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Revisiting the Investment Theory of Creativity

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DOI: 10.1080/10400419.2011.595974

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CREATIVITY RESEARCH JOURNAL, 23(3), 229–238, 2011
Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 1040-0419 print=1532-6934 online
DOI: 10.1080/10400419.2011.595974

Revisiting the Investment Theory of Creativity

Li-fang Zhang
The University of Hong Kong

Robert J. Sternberg
Tufts University

This research further examines Sternberg and Lubart’s (1995) investment theory of
creativity by testing the newly constructed Multifaceted Assessment of Creativity
(MAC). The MAC measures the extent to which people take into account the 6
resources for creativity (intelligence, knowledge, intellectual styles, personality, motiv-
ation, and environment) when they evaluate (a) hypothetical cases and (b) the impor-
tance of the six resources for identifying creativity. Two forms of the MAC (one
assessing school boys and the other assessing school girls) were administered to 270
(120 male and 150 female) Chinese university students. Overall, results strongly
supported the investment theory of creativity. Meanwhile, the 2 types of evaluation
tasks yielded diverse results centered on the importance of intelligence and of styles.
Furthermore, differential expectations were expressed for boys versus girls regarding
what counts in creativity.

For some individuals, a bachelor’s thesis is the end of
serious creativity. For many others, however, even a
doctoral dissertation is just the beginning of a creative
career. Why are there such individual variations in
thinking about creative work?
The research presented here tests the newly
constructed Multifaceted Assessment of Creativity
(MAC), which is based on Sternberg and Lubart’s
(1995) investment theory of creativity. This research
was motivated by the fact that various resources for crea-
tivity articulated in the investment theory of creativity
have been proven to be critical to creativity (e.g., Feist,
1998; Thompson, Steffert, & Gruzelier, 2009; Zhang &
Sternberg, 2009). However, the theory, as an entire
entity, has yet to be directly tested in one single study
or set of studies. Such a single enterprise has been
attempted here.
This project was supported by the Committee for the Research
Output Prize and the Committee on Research and Conference Grants
as administered by the University of Hong Kong.
Correspondence should be sent to Dr. Li-fang Zhang, Faculty of
Education, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong
Kong. E-mail: lfzhang@hku.hk
TWO ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES TO
CREATIVITY
Sternberg and Lubart (1992) conceptualized various
approaches to studying creativity into two types:
person-centered approaches and context-centered
approaches. Person-centered approaches put more
emphasis on the internal, acontextual aspects of creative
performance, whereas context-centered approaches
focus on the interaction of the individual with the exter-
nal context in which he or she lives.
The person-centered approaches to creativity are
deeply rooted in the psychometric tradition. Some
researchers (e.g., Torrance, 1975) oriented toward
understanding the abilities underlying creativity have
constructed instruments that measure individual differ-
ences in the production of creative products. These
products are usually of a minor kind—such as thinking
of unusual ways of using a paper clip. Thereafter, the
investigators assign scores to individuals on one or more
aspects of their creative products, such as novelty, flu-
ency, quality, and so forth. Attaching more importance
to personality, other researchers (e.g., Barron, 1955)
have examined individual differences in personality
230 ZHANG AND STERNBERG
attributes in more and less creative individuals. Yet
other researchers (e.g., Johnson-Laird, 1988; Schank,
1988; Simon, 1983), placing more emphasis on infor-
mation processing, have used a computational approach
to construct computer simulations of creative perform-
ance or to provide individuals with tasks that require
creative problem-solving.
The context-centered approaches to studying creativ-
ity look at the factors in the environment that influence
creativity. For example, Amabile (1982) pioneered the
social-psychological approach. Investigations using this
approach focus on the critical role of intrinsic
motivation or of freedom from evaluative pressure in
creativity. As another example, Csikszentmihalyi
(1988) explored effects of sociocultural variables upon
creative performance. As a final example, Gruber
(1988) devoted a substantial portion of his career taking
an intensive biographical approach to studying the lives
of creative people such as Piaget and Darwin.
THE INVESTMENT THEORY OF CREATIVITY
AND DERIVATIVE RESEARCH
Other researchers, such as Sternberg and Lubart, have
embraced both person-centered approaches and
context-centered approaches. Consistent with several
other theories of creativity (e.g., Rubenson & Runco,
1992; Runco, 2007; Walberg, 1988) loosely rooted in
economic theories, Sternberg and Lubart (1991, 1992,
1995) constructed their investment theory of creativity
to explain why some people are more creative than
others. Using investment as a metaphor, Sternberg and
Lubart argued that creative people, like good investors
in financial markets, are ones who are willing and able
to buy low and sell high in the realm of ideas (see also
Rubenson & Runco, 1992). Buying low means pursuing
ideas that are unknown or out of favor, but that have
potential for growth. Very often, when these ideas are
initially put forward, they meet concerted resistance
(Sternberg & Lubart, 1995). Creative individuals persist
despite this resistance and, ultimately, sell high, moving
on to the next new or unpopular idea.
According to the investment theory of creativity,
there are six resources for creativity: intelligence, knowl-
edge, intellectual styles, personality, motivation, and
environment. The first five resources are person-
centered, whereas the final one is context-centered.
Resources for Creativity
The first resource for creativity is intelligence. Three
types of intelligence are particularly important: (a) the
synthetic intelligence to see problems from new perspec-
tives and to think outside the box, (b) the analytical
intelligence to recognize and decide which of one’s ideas
are worth pursuing and which are not, and (c) the prac-
tical intelligence to know how to persuade others of the
value of the newly proposed ideas (Sternberg, 1985a).
The confluence of these three types of intelligence is
equally important. Analytical intelligence used in the
absence of the other two types of intelligence may result
in critical, but not creative, thinking that produces new
ideas. Synthetic intelligence used in the absence of the
other two types of intelligence may result in new ideas
that are not subjected to adequate scrutiny to ensure
their quality. Practical intelligence in the absence of
the other two types of intelligence may result in accept-
ance of ideas, not because the ideas are good, but
because the ideas have been presented persuasively. For
example, throughout history, charismatic politicians,
through the sheer force of their personalities, have per-
suaded followers to accept sometimes destructive ideas.
The second resource for creativity is knowledge.
There are two sides to being knowledgeable about any
subject matter or field. On the one hand, without knowl-
edge, one has nowhere to begin in being creative.
Creative ideas and behaviors typically derive, in part,
from something that one already has known from past
knowledge or experience. On the other hand, being
too knowledgeable about a certain subject or field may
stifle an individual’s creativity—the individual may get
so absorbed in a particular way of seeing things that
he or she tends not to think in novel ways. In a study
of expert and novice bridge players, Frensch and
Sternberg (1989) showed that expert bridge players were
slower to adapt to experimentally created fundamental
changes in the rules of the game than were novices.
The third resource for creativity is intellectual style.
Intellectual styles are preferred ways of using one’s
abilities. Among the 13 intellectual styles described by
Sternberg (1988, 1997), three are particularly important
for creativity: the legislative, global, and liberal styles.
The legislative style is a preference for doing things one’s
own way. The legislative style is important for creativity
because to be creative, one must develop one’s own way
of thinking, rather than merely thinking the way others
do. The global style is a preference for thinking with a
holistic picture of a situation in mind. Global thinking
is important for creativity because one needs to know
the general situation of a field (or subject matter) in
order to identify important ideas to pursue. The liberal
style is a preference for thinking in new ways. Liberal
thinking is important for creativity because to be cre-
ative, one needs to think outside the box, rather than
merely to follow the established ways of doing things.
In their review of the literature on styles, Zhang and
Sternberg (2009) identified much research evidence
suggesting the important role of these intellectual styles
in creativity.

The fourth resource for creativity is personality. To be
creative, one needs to be willing to overcome obstacles,
be willing to take reasonable risks, and be willing to grow
(Sternberg & Lubart, 1995). Likewise, to be creative, one
needs to be tolerant of ambiguity, open to new experi-
ence, and to believe in what one is doing (Feist, 1998).
In particular, buying low and selling high typically
means going against the crowd. Therefore, if one wants
to think or act in creative ways, one has to be willing
to stand up to conventions. Numerous studies (Barron
& Harrington, 1981; Feist, 1998; Glover, 1977; Golann,
1962; Silvia, Nusbaum, Berg, Martin, & O’Connor,
2009; Thompson et al., 2009) have supported the
importance of these personality traits in creative work.
All creative people encounter obstacles to the expression
of their creativity. The important thing is that they
persevere in the face of those obstacles.
The fifth resource for creativity is motivation. To be
creative, one needs to have intrinsic, task-focused motiv-
ation. The importance of such motivation for creativity
has been shown in the research of Amabile (1983) and of
others (Herman, 2009; Kreitler & Casakin, 2009). Exist-
ing research also suggested that people rarely do truly
creative work in an area unless they really love what
they are doing and focus on the work, rather than on
the potential rewards.
The sixth and final resource for creativity is environ-
ment. One could have all the internal resources needed
to think creatively. However, without an environment
that is supportive and rewarding of creative ideas, the
creativity that an individual has within him or her might
never be displayed. Creativity needs to be nurtured. An
environment can be supportive in at least three ways:
helping spark creative ideas, supporting creative ideas,
and serving as a basis for evaluating and improving
creative ideas. However, environments typically are not
fully supportive of the use of one’s creativity. Therefore,
one must decide how to respond to the ubiquitous
environmental challenges to the display of one’s creativity.
According to the investment theory of creativity,
creativity requires the aforementioned six resources to
converge. Moreover, the theory posits that creativity
involves more than a simple sum of an individual’s level
on each resource. Instead, not all resources are necessar-
ily fully involved in every exhibition of creative thinking
or action. Some of the personality attributes (e.g., toler-
ance of ambiguity) may matter more for long-enduring
creativity than for short-term bursts of creativity.
Furthermore, not all the interactions among resources
are linear. For example, no matter how legislative an
individual’s intellectual style may be, without at least a
minimally adequate level of intelligence, creativity
would be unlikely to be displayed. In addition, the
weightings of the resources may vary from one creative
project to the next.
INVESTMENT THEORY OF CREATIVITY 231
VALIDATING THE INVESTMENT THEORY OF
CREATIVITY
Thus far, two studies (reported in Lubart & Sternberg,
1995) have been conducted directly to test the invest-
ment theory of creativity. In the first study, the authors
tested the predictive value of the five person-centered
resources specified in the theory for creative production
in eight tasks: designing two advertisements, making
two drawings, solving two creative scientific problems,
and writing two short stories. All correlations between
average creativity scores across the four domains and
scores on the tests measuring the five person-centered
resources were statistically significant. The correlation
for motivation was nonlinear, showing a curvilinear
function whereby people with intermediate motivation
showed higher levels of creativity than those with either
high or low motivation. It was concluded that, in
general, the results dovetailed well with the predictions
of the theory. However, an unexpected finding was
obtained: Creativity was significantly correlated with
the local, rather than with the global, style. It was
thought that this unexpected finding could have been
due to the fact that the topics and titles given might have
narrowed the tasks too much.
The second study examined predictions concerning
risk-taking behaviors—the personality resource in the
investment theory of creativity. The creative tasks were
the same with those in the first study for the drawing
and writing domains. In the risk-taking contest, parti-
cipants entered their drawings and stories (separately)
in contests involving varying degrees of risk and payoff.
In the hypothetical-situations questionnaire, parti-
cipants were asked how they would respond if they
encountered certain risk situations. In the self-report
questionnaire, participants were asked about risk taking
in a wide range of situations. It was found that the
participants generally tended toward being risk-averse,
‘‘perhaps because of socialization against risk taking’’
(Sternberg & Lubart, 1992, p. 5). Moreover, the results
for the art domain supported the authors’ hypothesis
that high risk-takers would be judged (by 15 inde-
pendent evaluators) as significantly more creative than
low risk-takers. However, the results for the writing
domain did not clearly support this hypothesis. The rea-
son was that what was evaluated as creative by the
authors was sometimes found to be somewhat offensive
to at least some of the independent judges.
THE RESEARCH
The two existing studies reported by Lubart and
Sternberg (1995) are limited in three ways. First, both
studies involved small sample sizes (44 participants in
232 ZHANG AND STERNBERG
each study). Second, both studies involved many tests,
both self-reported and behavioral ones. Although such
extensive testing has the obvious advantage of being
comprehensive and objective (with the involvement of
behavioral measures), administering such tests could
be cumbersome and expensive. Finally, the existing
studies did not take into account the contextual resource
(i.e., environment) specified in the investment theory of
creativity.
The aforementioned limitations call for an alternative
approach to further investigating the validity of the
theory. One potential approach is to design question-
naires to examine the extent to which people take into
account each of the six resources when they make
judgments about creativity. Furthermore, because there
is often a gap between people’s espoused theory and
their theory-in-use (e.g., Westby & Dawson, 1995), it
is necessary to assess people’s judgments about creativ-
ity when they are presented with different types of tasks.
METHOD
Participants
Research participants were 270 (120 male and 150
female) students from a large research-oriented univer-
sity in Shanghai, the People’s Republic of China. With
an average of 19 years, the students’ ages ranged from
17 to 23 years. These students were volunteer parti-
cipants from two academic majors: finance (n ¼ 130)
and engineering (n ¼ 140). Among these students, there
were 135 freshmen and 135 juniors.
Materials
Composed of two parts, the MAC was designed to
assess the six resources for creativity described in the
investment theory of creativity. The first part assesses
the degree to which people say they take each of the
six resources for creativity into account when they are
presented with hypothetical cases of school children.
By evaluating and making judgments about the hypo-
thetical cases, the participants would communicate their
implicit theories of creativity (Sternberg, 1985b;
Sternberg, Conway, Ketron, & Bernstein, 1981). The
second part aims at eliciting, more explicitly, people’s
views about the usefulness of each of the six resources
in making judgments about school children’s creativity.
The first part contains 30 hypothetical cases, each
describing a school child. Each case is composed of six
statements. One statement is based on the intelligence-
resource criterion, a second on knowledge, a third on intel-
lectual styles, a fourth on personality, a fifth on motiv-
ation, and a sixth on environment. The order in which
the six statements are placed within each case is
randomized. Each of these statements carries a
preassigned value of the extent to which it satisfies the
corresponding criterion. Furthermore, the 30 cases are
balanced across the six resources and across the preas-
signed values. There are two forms of the 30 cases, one
with hypothetical children being given male names (Boys
Form), and the other with hypothetical children being
given female names (Girls Form).
Procedure
Participants were asked to read each case and to rate on
a Likert scale (from 1 to 6, where 1 ¼ almost certainly
not, and 6 ¼ almost certainly yes) the likelihood that
the child involved would be identified as being creative,
both from the participant’s own viewpoint (my judg-
ment) and from their perception of the children’s
school’s viewpoint (school judgment). Here is a sample
case:
1. Susan is reasonably good at coming up with ideas
that other people don’t think of.
2. Susan knows somewhat well what other people
have done in her field.
3. Most of the time, Susan enjoys dealing with tasks
in new ways.
4. Susan is often willing to take sensible risks.
5. Susan is seldom eager to act in new ways.
6. Susan sometimes finds herself in a learning
environment that allows her to think or act in
new ways.
7. School’s judgment (3) My judgment (2)
The second part of the questionnaire is composed of
six simple rating scales, each for one of the six resources.
On a 6-point response scale, participants were asked to
rate how useful they thought each of the six resources
was for identifying creative students. Again, there are
two forms of this part of the questionnaire. One (the
Boys Form) elicits the participants’ views about the
importance of each of the six resources in identifying
creativity among boys, and the other (Girls Form) elicits
the participants’ views about the importance of each of
the six resources in identifying creativity among girls.
It should be noted that six single-item scales were
employed in this part of the inventory because responses
to these items that directly asked the respondents to rate
the importance of each of the resources in making
judgment about creativity served to cross-validate the
responses elicited by the more covert case descriptions
in the first part of the inventory.
The original inventory was written in English. It was
then translated into Mandarin, using the translation and
back-translation technique. Half of the participants
 INVESTMENT THEORY OF CREATIVITY 233

responded to the Boys Form and the other half
responded to the Girls Form of the questionnaire.
RESULTS
Results From Evaluation of Hypothetical Cases
Reliability. An initial effort was made to examine the
consistency of the research participants in rating the 30
cases, for both gender-combined and gender-separated
data. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for the judg-
ments of the schools as perceived by the participants
(school judgment) and the participants’ own judgments
(my judgment) of the 30 cases for gender-combined data
(i.e., responses to both forms of the hypothetical cases)
were .84 and .86, respectively. Those for judgments of
the 30 cases of boys only were .81 (school judgment)
and .86 (my judgment). Those for judgments of the 30
cases of girls only were .86 (school judgment) and .87
(my judgment). These internal consistency reliabilities
were considered sufficiently high for the remaining
statistical analyses to proceed.
T-tests. T-tests were used to identify group differ-
ences in the mean ratings of the 30 cases based on the
participants’ gender, university class level, and academic
discipline. Results from these t-tests indicated that
research participants did not differ significantly in mak-
ing judgments about creativity as a function of their gen-
der, academic major, and university class level. Table 1
presents the summary statistics for these analyses.
Multiple-regression analyses. Multiple-regression
analyses were conducted separately for ratings of the
30 hypothetical boys and for ratings of the 30 hypotheti-
cal girls to find out the extent to which the research part-
icipants took into account the six resources specified in
the investment theory of creativity in making judgments
about creativity of school boys and girls. That is to say,
multiple regressions provide a test of the fit of the
six-resource investment theory of creativity to the data.
Support for the validity of the MAC for assessing the
investment theory of creativity is indicated to the extent
that (a) values of R2 (the squared multiple correlation of
the ratings of creativity with each of the six resources
specified in the investment theory) are high in magnitude
and statistically significant, and (b) values of the
regression beta weights corresponding to each of the six
resources for creativity are statistically significant. Non-
significant beta weights would suggest that, contrary to
the investment theory, a variable (i.e., a resource for crea-
tivity) was not taken into account in making judgments
about creativity (see results in Table 2).
As shown in Table 2, intelligence and intellectual style
produced statistically significant regression weights in all
of the four multiple regressions. The beta value for the
variable knowledge was statistically significant in all but
one regression (i.e., knowledge was not uniquely taken
into account when the participants themselves made
judgments about school girls’ creativity). Interestingly,
our participants believed that they would take motivation
and personality into account in their evaluations of both
male and female school children’s creativity but that the
school would take those two variables into account only
when making judgments about school girls’ creativity.
Also, as shown in Table 2, our participants believed that
the school would take intelligence, styles, and knowledge
into account only when making judgments about boys’
creativity. Finally, the variable environment was uniquely
taken into account only when our participants made their
own judgments about the creativity of school girls.
Overall levels of prediction were reasonably high,
with R2 values of .51 (school’s judgments of boys), .67
(participants’ own judgments of boys), .84 (school’s
judgments of girls), and .80 (participants’ own judg-
ments of girls). Moreover, with these ratings higher for
girls than for boys, the independent variables (i.e., the
resources specified in the theory) fit better to the ratings
of girls than to those of boys.

TABLE 1
Group Differences in Ratings of Cases Based on Gender, University Class Level, and Academic Major

School Judgment Self-Judgment

Demographics Mean N df t-Value 2-Tail Sig. Mean N df t-Value 2-Tail Sig.

Gender
Male 3.58 96 216 .94 .46 3.92 109 255
.20 .75
Female 3.60 112 4.00 148
University class
Freshmen 3.61 110 218 .92 .36 3.92 129 257
.19 .85
Juniors 3.54 110 3.93 130
Academic major
Finance 3.57 103 213
.33 .74 3.97 123 252 .70 .48
Engineering 3.59 112 3.91 131
234 ZHANG AND STERNBERG

TABLE 2
Summary of Multiple Regression Analyses

Rating (Statement) Boys-School Boys-Self Girls-School Girls-Self

R2 .51 .67 .84 .80

   
bFirst predictor .52Intelligence .42Intelligence .48Intelligence .56Intelligence
   
bSecond predictor .42Intellectual Styles .47Motivation .37Intellectual Styles .32Intellectual Styles
   
bThird predictor .37Knowledge .32Personality .34Knowledge .43Motivation
  
bFourth predictor .29Knowledge .39Motivation .31Personality
 
bFifth predictor .29Intellectual Styles .32Personality

bSixth predictor .23Environment
F 8.6 9.94 20.24 25.55
DfL 3,25 5,24 6,23 4,25
  
p < .05. p < .01. p < .001.

These results generally lent support to the investment intelligence were not thought to carry significantly
theory of creativity. Ratings of the female hypothetical different levels of importance for making judgments
cases were particularly consistent with the theory. When about creativity among boys. Detailed statistics are
the participants made judgments about girls’ creativity, shown in Table 3.
they took all but the environment variable into account The mean rankings yielded from the data based on
and they believed that the school would take all six the girls version of the rating scales, from the highest
resources into account.
TABLE 3
Mean Differences Among Six Resources for Creativity: Pairwise
Results From Rating the Importance of the Six Comparisons (From Repeated Measures)
Resources in Identifying Creativity
Mean Difference (I-J)
Two separate repeated-measures analyses (one for boys
and the other for girls) were conducted on the parti- Resource (I) Resource (J) For Boys For Girls
cipants’ ratings of the importance of each of the six vari- Intelligence Knowledge
.18
.15
ables to examine if participants would attach different Styles
.70
.94
levels of importance to the six resources for creativity. Personality
.41
.73
These tests resulted in statistically significant differences Motivation
.17 6.78E-02
Environment
.27
.13
among the six resources for the ratings of both boys
Knowledge Intelligence .18 .15
(Wilk’s lambda: F ¼ 9.59, p < .001; Hypothesis df ¼ 5; Styles
.52
.79
Error df ¼ 128; Eta squared ¼ .27) and girls (Wilk’s Personality
.24
.58
lambda: F ¼ 24.70, p < .001; Hypothesis df ¼ 5; Error Motivation 1.50E-02 .22
df ¼ 126; Eta squared ¼ .50). The mean rankings from Environment
9.02E-02 2.29E-02
Styles Intelligence .70 .94
the data based on the boys version of the rating scales,
Knowledge .52 .79
from the highest to the lowest resource of creativity, Personality .28 .21
were 4.77 (intellectual styles), 4.49 (personality), 4.34 Motivation .53 1.01
(environment), 4.25 (knowledge), 4.23 (motivation), Environment .43 .81
and 4.07 (intelligence). Pairwise comparisons showed Personality Intelligence .42 .73
Knowledge .24 .58
that participants attached significantly different levels
Styles
.28
.21
of importance to the different resources for creativity Motivation .26 .80
for the evaluation of boys’ creativity. Specifically, the Environment .15 .60
intellectual-styles variable came out as the most impor- Motivation Intelligence .16
.687E-02
tant variable, and was perceived as significantly more Knowledge
1.50E-02
.22
Styles
.53
1.01
important than all of the variables except personality.
Personality
.26
.80
Personality, rated as the second most important Environment
.11
.20
resource for creativity, was considered significantly Environment Intelligence .27 .13
more important than intelligence and motivation, but Knowledge 9.02E-02
2.29E-02
not significantly more important than environment Styles
.43
.81
Personality
.15
.61
and knowledge. Although rated respectively as the third,
Motivation .11 .20
fourth, fifth, and the least important resources for
creativity, environment, knowledge, motivation, and 
p < .05. 
p < .01. 
p < .001.
 INVESTMENT THEORY OF CREATIVITY 235

to the lowest resource for creativity, were 4.90 of school children’s gender, they would attach the same
(intellectual styles), 4.69 (personality), 4.11 (knowledge), importance to each of the six resources when identifying
4.09 (environment), 3.96 (intelligence), and 3.89 (motiv- creativity among school children. See Table 4 for
ation). Pairwise comparisons showed that participants detailed statistics.
attached significantly different levels of importance to
the different resources for creativity when they evalu-
ated girls versus boys. Specifically, intellectual styles, DISCUSSION
ranked as the most important resource for creativity,
are rated as significantly more important than all other The primary objective of this research was to use the
resources except personality. Personality, ranked as the newly designed MAC further to examine the validity
second most important resource for creativity, was of the investment theory of creativity. Specifically, the
perceived as significantly more important than all other research sought to determine the extent to which the
resources except intellectual styles. Knowledge, environ- six creativity resources were taken into consideration
ment, intelligence, and motivation were ranked respect- under two different circumstances—when research part-
ively as the third, fourth, fifth, and the least important icipants were presented with hypothetical cases and
resources for creativity. They were not rated as statisti- when they were directly asked to rate the importance
cally different from one another. All four resources were of each of the six resources.
considered significantly less important than intellectual Findings from both ratings of the 30 hypothetical
styles and personality. Furthermore, intellectual styles cases and ratings of the 6 resources for creativity (each
and personality were not rated as being statistically in two different forms) supported the reliability and
different from each other. validity of the MAC in assessing the six dimensions
proposed in the investment theory of creativity. That
is to say, our research participants believed that the six
Mean Differences in the Six Resources Between
resources specified in the investment theory are impor-
Boys and Girls
tant in making judgments about creativity. Moreover,
T-tests were employed to explore if the participants results from the two types of data share one major com-
considered the importance of each of the six creativity monality and, at the same time, revealed two striking
resources differently for boys than for girls. These tests differences.
comparing mean scores for the Boys Form of the six The similarity is shown by the fact that both types of
rating scales and those for the Girls Form did not yield ratings indicate that intellectual styles are very impor-
any statistically significant result. That is to say, in tant in creativity. Within the context of the ratings of
responding to the simple ratings of the six resources the hypothetical cases, intellectual styles entered three
for creativity, the participants reported that, regardless of the four regression models as the second predictor
after intelligence. Meanwhile, when the participants
were asked explicitly to specify the importance of each
TABLE 4
Mean Differences in Importance of Resources for Creativity Between
of the creativity resources in identifying creativity
Boys and Girls (N ¼ 270) among school children, they rated intellectual styles as
the most useful resource for creativity with regard to
Resource M SD t-value df Significance (2-Tailed) both boys and girls. The prominent place given to intel-
Intelligence lectual styles in making judgments about creativity
Boys 4.08 1.42 .76 262 .45 could well be a reflection of the strong association
Girls 3.97 .97 between intellectual styles and creativity (Zhang &
Knowledge Sternberg, 2009). It also could be that the styles move-
Boys 4.23 1.26 .54 263 .59
ment, which has been active for more than half a century
Girls 4.16 1.06
Styles (Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswick, Levinson, & Sanford,
Boys 4.76 1.32
1.045 263 .30 1950), has raised the awareness of the research parti-
Girls 4.91 1.03 cipants so that when they were presented with both
Personality types of rating tasks (i.e., rating of hypothetical cases
Boys 4.62 1.43 .06 262 .96
with the six resources for creativity hidden in the state-
Girls 4.60 1.39
Motivation ments of the cases and rating of the six resources with
Boys 4.24 1.39 1.72 261 .09 each construct clearly labeled), they attached great
Girls 3.97 1.19 importance to styles. This point may seem to be
Environment implausible because the participants had no expertise
Boys 4.29 1.41 .71 263 .48
in the field of styles. However, for two related reasons,
Girls 4.18 1.24
the concept of styles has become increasingly widely
236 ZHANG AND STERNBERG
known to students in many higher education institutions
in mainland China, including those in the university
where the present data were collected. First, in the last
decade or so, students in a great number of universities
have been exposed to academic talks on intellectual
styles. Second, in the past several years, a number of
academics who are currently working in mainland
Chinese universities have obtained their doctoral
degrees overseas and have written their dissertations
on styles. Such academic activities would naturally
make university students appreciate the concept of
styles, consciously or subconsciously.
Simultaneously, two major differences emerged from
the two types of data. The first concerns the degree of
importance attached to intelligence. In making judg-
ments about school children’s creativity based on the
hypothetical cases, with no exception, the research part-
icipants considered intelligence to be the most important
resource for creativity. However, when asked to rate the
importance of each of the six resources for creativity on
the 6-point response scale, the participants consistently
rated intelligence as the least important contributing
factor to creativity.
There could be multiple possible explanations of the
seemingly contradictory findings from the two types of
data centered on the importance of intelligence to crea-
tivity. First, multicollinearity in the multiple regressions
could have been partially responsible for the differential
results obtained in the two types of evaluation tasks.
It could also be that the research participants had
different conceptions about each of the terms for the
six resources for creativity (intelligence, knowledge,
intellectual styles, personality, motivation, and environ-
ment). When they were asked to rate the usefulness of
each of the six resources in identifying creativity among
school children, the participants were not provided with
a definition for any of the six sources. Even if such
definitions had been provided, the participants’ interpre-
tations of the definitions could still be very different.
Finally, an equally, or perhaps most, plausible expla-
nation of this finding is that the research participants’
espoused theory of creativity differed from their theory-
in-use. This discrepancy between theory and practice
could be related to social desirability. For at least the
past 3 decades, many people, at least in Asian countries,
have believed that intelligence is not the most important
factor in school success. In the meantime, the notion of
styles has become an increasingly more popular concept
among students and teachers. As a result, when
presented with the terminology representing the six
resources for creativity, the research participants perhaps
rated intelligence as least important and style as most
important for creativity. Nevertheless, in practice, when
they rated the hypothetical cases—cases that involved
statements that did not specify the particular constructs
(attributes) that they were supposedly evaluating—the
research participants unknowingly attached greater
importance to intelligence than they did to styles.
A second main difference revealed by the two types of
ratings pertains to the levels of expectations that the
participants expressed for boys versus girls. In rating
the hypothetical cases, our participants expressed higher
expectations for boys than for girls: Compared with
girls, boys were expected to be creative with fewer
(and lesser) resources for creativity. Girls were thought
to require a lot more resources in order for them to be
creative. However, when asked to rate the importance
of each of the six resources for identifying creativity
among school children, our participants did not express
such differential expectations.
The differential expectations for boys and for girls
found in this sample of mainland Chinese university
students are consistent with the results obtained in
Zhang and Sternberg’s (1998a) study of conceptions of
giftedness among school children in Hong Kong,
whereby pre-service and in-service teachers expressed
higher expectations for boys than for girls. Zhang and
Sternberg (1998a) postulated that girls’ progressive loss
of self-confidence (AAUW, 1992; Arnold, 1993) and
increasing doubt about their own intellectual abilities
(Stipek & MacIver, 1989) might have been derived
from lowered expectations for them. At the same time,
these conflicting findings obtained from the two types
of data, once again, suggested that the participants’
espoused theories of creativity deviated from the implicit
theories they used in making judgments about the hypo-
thetical cases.
Certainly, this research is limited to Chinese univer-
sity students; and as such, the MAC needs to be tested
among other populations. Nevertheless, because this
research yielded convincing results that make substan-
tive sense, practical implications of this research may
be proposed for educational practice.
Consider a question that often comes from teachers:
‘‘What can we do to encourage creativity?’’ These find-
ings suggest that teachers could cultivate creativity by
taking into account at least six variables: intelligence,
knowledge, intellectual styles, personality, motivation,
and environment. Irrespective of the similarities and
differences identified in the two types of data, the six
resources specified in the investment theory of creativity
were deemed important contributing factors in creativity
by our research participants. That is, this research
provided empirical evidence supporting the theoretical
argument that creativity comes from, in addition to
intelligence and knowledge, intellectual styles that are
creativity-generating (e.g., legislative and global styles),
personality traits that communicate open-mindedness,
sensible risk-taking, and willingness to grow, as well as
from an intrinsic motivation. Creativity can also be

nurtured by an environment that is supportive and
rewarding of creativity (Sternberg & Grigorenko, 2007).
Therefore, truly to encourage creativity among
students, teachers should target the wide range of fac-
tors proposed in the investment theory of creativity.
Not only should teachers provide intellectual stimuli to
increase students’ knowledge and to enhance their levels
of intellectual skills, but also they should attend to
students’ intellectual styles, personality, motivation,
and to the environment. Furthermore, these findings
have implications for selection exercises at schools. At
times, creativity is used as a selection criterion for school
enrichment programs. In this selection, what factors
should teachers think of? The investment theory of crea-
tivity and its research findings make it clear that at the
very least, the six resources for creativity investigated
in this research should come into play.
The question that arises is: Can teachers (or any one)
always act upon what they truly believe in? For example,
in theory, our research participants believed that intellec-
tual styles and personality play the most important roles
in creativity and that intelligence is the least important in
identification of creativity among school children. Fur-
thermore, in theory, our research participants alleged
that, regardless of school children’s gender, they would
value the resources for creativity the same way for boys
as they would for girls. However, in practice, our parti-
cipants rated intelligence as the most important variable
(as opposed to styles and personality) and they had differ-
ential expectations about creativity for boys and for girls.
The theory–practice gaps found in this research are not
unique. Consider how far education has gone with respect
to cultivating creativity in schools. For the last two dec-
ades or so, developing creative thinking has been said to
be one of the important missions in many schools around
the world. However, there is little evidence of many suc-
cesses in developing creative thinking through schooling.
Instead, thinking and behaviors that go against creativity
(e.g., local and conservative intellectual styles) have often
been rewarded at schools across the globe (Bernardo,
Zhang, & Callueng, 2002; Cano-Garcia & Huges, 2000;
Nachmias & Shany, 2002; Zhang & Sternberg, 1998b).
High academic achievers are often those who demon-
strate conforming thinking and behaviors. As another
example, previous research (e.g., Dawson, D’Andrea,
Affinito, & Westby, 1999; Westby & Dawson, 1995)
revealed a paradox between school teachers’ self-reports
that they enjoyed creative children in the classroom and
the finding that the same teachers displayed their dislike
for characteristics such as nonconformity that tradition-
ally are associated with creativity.
Similarly, consider how far schools have gone in
narrowing the gender gap in mathematics achievement.
For the past two decades, it has been commonly per-
ceived that the gender gap in mathematics achievement
INVESTMENT THEORY OF CREATIVITY 237
has become increasingly narrower. Teachers have been
thought to give equal attention to school boys and girls
in mathematics classes. As a result, similar, if not exactly
the same, expectations should have been communicated
to boys and to girls. However, research on girls’ edu-
cational experiences continues to show that girls are
given much less attention than are boys (e.g., American
Association of Women Education Foundation, 2002).
Research continues to suggest that, beginning in the
middle-school grades, girls have less confidence in their
mathematical ability than do boys. This finding indi-
cates that girls’ lower scores on mathematics and asso-
ciated intellectual skills and personality could be the
result of the discouragement that girls received over a
long period of time. The confidence in learning math-
ematics girls initially display at a younger age diminishes
as a consequence of their having been socialized in an
environment in which girls receive the subtle (or, not-so-
subtle) message that they are not expected to do well in
mathematics.
These theory–practice gaps and many others require
that teachers be aware of the possible discrepancies
between their espoused theory of creativity and the
theory that they actually use when making judgments
about their students’ creativity. Meanwhile, teachers
should be aware that they may inadvertently express
lower expectations for girls than for boys in their edu-
cational practice. If they change, everyone will benefit.
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