Enduringness and Change in Creative Personality and the Prediction of Occupational Creativity

Participants in a longitudinal study of women's adult development were scored at midlife on the Occupational Creativity Scale (OCS), which draws on J. L. Holland's (1985) model of vocational environments in the assessment of participants' creative achievement. College measures of cognitive-affective style and career aspirations predicted OCS scores at age 52, and consistency of creative temperament (H. G. Gough, 1992), motivation, and overall attributes of creative personality were demonstrated with both self-report and observer data over several times of testing. However, there was change along with this enduringness: Large fluctuations in creative temperament over one period of life or another were common in individuals, and OCS scores were associated with an increase in level of effective functioning over 30 years.