Building the Creative Self: The Sources of Creative Self-Concept Scale

Understanding how individuals form beliefs about their own creativity – referred to as the creative self-concept (CSC) – requires examining the informational sources that shape these self-assessments. In this paper, we introduce and validate the Sources of Creative Self-Concept Scale (SoCSC), a questionnaire adapted from self-efficacy research, designed to assess four theorized sources of CSC: mastery experience, vicarious experience, social persuasion, and physiological and emotional states. A sample of 558 adults completed measures of CSC (both global and trait-like) and the SoCSC. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses supported a four-factor model aligned with the proposed sources. All sources were significantly associated with CSC, with social persuasion emerging as the strongest individual predictor. However, structural equation modeling revealed that a general factor – reflecting shared variance across all sources – accounted for the majority of the variance in CSC. This finding suggests a dynamic interplay between personal experiences, observed models, social feedback, and affective responses in shaping creative self-perceptions. The results are discussed in the context of Bandura’s theory of self-efficacy.