Exploration of creativity and resiliency in survivors of Hurricane Katrina

This study examines the role that creativity, conceptualized as divergent thinking, might play in the process of resilience. In accord with current models of resilience, subjective wellbeing despite exposure to adversity is conceptualized as manifestation of resilience. In this case, survivors of Hurricane Katrina who have lost their homes were asked to respond to measures of divergent thinking, perception of adversity (life events), well-being, a short personality inventory, and a demographic questionnaire. In addition qualitative exploration of participants' experiences living in New Orleans a year after the hurricane augmented understanding of coping and recovery within contextual framework. Findings suggest the specific traits linked with creativity such as originality, flexibility, and extroversion help predict emotional resilience after natural disaster. Specifically, originality was found to be a significant predictor for extroversion, which was a significant predictor of life satisfaction and the well-being composite in this study. Also, both Flexibility and originality were significant predictors of both clinical stress and life satisfaction for the African American population in this study but not for the Caucasian population; Similarly, originality and flexibility were significantly correlated to well-being measures under greater income disparity and not for participants reporting lower income disparity. These findings suggest that flexibility and originality are moderated by SES, culture and social structure and their effects might be masked under condition of social privilege and prevalence of resources. The importance of flexibility and original thinking was highlighted in interviews with participants of middle and higher SES of Caucasian background, providing further support for this conclusion. A discussion of findings attempts to integrate theories of creativity and resilience in light of the study results.