The Role of Temperament in Creative Failure

As a behavioral neurologist, I am sometimes asked to evaluate a middle-aged adult who seems to be an underachiever.

Typically, the evaluation is prompted not by the patient or anyone who has known him for a long time, but by a new close friend or new spouse who is unhappily surprised by the patient’s underachievement. Often, such evaluations reveal that the patient has no sign of a learning disability or dementing illness and has always been smart (as evidenced by good grades in school) but has never strived to be an "overachiever."

For many people, the source of this relative "failure to excel" is not one of intelligence, opportunity, or capability, but one of temperament. In a study of 80 male graduate students with a mean age of 27 years, investigators assessed the students on a variety of intelligence and personality measures. When their relative career success was assessed at age 72 years, intelligence proved important, but personality factors played an even greater role (J. Res. Pers. 2003;37:62-88).

Last year in this column, we discussed Robert Cloninger’s personality model in which temperament is an unconscious property based on our automatic responses to perceived stimuli (associative learning). The four dimensions of temperament include novelty seeking (motivated by the possibility of unexpected reward), harm avoidance (happy to simply avoid punishment), reward dependence (in need of praise), and persistence (perseverance despite frustration and fatigue) (Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 1993;50:975-90). Another personality model is the five-factor "NEO" Personality Inventory (neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness) that has many parallels with Cloninger’s model. Research into creativity and its failures has used both (as well as other) models.

Creative failure can result from any of Cloninger’s dimensions or the NEO’s five factors. Novelty seeking is important if we are to make new discoveries. We are not likely to create something novel if we are not seeking new ideas and experiences, envisioning what should be compared with what already exists. On the other hand, thrill seekers who put themselves in harm’s way score high in novelty seeking, and high novelty seeking in conjunction with low persistence are character traits within some personality profiles of obesity (Int. J. Obes. [Lond.] 2007;31:669-74).

Harm avoidance helps us to stay away from trouble, and may lead us to seek novel ways of circumnavigating undesirable situations, but it is also associated with depression and reduced willingness to expend the extra effort needed to achieve difficult goals (J. Affect. Disord. 2006;92:35-44).

Reward dependence refers to pleasing others – generally those in authority – and so can serve as both an asset (we wish to be popular and please those who are likely to be critical of us) and a liability (revolutionary ideas are rarely those that simply please the boss). High persistence is very important for finishing a task, a critical step in creative success, but it comes with the price of greater proclivity to anxiety disorder (J. Affect. Disord. 2012;136:758-66).

Novelty and utility (whether defined pragmatically or aesthetically) are inherent in all endeavors but are the defining qualities of art and science. In a meta-analysis of personality studies of artists and scientists, less-creative people were found to be generally less open to new experiences, more conventional, more conscientious, less self-confident, and less impulsive. When less-creative scientists whose work had little impact were compared with their more highly creative colleagues, the differences that emerged again showed that the less-creative scientists were more conscientious, conventional, and closed minded, despite having similar intelligence as their more influential counterparts (Pers. Soc. Psychol. Rev. 1998;2:290-309).

The neurobiological underpinnings of temperament are far from well understood, and not all reported associations have been replicated. With that caveat in mind, there have been some intriguing possible associations. Women tend to score higher than men in reward dependence and harm avoidance (Compr. Psychiatry 2007;48:161-9). Neuroanatomical studies of the various dimensions of temperament and personality have shown some correlations with frontotemporal and limbic structures (Brain Res. 2011;1371:32-42). Similarly, neurochemical differences have shown higher novelty seeking in individuals with lower type 1 cannabinoid receptor activity in the left amygdala (Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 2009;66:196-204). Individuals who are less willing to expend greater effort to achieve a goal tend to have lower dopamine levels in orbitofrontal and striatal regions, which are important areas for reward-based behavior (J. Neurosci. 2012;32:6170-6). The C allelic variant of the gene for the presynaptic protein "piccolo" is associated with depression. It is also associated with the depression-associated "anticreative" personality traits of higher harm avoidance and lower novelty seeking in nondepressed individuals (J. Affect. Disord. 2012;139:250-5 [doi:10.1016/j.jad.2012.01.028]). Individuals with higher harm avoidance also have greater biological responses to stress as assessed by salivary cortisol levels (Biol. Psychol. 2009; 81:177-83).