Intellectual Risk Taking: A Moderating Link Between Creative Confidence and Creative Behavior?

Having confidence in one’s creative ability seems necessary for creative behavior. The relationship, however, may not be as direct as creativity researchers have initially posited. Previous research on the relationshipbetween creative confidence (CC) and creative behavior (CB) has yielded mixed findings. Moreover,emerging theoretical and empirical work suggests that the CC–CB relationship is moderated by other beliefs.In this exploratory study, we examined the relationship among intellectual risk taking (IRT), CC, and CB.Specifically, we tested 2 theoretical propositions. The first involved examining the posited relationshipbetween creative confidence and creative behaviors. Consistent with our expectations, our preliminary resultsindicate positive, albeit somewhat modest correlations between creative confidence and creative achievements(r =.33), creative achievements in the arts (r =.17), creative achievements in science (r =.27), andparticipation in creative activities (r =.35). The second proposition involved examining whether IRTmoderates the relationship between CC and CB. Our results indicate that IRT did serve as a moderator in therelationship between CC and CB. Specifically, our preliminary results indicate that willingness to takeintellectual risks enhances the relationship between CC and CB. Moreover, our findings also indicate that atvery low levels of IRT, there is no relationship between CC and CB. In sum, our results suggest that even ifpeople have high levels of confidence in their creativity, they may also need to be willing to take the creativerisks in order for creative confidence to develop into creative behavior. Theoretical and research implicationsof these findings are also discussed