The quest to quantify the creative process, primarily through the use of divergent thinking batteries, has been a lightning rod for the psychometric study of creativity.
Divergent thinking tests require individuals to produce several response to a specific prompt, in sharp contrast to most standardized tests of achievement or ability that require one correct answer.
Getzels and Jackson (1962) gave more than 500 students, in grades 6 to 12, intelligence tests and five creativity tests:
*A word-association test in which students were asked to give as many definitions as possible for fairly common words.
*A test of alternate uses, in which students were asked to think of as many uses as they could for familiar object.
*A hidden-shapes test that required them to find geometric figures hidden in more complex figures.
*A fable test in which they furnished the last line for an unfinished fable.
*A make-up problems test in which they were to make up a variety of mathematical problems from large amount of numerical information.
Scores in these creativity measures and scores in IQ tests correlated very little. Thus creativity seems to be largely independent of general intelligence as defined by IQ tests.
At the same time, highly creative people rarely have below-average required for creativity. Among people with above-average IQ, an individual’s IQ scores cannot predict his or her level of creativity.
Getzels and Jackson changes the dominant views of the relationship between IQ and creativity by postulating, based on their extensive study that creativity was far more independent of IQ than previously believed especially at the upper-IQ levels. This work paved way for the development of modern creativity.
Creativity and divergent thinking
