Creativity of undergraduates with and without family history of alcohol and other drug problems.

Noble, Runco, and Ozkaragoz (1993) provided evidence that alcoholics' children differ negatively from recovering alcoholics' and nonalcoholics' children in terms of personality characteristics related to creativity. They also found that divergent thinking test scores among the three groups of children are similar, yet the possibility exists that offspring compensate for the personality deficits and maintain productively creative lives in spite of the negative influence of parental substance use. This study investigated the impact of parental substance abuse problems on 163 undergraduates' creative achievement. With current alcohol consumption as a covariate, analysis of covariance results suggest that parental alcohol and drug problems do not have an appreciable effect on students' creative achievement, although marginally significant interaction of gender and family history provides limited evidence that gender may influence the impact of parental substance abuse on creativity. Because the true effects of parental substance abuse may not be felt for several years, future research should investigate these issues with older offspring.