Are creative people crazy?

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There’s definitely overlap in terms of personality and cognitive traits:

We investigated the relationship between creativity, personality, latent inhibition (LI), and psychopathology. For this purpose, a sample of actors, 2 clinical samples (alcohol and polydrug dependents), and a group of university students were compared with respect to psychometrically determined creativity, personality, and LI. The results suggest that actors and polydrug dependents can be characterized by (a) high scores in the personality dimension psychoticism, (b) high originality during creative idea generation, and (c) decreased LI as compared with the other groups. Correlational analyses moreover revealed significant associations between LI, originality, and psychoticism. According to our findings, creative people and people suffering from mental disorders appear to share some common personality and cognitive traits.

Source: “Creativity: Genius, madness, or a combination of both?” from Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts

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