First off I want to say thank god Obama got in now his party will stop emailing me everyday telling me I should vote for him, seeing as before they even sent me any emails I was already going to vote for him. Now the reason I wanted to vote for Obama? Because Obama is one of those few people in politics that I've seen in my life time that in my eyes has symbolized hope and a new begining. America is a country that is helping to lead the world and with Bush a "bad shadow" so to speak was cast out misrepresenting all American's as warriors that have no creativity. To me Obama is a sign of good things to come for America I believe he will bring about great change in the creativity sector as he is young, fun, and full of spirit and optimism. After reading this article and seeing the findings of the tests performed that only helped to confirm my opinion that Obama is going be a big figure leading change within America an has real plans to help curve the country into a cultural friendly place full of optimism and hope for a better future and individual growth among American's.

I question the framing of this finding using a broad political designation rather than cognitive inflexibility. There have been many studies that link individuals who need cognitive closure and have an intolerance for ambiguity with lack of creativity. (note: links are relationships, not causality). Given the research premise, these findings should be consistent with anyone who is firmly and unwaveringly committed to ideas and positions without questioning--conservative or liberal or in between. As you note, there is variation in conservatives. For example, some people are fiscal conservatives and social liberals. Anyone reading the headline would assume that much broader definition of conservative than the research supports. I think in the spirit of the Obama win, we should work toward humanizing individual differences and avoid stereotyping.

Pamela Rutledge
Director, Media Psychology Research Center

I was going to rant about this article being BS, but I couldn't think of any really creative comments.

I guess I voted for McCain.

Oh well, at least I am not some dumb liberal college kid who thinks mom is going to pay for 12 years of school so they can sit around smoking pot.

Scott, I really want to thank you first for giving me clarity on what I was feeling in the past couple of days. Maybe I am biased, but creativity is the core issue in this defining moment and as I wrote over on my side of the PT blog pond, it is an experience of hope that we all have needed for quite some time.

But thank you also for the tremendous amount of thought and synthesis you put into this posting and others. I have downloaded everything you so generously included and am looking forward to reading all of them. It always inspires me -- and sets my imagination on fire-- when I read your blog.

What a ridiculous article.

What, are you one of "Kramer's Kidz"?

The article wouldn't be as ridiculous if you hadn't embedded the snotty suggestion that "creative", aka liberal people are superior to those who are not.

Moreover, the authors of the study could have simply mapped beliefs and behaviors to a well established temperament categorization like Myers-Briggs and reached the same conclusions but in a more general and informative way.

And some people are more creative than others. Well so what? Tall people are better basketball players and short people are better jockeys.

And sure, I love creative people. I find them very interesting. (Haven't run into many on this blog though). And I would have loved to have had dinner with Man-Ray. But I wouldn't want Man-Ray to perform brain surgery on me or do my taxes. Give me a serious stolid Joe Friday over a "boundary-crossing" creative any day for that stuff.

Why don't you get off your high horse of smarmy elitism and acknowledge the genuine and equivalent value of people that span the universe of temperaments. Their contributions may be in different domains, but we synergistically need all types.

Grow up...

This is bad science in the service of bad propaganda.

I would not attempt to dispute the fact that liberals could be (generally) more creative than conservatives. That may be true. Perhaps the same things come into play that cause liberals to believe strongly in concepts that are inherently flawed and proven to be failures (such as Socialism for example), simply because the concept feels good and represents a coveted ideal.

And conversely, liberals also rail against things which are factually proven, simply because they *don't* feel good to them. For example, it is proven that when private citizens own firearms, crime goes down. Yet, because guns "feel bad" to idealistic liberals, they simply refuse to believe what has been proven time and time again.

Interesting study. Nevertheless: Were any of the 'judges' of creativity conservative, by any chance? Did anyone bother to ask the research participants why they responded the way they did? There's alot more questions to be asked/answered before I'd consider this topic resolved.