I don't know if NYT's assessment of the study is accurate (the study is paywalled), but here's the key paragraph for people trying to decide if this or the stud

I don't know if NYT's assessment of the study is accurate (the study is paywalled), but here's the key paragraph for people trying to decide if this or the study is worth reading: >> It turns out that highly creative adults often grow up in families full of tension. Not fistfights or personal insults, but real disagreements. When adults in their early 30s were asked to write imaginative stories, the most creative ones came from those whose parents had the most conflict a quarter-century earlier. Their parents had clashing views on how to raise children. They had different values and attitudes and interests. And when highly creative architects and scientists were compared with their technically skilled but less original peers, the innovators often had more friction in their families. As the psychologist Robert Albert put it, “the creative person-to-be comes from a family that is anything but harmonious, one with a ‘wobble.’ ” Referenced study: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092656698922401 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092656698... There's another study linked, but the rest is anecdata built on famous people that, personally, wasn't too illuminating on a skim. It might be interesting to read for the narrative.