Photographic individuality, breadth of perspective, and creativity

Individuality is valued in most conceptions of personality, but is seldom o perationalized. The present research used photo essays about the self as th e medium for operationalizing self-construals that are unlike others (i.e., are uniquely creative, abstract, self-reflective, and multidimensional). R atings of these photo essays from two samples (N = 183 university students) served as the measure of individuality. This measure was predicted and fou nd to correlate in both samples with Breadth of Interest from the Jackson P ersonality Inventory (JPI; Jackson, 1994). In Study 1, individuality also c orrelated with the JPI Complexity scale and with two measures of divergent thinking (unique word associations, and fluency on Wallach & Kogan's [1965] creativity tasks). In Study 2, individuality correlated with having more p ermeable boundaries, a nonprejudicial universal orientation, and imagining greater cultural diversity in one's future. Results suggest that individual istic persons take a broader, more complex and more creative perspective to their lives.