dimensions of curiosity and creativity were not significant,
indirect relationships through the mediating effect of the experience of
Participants rated their experience in designing the program on the flow between dimensions of curiosity and creativity were significant.
Dimensional Curiosity Measure subscales assessing the joyous ex- Three mediation analysis using PROCESS with 2000 bootstraps tested
ploration, deprivation sensitivity, and stress tolerance facets of curiosity hypothesis four. The first showed that flow linked joyous exploration
(Kashdan et al., 2018) and the Flow Short Scale (Engeser & Rheinberg, with creativity, standardized beta = 0.23, 95% CI [0.02, 0.25] for the
2008), with items reformulated to refer to the task. Only flow, and not indirect effect. The second showed that flow linked deprivation sensi-
worry items, were included for the flow scale. On each of the scales tivity with creativity, standardized beta = 0.14, 95% CI [0.04, 0.29] for
response options ranged from 1, describes me not at all, to 7, describes the indirect effect. The third showed that flow linked stress tolerance
me completely. Higher scores on the summed scales indicated more of a aspects of curiosity with creativity, standardized beta = 0.13, 95% CI
quality. Scores could range from 7 to 35 on each of the creativity scales [0.02, 0.27] for the indirect effect.
and from 7 to 70 on the flow scale. Reliability of the measures as as-
sessed by Cronbach's alpha was as follows: Joyous Exploration =0.92, 4. Conclusions
Deprivation Sensitivity =0.66, Stress Tolerance =0.93, and
Flow = 0.96. The general curiosity subscales on which the present task The present study found that for individuals engaging in an activity,
specific curiosity assessments were based showed evidence of validity higher levels of curiosity were associated with greater flow, as judged
in prior research (Kashdan et al., 2018) as did the flow measure by participants after engaging in the activity. More flow was associated
(Engeser & Rheinberg, 2008). with higher levels of creativity. Unlike in some previous research (Celik
Two raters independently coded each participant's water conserva- et al., 2016; Hardy III, Ness, & Mecca, 2017; Peljko et al., 2016; Puente-
tion program description on creativity using the rating process devel- Díaz & Cavazos-Arroyo, 2017) the direct relationships between curi-
oped by Amabile (1982), which has evidence of validity (Amabile, osity and creativity was not significant. Even though the direct re-
1982). As suggested by the Amabile rating process, both raters were lationships between curiosity and creativity were not significant, ex-
familiar with psychological principles and theories of creativity that amination of indirect relationships indicated that flow significantly
posit that creative products are novel and useful. Each rater assessed linked curiosity with creativity. It may be that the presence of other
creativity of ideas on a five-point scale ranging from 1, not creative, to characteristics or circumstances in these studies accounts for the dif-
5, very creative. The mixed-model interaclass correlation coefficient for ference. A finding of a significant indirect or mediating effect when
the two sets of ratings was 0.73, which is moderately good according to there is no direct effect has been discussed by Hayes (2009) and
Koo and Li (2016). The mean of the two ratings produced the final MacKinnon, Lockwood, Hoffman, West, and Sheets (2002). Based on
creativity score for each participant: these mean scores could range ideas presented by Hayes (2009) and MacKinnon et al. (2002), a
from 1 to 5. speculative interpretation of the significant mediation findings in the
present study is that several paths or processes connect curiosity with
3. Results creativity and that some of these processes strengthen the relationship
and others suppress the relationship between curiosity and creativity. In
3.1. Descriptive information and correlations the present study unknown suppressor processes may account for an
overall non-significant association between curiosity and creativity.
Table 1 provides descriptive information and the Pearson r corre- When flow, which may strengthen the relationship between curiosity
lations between variables. Supporting the first hypothesis, during parti- and creativity is examined, it significantly connects curiosity and
cipants' experience of designing the program, all three types of curiosity creativity.

2
N.S. Schutte and J.M. Malouff Personality and Individual Differences 152 (2020) 109555

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Declaration of competing interest Koo, T. K., & Li, M. Y. (2016). A guideline of selecting and reporting intraclass correlation
coefficients for reliability research. Journal of Chiropractic Medicine, 15, 155–163.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcm.2016.02.012.
None. Litman, J. A. (2005). Curiosity and the pleasures of learning: Wanting and liking new
information. Cognition and Emotion, 19, 793–814. https://doi.org/10.1080/
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