Integrative Complexity: Its Measurement and Relation to Creativity

HARVEY, Hunt, and Schroder’s (1961) classification of individuals according to the level of integrative complexity of their personality structure has led to the accurate prediction of the individual’s diversity of perceptions (Driver, 1962), reaction to attitude refutation (Streufert, 1962), and attitude change in a sensory deprived and isolated environment (Suedfeld, 1964). The classification system, when used to compare homogeneous groups, has made possible the prediction of sensitivity to feedback (Lawrence, 1962) and group structure and performance on a variety of measures in a simulated environment (Tuckman, 1964). This evidence provides validity for the classification scheme and its underlying theory, as well as the measure used for identifying the individual’s level of integrative complexity. The measure used for this purpose has been the Sentence Completion Test (SC) developed by Schroder and Streufert (1962), a projective instrument, which can be considered to have been validated by the above studies. The purpose of this study was to evaluate an objectively-scored device to measure integrative complexity by determining the extent to which it was useful in predicting creativity, a characteristic