Conservatism, Openness, and Creativity: Patents Granted to Residents of American States

This study was conducted to determine the relation of creative production to conservatism and openness to experience with American states as the units of analysis. Patents per state population from 2001 to 2005 served as the criterion. Conservatism was gauged by a composite based on (a) state-aggregated conservative self-placement among over 141,000 respondents to 122 national telephone surveys between 1976 and 1988 and (b) state percentage voting for Bush in 2004. State openness scores were based on state-aggregated survey responses of over 600,000 residents to a common Big Five personality questionnaire. For 46 states (excluding Alaska, Hawaii, Nevada, and Idaho because of lack of suitable data), patents per state population was negatively related to conservatism (r = − .65) and positively related to openness (r = .50). These associations persisted when state socioeconomic status (SES), estimates of IQ, and degree of urbanization were statistically considered. Multiple regression analysis showed that conservatism and openness together accounted for 46.5% of the criterion variance without controls and 22.7% with SES controlled. Variance in state creative production accounted for by conservatism and openness indicated that the 2 predictors had both overlapping and separate components but that conservatism was the predominant of the 2 dispositional variables.