Reflection of creative personality in TAT narrations

Introduction
Despite the fact that creativity has been the focus of interest not only amongst psychologists for decades, quantitative methods remain the dominant approach to its study. Our empirical research on creativity differs from traditionally oriented research in that area. Although the key role of Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) regarding fantasy is well known, we practically do not encounter it in research on creativity. Nevertheless, it is hard to question that the storyteller's creative imagination is behind the creation of every story. Our research thus focuses on this overlooked connection between creativity and stories evoked by the TAT.

Goals and Methods
The purpose of our study is to try to identify and to capture factors contained in narratives evoked by TAT, which can manifest author's creativity. Through qualitative analysis we aimed to form more general criteria for the evaluation of creativity. We focused on both the content and formal aspects of the stories, using mainly narrative and thematic analysis techniques.
The research sample consists of 50 artists divided into group of visual artists and group of musicians. Thus, we obtained 500 different stories for analysis.

Results
Several criteria emerged from the analysis. Based on these, we formed content categories such as "surprising twists", "character development" or "figures of speech" category capturing the formal level of the stories.
The analyses also revealed differences in storytelling between different groups of artists.

Conclusions
We assume the qualitative analysis of TAT stories is not only one of the unexplored but also immensely rich and useful ways to obtain new and different perspective in creativity understanding. We believe that our study has shed light on one of the grey areas of creativity research and offered suggestions for its further study from a side that has long remained averted.