Elsevier

Schizophrenia Research

Volume 195, May 2018, Pages 23-31
Schizophrenia Research

Schizophrenia and creativity: A meta-analytic review

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.schres.2017.08.036Get rights and content

Abstract

The present study investigated the relationship between creativity and schizophrenia with a 3-level multilevel meta-analytic approach. Analyses with 200 effect sizes obtained from 42 studies found a mean effect size of r =  0.324, 95%CI [− 0.42, − 0.23]. Further analyses focused on moderators and indicated that the relationship between schizophrenia and creativity is moderated by type of creativity measure, the content of creativity measure, the severity of schizophrenia, and patient status. The negative mean effect size was stronger with semantic-category or verbal-letter fluency tasks than the divergent thinking or associational measures. Performance on verbal measures of creativity was significantly lower than the nonverbal measures. When effect sizes were compared at different levels of severity, a stronger and more negative mean effect size was obtained at chronic schizophrenia than acute and early onset levels. Studies that involved inpatients had a significantly higher (more negative) mean effect size than those involving outpatients. When these findings are considered along with previous meta-analyses on the link between creativity and psychoticism and schizotypy, creativity and psychopathology seem to have an inverted-U relationship. A mild expression of schizophrenia symptoms may support creativity but a full demonstration of the symptoms undermines it.

Section snippets

Schizophrenia and creativity: A meta-analytic review

The link between madness and genius is one of the oldest and most persistent among laypeople and unsurprisingly has become controversial among researchers (Jamison, 1993, Simonton, 2010a, Simonton, 2010b). Simply phrased as mad-genius hypothesis, this connection is often explored in terms of the relationship between creativity and psychopathology. In fact, creativity may be one of the few fields, if not the only one, in which mental illnesses are perceived differently. Instead of being

Study variables

Schizophrenia and creativity were the two major study variables. Schizophrenia was mostly diagnosed based on Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) third or fourth version although there were a few studies that followed a psychometric approach. Creativity was operationalized in many different ways. Table 1 provides the list of methods and instruments used in the present meta-analysis.

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

  • 1.

    Quantitative articles published in peer-reviewed journals were included. Qualitative

Results

Before running the analyses, the effect sizes (k = 200 obtained from 42 studies) were investigated in terms of publication bias. Neither Egger's regression test, t (199) =  0.67, p < 0.50, nor Begg and Mazumdar's rank correlation, rt. =  0.04, p = 0.368, were significant. Therefore, publication bias did not seem to be an issue for the present dataset. A stem-and-leaf plot was presented in Fig. 2.

An unconditional three-level model was tested initially to calculate average mean effect size. This model had

Discussion

Results of the present meta-analysis showed that the relationship between creativity and schizophrenia is negative (r =  0.324) and the nature of the relationship is influenced by the way creativity is measured, severity of the schizophrenia, the content of creativity test, and patient type. This finding can be interpreted alongside prior meta-analyses that investigated the relationship between creativity and psychoticism (Acar and Runco, 2012) and schizotypy (Acar and Sen, 2013). Those

Conclusion

The present meta-analysis found that creativity has a negative relationship with schizophrenia. Small but positive correlation of creativity with psychoticism and positive schizotypy does not apply to schizophrenia. Anecdotal evidence reporting higher creativity with mental illnesses, more specifically, schizophrenia is not supported by empirical evidence based on psychometric measures of creativity. This finding certainly supports the argument that creativity is mainly a healthy behavior (

Role of the funding source

No funding was used for this study.

Contributors

Selcuk Acar and Nur Cayirdag designed the study and collected the data. Xiao Chen collected additional data, conducted a literature review and verified the accuracy of the coding.

Conflict of interest

There is none.

Acknowledgements

We thank to Barrett Gordon for proofreading this manuscript.

References (0)

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1300 Elmwood Ave. Chase 239, Buffalo, NY 14222 United States of America.

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1300 Elmwood Ave. Chase 245, Buffalo, NY 14222 United States of America.

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1300 Elmwood Ave. Chase 246, Buffalo, NY 14222 United States of America.

Note: References with asterisk (*) indicate studies included to meta-analysis.

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