Creative Minecrafters: Cognitive and Personality Determinants of Creativity, Novelty, and Usefulness in Minecraft

Considering creativity as a novel-and-useful performance outcome, this study explored the predictive effects of cognitive abilities (i.e., divergent thinking, intellectual aptitude as indicated by SAT scores) and Big Five personality traits on creativity and its two aspects (i.e., novelty and usefulness) in addition to the intercorrelations between creativity, novelty, and usefulness in a Minecraft building task. Regression analyses based on a college student sample (N = 285) revealed that Minecraft creativity was predicted by divergent thinking (beta = .16, p < .01), SAT scores (beta = .27, p < .001), and Openness to Experience (beta = .23, p < .001), supporting the standing beliefs regarding individual antecedents of creativity. Such personal characteristics however, had different predictive effects on the two components of creativity, in that novelty was predicted by divergent thinking (beta = .14, p < .01), SAT scores (beta = .13, p < .01), and Openness to Experience (beta = .27, p < .001) whereas usefulness was predicted by Openness to Experience only (beta = .14, p < .01). In terms of the intercorrelations among creativity and its two subdimensions, novelty and usefulness were found to be highly correlated with each other (r = .72, p < .001) and were also both highly related to creativity (r(novelty-creativity) = .89, p < .001, and r(usefulness-creativity) = .65, p < .001, respectively). Implications of these results, several key avenues for future research, and study limitations are discussed.