Gender Differences in Creativity
2008/06/01 by JOHN BAER, John Baer, James C. Kaufman +1 · 660 citations
Psychology · #Cognitive psychology #Creativity #Creativity in Education and Neuroscience #Creativity technique #Developmental psychology #Education, Achievement, and Giftedness #Perfectionism, Procrastination, Anxiety Studies #Psychology #Social psychology #Test (biology)
paper · doi:10.1002/j.2162-6057.2008.tb01289.x
published in The Journal of Creative Behavior 42(2), 75-105 (Wiley)
openalex publication_date 2008/06/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25
Abstract
Abstract Research on gender differences in creativity, including creativity test scores, creative achievements, and self‐reported creativity is reviewed, as are theories that have been offered to explain such differences and available evidence that supports or refutes such theories. This is a difficult arena in which to conduct research, but there is a consistent lack of gender differences both in creativity test scores and in the creative accomplishments of boys and girls (which if anything tend to favor girls). As a result, it is difficult to show how innate gender differences in creativity could possibly explain later differences in creative accomplishment. At the same time, the large difference in the creative achievement of men and women in many fields make blanket environmental explanations inadequate, and the explanations that have been proposed thus far are at best incomplete. A new theoretical framework (the APT model of creativity) is proposed to allow better understanding of what is known about gender differences in creativity.
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