Intelligence, personality and schizotypy as predictors of insight

Like divergent thinking tasks used in traditional creativity tests, insight problems require the subject to step out of his commonly employed cognitive framework and acquire novel representations of the problem's components. Although this process is believed to be influenced by individual differences, the relationship between insight, personality traits and other cognitive factors is still insufficiently researched and understood. This study sought to examine the contribution of fluid intelligence, Big Five personality traits and schizotypy in predicting creative problem solving (using 4 spatial, 3 mathematical and 3 verbal insight tasks). Multiple linear regression analyses showed that neither Big Five personality factors, nor dimensional schizotypy facets besides Impulsive Nonconformity, are reliable predictors of insight. Only intelligence, gender (male), age and Impulsive Nonconformity were found to predict higher performance on such tasks. Further detailed analyses were carried out to account for meaningful differences between pure and hybrid problems of this nature, following Weisberg's (1995) suggestion that some commonly used insight problems do not require special automatic and associative cognitive processes, but simple analytical ones.