Half the Right People: Network Density and Creativity

Abstract

Social scientists investigating the attributes associated with creativity have for the most part confined their research to the study only of creative people. This research attempts to compare creativity with non-creativity by comparing creative with non-creative periods in the lives of three famously isolated creators (Emily Dickinson, Paul Gauguin, and Charlotte Brontë) to argue that the social networks of the individuals are different during creative periods than during non-creative periods. By using the correspondence of each of the artists to construct social networks, it is possible to analyze the artist’s relationships with regard to density and betweenness and to compare those across creative and non-creative time periods. The average network density of the first order zone network around each of the artists was 0.475 during periods of creativity. There was no correlation with a particular betweenness score.