| Common methods that have been used to study creative achievement include nomothetic and ideographic approaches. While providing some valuable findings, such methods have considerable limitations: the nomothetic approach minimizes individual differences among creators; the ideographic approach does not necessarily generalize well. A potential resolution to this problem is Galenson's (2001) "finder-seeker" typology, which identified two types of creators based on their approaches to creative tasks and career trajectories. Finders are characterized by a deductive approach and earlier career peaks, seekers, by the opposite tendencies. While this typology is promising as a unifying theory of creativity, so far it relies heavily on qualitative observations, and its statistical properties have not been studied in detail. For instance, is the finder-seeker distinction a one-dimensional or multi-dimensional distinction?; The main goal of this study was to create and examine a new paper-and-pencil self-report instrument, the Creative Approach Questionnaire (CAQ), to quantitatively assess the nature of Galenson's typology. The second goal was to understand the relationship of the CAQ to existing psychological constructs, such as ambiguity tolerance, need for cognition, creative thinking, and others.; The 40-item CAQ (including 20 "finder" items and 20 "seeker" items) was given to 105 undergraduate students, together with six other psychological measures. Item analyses and internal consistency measures of the CAQ yielded refined measures of the finder and seeker subscales. The correlation between the two subscales was zero, suggesting that the constructs of finders and seekers are independent. Comparisons of scores on the two subscales with the other measures suggest that Galenson's typology can be "psychologized" and is actually related to a number of other constructs that psychologists have studied, including ambiguity tolerance, creativity, and Eastern versus Western thinking styles. General implication and future directions for continued refinement and application of the CAQ are discussed. |
