Gender and creativity: New study challenges traditional views

A new study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology challenges the common belief that men are inherently more creative than women. Instead, the research suggests that men and women tend to express their creativity in different ways, with men leaning into risk-taking and women leveraging their empathetic abilities. Notably, the research demonstrates that empathy can be a more powerful driver of creativity than risk-taking, especially when the usefulness of ideas is taken into account.

Creativity is often portrayed as a trait associated with independence, risk-taking, and self-confidence—qualities that align more with traditional masculine gender roles. Prior studies have shown that people tend to perceive men as more creative than women, even when they present identical ideas. This perception may be due to an overemphasis on novelty as the defining characteristic of creativity while underestimating the role of usefulness. The researchers sought to challenge this one-sided perspective by exploring whether creativity can also stem from communal behaviors such as empathy, which align more with traditional feminine gender roles.

Drawing on social role theory, which suggests that societal expectations shape behaviors and attitudes based on gender, the researchers hypothesized that both men and women could be creative, but through different mechanisms. Men, they predicted, would exhibit creativity through risk-taking, whereas women would do so through empathy. They also aimed to examine the conditions under which empathy-driven creativity could be more recognized and valued.

“This idea emerged from discussions with my coauthors. We noted that creativity research often emphasizes the novelty aspect of creativity while neglecting the importance of its usefulness aspect, although both aspects are important (i.e., ideas need to be both novel and useful in order to be creative),” said study author Joohyung (Jenny) Kim, an assistant professor at City University of Hong Kong.

“Further, because men are typically better at the former (because of their risk-taking tendency) while women are typically better at the latter (because of their empathic tendency) given their gender role expectations, we thought this may explain why men are often viewed as more creative.”

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To test their hypotheses, the researchers conducted a meta-analysis, which is a method for combining and analyzing the results of multiple independent studies on a particular topic. They searched through academic databases, previous meta-analyses, major academic conferences, and dissertations. They identified 700 studies involving 753 independent samples, encompassing a total of 265,762 individuals. These studies examined the relationships between gender and creativity.

The studies included in the meta-analysis measured creativity in various ways, including self-ratings, supervisor or peer ratings, and assessments by independent raters. Importantly, the studies also measured risk-taking tendency, which is the inclination to make choices that involve uncertainty and the possibility of either significant gains or losses, and empathic tendency, which is the ability to understand and share the feelings of others.

The researchers coded each study based on how these variables were measured. For example, they noted whether a study’s measure of creativity explicitly included usefulness as a criterion for evaluating creative ideas. They also coded whether the tasks involved in a study required participants to consider the perspectives of the people who would use the ideas they generated. To ensure accuracy, two members of the research team independently coded the studies, and any disagreements were resolved through discussion. They also consulted with subject matter experts to validate their coding decisions.

The results of the meta-analysis provided strong support for the researchers’ hypotheses. First, they found that men tended to score higher on risk-taking tendency, while women scored higher on empathic tendency. Second, they found that both risk-taking tendency and empathic tendency were positively related to creativity. This means that individuals who were more willing to take risks tended to be more creative, and individuals who were more empathetic also tended to be more creative.

The researchers then examined whether risk-taking tendency and empathic tendency could explain the relationship between gender and creativity. They found that men’s higher levels of risk-taking tendency partially explained why they might be perceived as more creative. On the other hand, women’s higher levels of empathic tendency also explained a significant portion of the relationship between gender and creativity.

Interestingly, the researchers found that empathic tendency was a stronger explanatory factor than risk-taking tendency. Furthermore, they looked at whether the relationship between empathic tendency and creativity was influenced by the context in which creativity was assessed. They found that when the assessment of creativity explicitly included usefulness as a criterion, the positive relationship between empathic tendency and creativity became even stronger. This suggests that when creativity is evaluated not just on novelty but also on how useful an idea is, individuals with higher empathic tendency are more likely to be recognized as creative.

“Both men and women have their own strengths when it comes to creativity,” Kim told PsyPost. “To help them bring their strengths to the table and to build a more equitable workplace, organizations should adopt creativity evaluation systems that put equivalent emphasis on both novelty and usefulness.”

The researchers also conducted a number of additional analyses to test the robustness of their findings. For example, they controlled for factors such as education level and social network connections. Across all these analyses, the main findings remained consistent.

The researchers also examined whether the gender gap in creativity remained when creativity was assessed by individuals unaware of the creator’s gender. When evaluators knew the gender of the individual being assessed, men were rated as slightly more creative than women. But when gender was hidden, this difference vanished.

“Although this was not extensively discussed in the paper, we found (in our supplementary analysis) that gender differences in creativity disappeared when the raters of creativity were blind to the creator’s gender,” Kim said. “This shows the impact of gender-related biases in creativity evaluation and suggests that creativity evaluators (typically supervisors) should be heedful of these biases in their creativity assessments.”

The researchers acknowledge that their study has limitations. As a meta-analysis, it relies on the data collected in previous studies, which may have their own limitations. For example, most of the studies did not allow the researchers to determine whether gender influenced creativity above and beyond gender role differences. Future research could investigate this question further. Additionally, the number of studies available for some analyses, particularly those examining the impact of workplace conditions, was relatively small.

“The number of studies examined for the moderator analyses was not very large, so we encourage future research to replicate our findings,” Kim said.

The study highlights the importance of fostering environments that encourage diverse approaches to creativity. While risk-taking can be valuable in certain contexts, organizations should also create space for more collaborative, empathetic forms of creative problem-solving.

“My ultimate goal is to alter perceptions about gender and contribute to a more equitable workplace through my research,” Kim said.

The study, “Looking Inside the Black Box of Gender Differences in Creativity: A Dual-Process Model and Meta-Analysis,” was authored by Joohyung (Jenny) Kim, Manuel J. Vaulont, Zhen Zhang, and Kris Byron.