The relationship between intelligence and creativity has long been debated and studied.
One of the hallmark tests of "general intelligence" is the Raven's Progressive Matrices Test. This test gives you a matrix of figures and you have to figure out the missing piece that completes the pattern.
Here's an example:
There are typically 8 answer options and you choose the one correct answer.
Performance on this test is strongly related to the common factor derived from performance across a wide range of IQ test items. This suggests that the form of reasoning tapped into by this test is something that cuts across different kinds of content (at least spatial, verbal and quantitative content). Many think the kind of thinking this test measures taps into the uniquely human capacity for abstract reasoning ("fluid intelligence").
Whatever this test is really measuring, one thing is for sure: this is a test of convergent thinking. Your answer must converge with what the test maker came up with. Contrast this type of thinking with divergent thinking, in which you have to come up with problems to solve in the first place because there is no single correct answer. How does this -- more creative -- form of thinking relate to the type of thinking measured by IQ tests?
Researchers have attempted to get at the answer to that question -- reporting on average a small correlation between convergent thinking tests and divergent thinking tests. A recent study, however, has one of the most ingenious designs I've seen to date. The researchers were Saskia Jaarsveld, Thomas Lachmann and Cees van Leeuwen, from Germany, Japan and Belgium, respectively. They didn't just have people solve standard Raven's Progressive Matrices items, but they also had 511 first to sixth graders invent their own darn items!
First they gave the children the standard pattern completion test to take. Then they flipped the script and asked the children to come up with entirely new items based on the test they just took. That's right, these young test takers suddenly become the test constructors. The researchers scored the responses to this test on a few different dimensions. They measured convergent thinking by having a team of raters assess the rules the kids used to describe the relations between the different figures. Those who came up with more complex and correct relations got more points.
This is essentially the most important component of solving the traditional task. In the original Raven's test, you have to figure out the rules that describe the relationship between the different figures. In the example above, the rule is a simple succession of the shaded pieces. But more difficult items require figuring out multiple rules and sorting out the relevant from the irrelevant elements of the figures in your head. These problems get hard. The researchers also assessed divergent thinking by having a team of raters reward detailed and richly varied components.
The researchers then gave the kids a measure of creativity, in which the children were presented with an unfinished drawing and were asked to complete it. It was emphasized that there is no one way to complete the drawing. The total score on the creativity test was based on the number of associations the child made, and the originality and organization of the created ideas.
Their result? The convergent thinking aspect of the invented task was -- unsurprisingly -- related to the standard Raven's format. The divergent thinking aspect, however, was not related to the standard version. In fact, the correlation was close to 0! Not only that, but the convergent and divergent thinking aspects were unrelated to each other. These were simply separate dimensions of the task. Perhaps most interestingly, both aspects were significantly correlated with the creativity test.
What does this all mean? It means that IQ-type reasoning is only one slice of the creativity pie. The highest levels of creativity require both convergent thinking and divergent thinking. This idea has long been known in creativity research. According to the well known Geneplore model, creativity involves a cyclical process of generating ideas and then systematically working out which ideas are most fruitful and implementing them. The generation stage is thought to involve divergent thinking whereas the exploration stage is thought to involve convergent thinking.
What is so unique about this study is that it took a typical IQ test and turned it into a divergent thinking test. Their results show quite clearly that IQ tests do not measure divergent thinking -- a crucial component of creativity. If we want to assess a person's potential for creativity, innovation and imagination, we have to do better than give them an IQ test. We can't just ask them to figure out the one correct answer. We have to give them the opportunity to tell us what the problem is in the first place.
© 2012 by Scott Barry Kaufman.
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This article also reminds me of what was said by a Google employee concerning the big fuss about some of their products not being attractive or as wanted by the public as those running their ship thought they should be. Amongst many words he was quoted as saying "we don't have a Steve Jobs". This was on the heels of Jobs passing. Of course, Steve was a divergent thinker. That is why Apple has been and is a success of a different order.
Sadly, the divergent thinker also seems to have killed the man... if the rumors are true that he kept treating his actually curable cancer with natural remedies, until it was medically too late, then you can see the downside to the man... he was opinionated and he didn't trust conventional medical wisdom, which, in this case, is backed by a very high rate of success...
Your theory on his death reminds me of a study I read many years ago that went through some of the downsides to being highly intelligent. One of the biggest was that when mistakes were made, they were often huge because they were so unused to being wrong their whole lives that they would continue in a direction that others kept telling them was wrong.
Anyway, the company he cofounded was a success because of him in the beginning and in the end. According to the latest new, Apples is now worth more than Microsoft and Google combined.
When Jobs started NeXT, he had basically a demonstrator that he had learned from his earlier mistakes (of wanting to make ten technology steps at once... thus the wordplay?). Apple, at that time basically a dying company, needed the technology and the innovation that NeXT provided.
NeXTSTEP is, of course, a shrewd pre-cursor of the "open source" model (with commercial forking into closed source!). Steve Jobs stopped re-inventing the wheel and took existing technologies (Mach kernel and BSD code) and simply added the functionality that these robust low level design missed to make the whole into a consumer product.
How smart is that? In my books very. But it is more business smart than technology smart. Pretty much everybody can repeat the tech steps that Apple is doing as soon as they hit the market... there is no rocket science in any of Apple's products. The packaging, however, far outclasses the competition. As long as they can keep that next step close to their vests, they will have a first in market advantage. The very day someone figures out their recipe, they will be one among many.
The strange thing is it is from this unwillingness to allow others(divergent) in that they have taken what was originally an outsider’s(divergent) idea and misinterpreted it for 100 years. It’s time to let someone in that isn’t spoiled by the entanglement of the academic process of progression up to the understanding of their elders and only through a strict adherence.(convergent)
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There are plenty of models in physics and very few theories. Can you name them? If you can, I will give you some credit. If you can't, better educate yourself first... by reading an actual book about physics, possibly written by someone with "credentials".
Is it pretty? Absolutely? It is art? By all means. Is it good art? Not really.
But critical thinking? Nope. Total fail.
:-)
In my world "inaccurate" simply means "it doesn't work". We had concrete science and engineering criteria and tests. The hardware and software that these guys built for our experiments had to work as specified.
I don't know how you rate "behavior". In science and engineering related to science experiments we let nature rate. And that means the products of your mind either pass or they fail. If they pass, you are hired, if they fail, you can look for a different profession.
It's not rocket science. And it's not a "creativity cult", either. It's simply a matter of man against intellectual problems. Some succeed on much more complicated problems than others. How you call that is completely irrelevant.
While most you describe will be among the best technical problems solvers in the world, will any of them stand up to you or anyone else and create something or produce any novel concept the world will be talking about in a hundred years? See, this is the concept I always try to communicate to you, to no avail.
One author suggests: Stop asking how...instead ask, what's it doing? Here, the example is convergent thinking v. divergent thinking. You know Einstein wasn't a convergent thinker even as he did incorporate minimal competence as you describe with your own students.
It's often been described, Einstein was an average student. You may have mocked him, too, if he had been one of your students. And yet, the man eventually produced monumental results...because, you and I should agree...he was a divergent thinker.
Now, you would be surprised however, how many people fail to develop even minimal physics competence... like understanding the meaning of the law of energy conservation.
So in your opinion it was not physics that changed the world since the times of Galileo? Then what was it? Philosophy? It was philosophers who came up with mechanics, thermodynamics, electromagnetic waves and semiconductor physics? In what universe.
In any case, I would like to see "creative people" in an intellectual contest against a smart physicists... oh, wait... there would be no contest.
I doubt I would have mocked Einstein. He would have given me a run for my money in thirty seconds flat.
And, no, Einstein wasn't a divergent thinker. He was highly convergent. He took facts that were known to everyone and that didn't seem to make any sense and he showed them to be perfectly consistent... if interpreted correctly. That's not divergent, but convergent thinking. He solved nature's equivalent of the graphical problem shown above.
You don't have to believe everything that you hear about people like Einstein in the media, you know. Why don't you read a real biography, instead?
You know what the difference is between people who use Einstein as their excuse for intellectual mediocrity and those who don't? We have actually read his papers. In German.
:-)