432 Iv. COGNITI vE AND M OTIvATIONAL P ROCESSES
that the most eminent creators would pro -
vide the most typical or characteristic pro -
file of cognitive and dispositional traits. Yet 
many studies of creative behavior examine 
more mundane forms of the phenomenon, 
such as workers in industrial research and 
development units. Indeed, much research in 
creativity looks at student populations, in -
cluding children. Therefore, to what extent 
are the personality profiles gathered from 
the examination of creative geniuses truly 
indicative of what holds in more everyday 
creators? There are two alternative respons -
es.
On the one hand, we can argue that the 
creative genius differs only in degree from 
an individual whose creativity will never 
earn significant recognition beyond the 
confines of a rather circumscribed time and 
place. In other words, there exists some con -
tinuum linking the universally recognized 
genius with the average person on the street. 
On this continuum may be placed various 
intermediate grades of creators. All of the 
traits associated with creativity would then 
vary according to a person’s placement on 
this latent continuum. Eysenck (1995), for 
example, argued that psychoticism repre -
sents just such a dimension. Low levels of 
psychoticism predict the absence of creativi -
ty, and increased psychoticism predicts ever- 
elevated creativity. The genius emerges at the 
exalted level near the dangerous borderline 
between creativity and madness.
One attractive feature of this continuity 
hypothesis is the fact that creative behavior 
itself displays some degree of continuity. This 
is most obvious when creativity is gauged 
in terms of the output of creative prod -
ucts. Lifetime creative productivity forms 
a well-  defined ratio scale on which people 
may vary. In the sciences, for instance, there 
are those who made no contribution, those 
who made two, those who made three, and 
so forth. Furthermore, there already exists 
ample evidence that the magnitude of cre -
ative output can display a monotonic rela -
tionship with certain personality traits (e.g., 
Eysenck, 1995). Hence, continuous varia -
tion in creative behavior may be grounded 
in underlying variation in personality.
On the other hand, we can take the po -
sition that there are qualitative differences 
among the various forms that creativity may take. An illustration can be found in 
Kaufman and Beghetto’s (2009) “four-C” 
model of creativity. Besides distinguishing 
everyday “little-  c” creativity from eminent 
“Big-C” creativity, they also add “mini-c,” 
which occurs during learning and, most sig -
nificantly, “pro-c” creativity, which is asso -
ciated with the creative professions. These 
four kinds of creativity not only exhibit dif -
ferent relationships among each other, but 
also differ how they are assessed in research; 
the degree to which they are domain-  specific 
or general; whether their motivational basis 
is intrinsic, extrinsic, or both; and their as -
sociation with mental illness. For instance, 
whereas psychopathology may be related to 
Big-C creative genius, it may prove uncor -
related with little-  c creativity (see also Sil -
via & Kaufman, 2010; Simonton, 2014c). 
Hence, the four types are so qualitatively 
distinct that they cannot be ordered into 
a straightforward ordinal system, such as 
mini-c, little-  c, pro-c, and Big-C.
Of course, one might simply argue that 
any hypothesized continuity might be sub -
jected to empirical inquiry. Yet herein arises 
a problem: The methods for studying every -
day and exceptional creativity are not the 
same. For instance, where pro-c creators are 
most often studied using psychometric meth -
ods (Feist, 2014), Big-C creative geniuses are 
more frequently examined using historio -
metric methods (Simonton, 2014b). These 
methods cannot be simply interchanged, 
particularly given that only the latter can 
be applied posthumously (Song & Simon -
ton, 2007). This fundamental contrast is not 
readily resolved.
Childhood versus  Adulthood  Creativity
So far we have been discussing creativity 
in adult samples. Yet studies of creativity 
often focus on creativity in children, includ -
ing many of the classic investigations in this 
field (e.g., Getzels & Jackson, 1962; Wal -
lach & Kogan, 1965). Besides its theoreti -
cal interest, this issue can have significant 
practical consequences for the design and 
evaluation of programs for the education 
of gifted children (Balchin, Hymer, & Mat -
thews, 2009). Nevertheless, these inquiries 
have a somewhat ambiguous status from the 
standpoint of understanding the personality 