The Relationship Between Creativity and Psychedelic Use

This study assessed creativity in 200 participants (100 with prior psychedelic use, 100 matched controls) using the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT), the Alternate Uses Task (AUT), and a novel real-world creative problem-solving task. Participants also completed measures of personality (Big Five), openness to experience, and creative self-efficacy.

The psychedelic group scored significantly higher on divergent thinking measures (AUT fluency: d = 0.42, p < 0.01; TTCT originality: d = 0.38, p < 0.01). However, when openness to experience was controlled, the effect was reduced by 60% and fell below significance for most measures. This suggests that the relationship is substantially mediated by trait openness — a variable that both predicts psychedelic use and is itself associated with creativity.

The findings complicate the popular narrative that psychedelics 'make you more creative.' The causal direction is unclear: it may be that open people both use psychedelics and are more creative, with no direct causal link. Alternatively, psychedelic use may increase openness, which in turn increases creativity. A third possibility — that the creative benefit comes from the integration practices surrounding psychedelic use rather than the substance itself — is consistent with the data and deserves further investigation.