Higher creativity is linked to increased association scores in an audiovisual task

Human creativity is often studied in relation to idea-generation and problem-solving; yet a growing body of evidence suggests that creativity-related traits may also shape how we perceive and understand the world around us. In this study, we examined whether individual differences in creative disposition are associated with differences in crossmodal associations triggered by musical stimuli. A total of 97 healthy adult participants completed a crossmodal association task wherein they rated the extent to which short musical melodies could be associated with illustrations of everyday objects, followed by questionnaires assessing creative personal identity, creative self-efficacy, openness to experience, and creative activities. Using a Gaussian Mixture model-based clustering approach, we identified two participant profiles characterised by consistently high versus low creativity-related scores. By means of a Bayesian Zero-Inflated Beta-distributed Mixed Model, credible evidence was obtained that individuals from the former cluster, characterised by a broadly developed creative profile, gave higher association scores. Despite some uncertainty regarding its practical relevance, the effect showed a 95.82% probability of existence, suggesting that creativity-related traits may influence the crossmodal associations between musical and visual percepts.