Desirability of personal characteristics associated with creativity: Through the eyes of Polish and Chinese university students

The social desirability of characteristics associated with creativity and cultural stereotypes was examined across Polish and Chinese cultures. Polish responses were compared with those from an earlier Chinese study (n = 451). First, we carried out an initial study among 116 Polish students to determine what traits are parts of the national stereotype. Then we sought answers from another set of Poles (n = 610) as to what traits were, first, creative and, secondly, desirable. To analyze the responses we first ranked the traits that both Polish and Chinese students found desirable and then compared the desirable traits across cultures with traits known to be trademarks of creativity. As expected, we found differences between the two samples arising from underlying social origins in that: (a) Poles desired more creative traits and more western traits, whereas Chinese desired more Confucianism based traits and less creative traits; and (b) both Poles and Chinese found creativity traits are desirable albeit Poles found them more desirable than Chinese. An interesting side note is that Poles, unlike Chinese, do not take a positive view of their cultural traits.