Thinking styles in creative writers and journalists.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

To investigate differences between types of writers, student creative writers and student journalists were compared on their thinking styles. This study focused on two theories of thinking styles: Bruner's theory of Narrative and Paradigmatic thought and Sternberg's theory of Legislative, Executive, and Judicial thought. A total of 81 undergraduate participants (41 creative writing students and 40 student journalists) were assessed on Narrative and Paradigmatic thought by writing sentences for a series of photographs. These sentences were then rated for the two types of thought. In addition, Sternberg's Mental Self-Government Thinking Styles Inventory (MSG-TSI) and the NEO Personality Inventory (Costa & McRae, 1992) were administered to these 81 participants plus an additional four creative writers. As hypothesized, creative writing students scored significantly higher than student journalists on the Narrative thinking style. However, an unexpected interaction emerged between gender and type of writer. For males, the hypothesized difference in paradigmatic scores was found, with journalists significantly outscoring creative writers on this thinking style. For females, however, a trend in the opposite direction was observed, although that difference was not significant. On the MSG-TSI, as hypothesized, journalists were found to be more Executive in their thinking than creative writers, while creative writers were found to be marginally more Legislative than journalists. While unexpected, the significant gender X type of writer interaction found for the paradigmatic thinking style can be seen as being consistent with some previous cognitive and neuropsychological research on gender differences. These differences in thinking styles remained significant when personality variables were held constant. The participants were not professional writers, and this limitation should be considered in how well the results of this study can be generalized. Overall, however, these findings indicate that thinking styles are a viable and valid construct that can shed insight on a variety of research topics, particularly in investigations of writing and the creative arts.