The Role of the Triad of Traits “Tolerance for Uncertainty – Emotional Intelligence – Intuition” in Self-Assessed Creativity in Creative Professionals

Abstract

The article presents an overview of the relationships between creativity and personality traits, namely, tolerance/intolerance for uncertainty, emotional intelligence, intuition, and self-assessed creativity. We report on the results of an empirical study that highlighted the importance of this Positive Triad of traits in creativity measured via the ‘Creative Cartoons’ task. Three groups of accomplished creative professional participated in the study (writers, composers, and directors), for a total n = 52. In addition to administering the Creative Cartoons task, we administered a set of assessments: self-assessed creativity (using the procedure parallel to that proposed by A. Furnham for studying self-assessed intelligence), T. Kornilova’s New questionnaire for tolerance to uncertainty (NTN), the Emotional Intelligence (EmIn) questionnaire developed by D. Lyusin, and S. Epstein’s Rational-Experiential Inventory. A correlational analyses of the relationships between the studied traits provided support for the hypotheses related to the positive role of the Positive Triad of traits in creativity. Psychometric creativity was related to self-assessed creativity and trust in intuition, whereas intuition was related to tolerance for uncertainty, in its turn related to interpersonal emotional intelligence. Intrapersonal emotional intelligence, on the other hand, was negatively correlated with interpersonal intolerance for uncertainty: thus, both emotional intelligence traits were associated with a more positive attitude towards uncertainty.