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| Was Salvador Dali a little psychopathic? Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons |
I spent the majority of my time as a young wannabe-creative person trying to reconcile the whole "you have to be depressed/anxious/crazy to be an artist" thing with my desire to not be a depressed/anxious/crazy person.
While I now see and appreciate the fact that the best creatives are, in fact, mentally healthy, new research has come out confirming the opposite: creative people share more traits with psychopaths than non-creatives.
Well, then.
So what we actually rate higher in are traits like emotional disinhibition, dishonesty, and risk taking, which kind of makes sense if you think about how creative work emerges. You've got to be able to hold your emotions at arms length and be okay taking a chance on an idea. The dishonesty, well, I could come up with a roundabout way to justify that as a good thing, but whatever. We're not saints.
Source: Hyperallergic.
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