Creativity and Intelligence are related, but also opposed to each other in a certain way. Traditional analysis of relations between intelligence and creativity have focussed on whether one is a subset of the other; whether they are correlated and found significantly more often together than by themselves; and whether one (high IQ) is a necessary condition or prerequisite for the other (creativity) - the threshold theory of creativity.
From what I get from a reading of the literature, it appears to me that not only they are separate constructs; but also there is mild correlation between them, and most importantly that a threshold of intelligence is not really required for creativity.
A recent line of research by Deyoung et al group can be extended to infer that not only are they different, but in a sense are opposed to each other on a continuum. We seem to have come a long way from conflating one with the other. If the plot seems familiar, it is because something similar happened to Autism and Schizophrenia; initially seen as the same, or more co morbid with each other; or one as a childhood form of the adult form (autism was called childhood schizophrenia at one time); we have now come to understand that not only are the constructs different but they are also opposed to each other on a continuum. More about how Autism/Psychosis relates to intelligence/creativity in a later section.
For now, I direct you to this excellent article by Scott Barry Kaufmanthat elaborates on the paper I alluded to regarding new research hinting that creativity and intelligence are opposed to each other. The paper itself is more about the personality trait of openness to experience/ Intellect and argues that the openness to experience/intellect is actually abipolar continuum trait, with on end signifying intellectual immersion, while the other signifying apophenic tendencies like seeing too much patterns where there are none.
I'll like to take the argument forth from where the authors left. I argue that the authors sold short by focussing only on the personality trait of openness/intellect and comparing it with intelligence (intellect) on the one hand but limiting their discussion and research to apophenia (a subscale measuring schizotypy) on the other hand. If I were them, which I am trying to be now, I would have extended the measurements to include measures of creativity, bipolar susceptibility (propensity of flight of ideas) and Distraction (low LI), to arrive at a better conclusion regarding what the openness end of Openness/ intellect measure (I believe it measures all these too along with apophenia) and then to juxtapose creativity as the opposite end of Intelligence on the openness/ intellect personality factor.
But first to go there, we have to closely look at what creativity is, what intelligence is, how they are related and how they differ.
To recap, the fourth fundamental problem is that of abstraction and the polarity here is between broad and narrow. In my ABCD model of psychology, the C or cognition is the domain in which abstractness matters and the broad/ narrow tension plays out. This is the domain in which we should be focussing on and where intelligence and creativity pan out. I argue that cognitive ability is comprised of 2 parts - creativity (broad and expansive) in tension with and opposed to intelligence (focus and narrowing).
Creativity is sometimes broken up into divergent thinking and convergent thinking; though I argue that essentially same processes are involved in both.
Divergent thinking is measured using Torrance test of creative thinking (TTCT) TTCT consist of both verbal and figural parts. Divergent thinking is also measured by Guilford's Alternate uses task n which one has to come up with as many uses as possible for a common household item. . These creativity test results are scored keeping in mind a number of different creativity criteria. The most common (common to all of the above) criteria are:
1. Fluency: which captures the ability to come up with many diverse ideas quickly. This is measured by the total number of ideas generated. I call this the speed of ideation
2. Flexibility: which captures the ability to cross boundaries and make remote associations. This is measured by number of different categories of ideas generated. I call this the breadth of ideation.
3. Originality: which measures how statistically different or novel the ideas are compared to a comparison group. His is measured as number of novel ideas. I call this the uniqueness /novelty of ideation.
4. Elaboration: which measure the amount of detail associated with the idea. This I think is not relevant to creativity per se (as per my limited definition of creativity) , but elaboration has more to do with focussing on each solution/idea and developing it further - perhaps a responsibility more in alignment with that of Intelligence. I call this depth of ideation.
Convergent thinking is measured by tests like remote associations test or insight problems. These problems are solved when you apply one of the methods below:
1. See problem from a different perspective. To me this looks like how quickly you can adopt multiple perspectives - the speed with which you can take alternate perspectives and is similar to fluency.
2. Make unique association between parts of the problem. This looks again similar to flexibility or how fluid is your categorisation schema enabling you to think out of the box and not be limited by typical categories or associations.
3. Take a novel approach (and not the typical approach) to problem solving. To me, this again looks similar to Originality.
Creativity is also defined as coming up with something that is both novel and useful. At which point I am reminded of a quote by Oscar Wilde, that "all art is useless, we can forgive man for making a useless thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. ‘ by which I understand that art need not be useful or fulfil the criteria of utility, but is more measured by whether it fulfils the criterion of aesthetics or beauty. As long as one considers art as an integral part of creativity, I think we need to make room for beauty as part of defining what is creative: creativity = utility + beauty+ novelty.
Taken together I argue that these criteria/strategies/definitions that are used to measure and define creativity and solve creative problems, also hint at the underlying factor structure of creativity.
I propose that creativity is tripartite:
