ABSTRACT
A study of creative and sex-specific patterns in the original sample of 72 stories found that creative books emphasized the formal dimension of setting more than comparison books and put relatively less emphasis on plot and analysis of parts. Finally, on both the California Psychological Inventory and Writers Q Sort, there were significant interactions between level of creativity and writing heroic or tender stories, all involving crossovers by the middle-rated counter sex/traditional groups. The findings address many issues in creativity research, but one wonders whether they would generalize to other areas of literature and to other areas of creativity, where the creative product is more opaque to the expression of personality. Gender differences in creative style similar to those identified in authors of fantasy were previously demonstrated in mathematicians. In sum, authors of pleasant/traditional fantasy tend to be well-adjusted people who want to give pleasure and gain external rewards and often succeed.
