Discrimination of social knowledge and its flexible application from creativity: a multitrait–multimethod approach

The major goals of the present study were to replicate prior findings that social knowledge and the flexible application of that knowledge represent distinct social intelligence constructs and to explore how these two constructs are related to creativity. Data from 239 male and female undergraduates were analyzed in this multitrait–multimethod (verbal, pictorial, self-report) study. All three latent traits showed convergent and discriminant validities. In addition, all three traits were found to be approximately equally correlated with one another (rs between 0.45 and 0.66). These results suggest that the three constructs as assessed in this study may involve similar, or overlapping, mental processes.