Creativity and academic major: Business versus English majors

Abstract

Compared 28 business and 20 English majors on 2 measures of creativity, unusual uses for common objects and the Personal Opinion Survey, to explore N. R. Maier L. R. Hoffman's (see 36:4) interpretation of the inhibiting organizational effects on creativity. CHI2 tests revealed that English majors were superior to business majors on both creativity tests suggesting that a selective factor is operative: English attracts students high in creativity while business attracts students low in creativity. These results make the Maier and Hoffman emphasis on organizational effects somewhat dubious, since their results can be explained on the basis of this selective factor. Further comparison of the 48 SPS with 229 Ss previously tested indicated that business majors were significantly low on creativity while English majors were significantly high. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)