Do you need to be intelligent in order to be creative?
Nick Skillicorn
Innovation expert, A.I. for Program Leadership & empowering High-Performance global Teams
What is the link between intelligence and creativity?
And can you be creative without being intelligent, or do you need a minimum level of intelligence to achieve great creative feats?
This has been a question posed since creativity research began seriously in the 1950s.
And it has a long, controversial history.
Throughout history, many people who were regarded as highly creative, the people who made a mark on their fields, especially the scientific disciplines, were also highly intelligent. Often, they were classified as geniuses.
But do you need to be a genius in today’s world in order to be creative?
This is what the Threshold Theory of Creativity seeks to predict.
It suggests that up to a certain level of intelligence, you need that intelligence to achieve creative things. But once you have reached that important IQ threshold, additional intelligence becomes less important, or even a hindrance for doing creative work.
Threshold theory predicts that there is a weaker relationship between creativity and intelligence for an IQ above 120 than for an IQ below 120.
This is based on initial predictions made all the way back in 1967 by JP Guilford when looking at his Structure of Intellect model.
This IQ level of 120 was apparently seen in experiments at the time, yet has been highly controversial. As a result, numerous scientists have conducted experiments to see whether the threshold theory is true, and what the link between intelligence and creativity is.
Various tests of the threshold theory and their results:
Results of the experiments and Discussion
So, based on all of the available data above we have, is there really a threshold required for someone to be creative?
No.
Every one of us is creative. We just have different potential ranges of creative achievement, and these will vary between different fields (like mathematics, music, visual arts, storytelling or business).
People can have wildly different potential in different fields based on factors beyond just the intelligence measured by an IQ test. One person may score highly on an IQ test and have a propensity for mathematics and physics, so could be creative as a scientist. But the same person may have very low intelligence and potential when it comes to music, visual arts or business. Their potential range for creative achievement will be high in some fields but much lower in others.
Similarly, there may be someone who does not score highly on an IQ test because it does not measure the aspects of their intelligence where they are strongest, and this person may still find a field or niche where they can deliver highly creative, original and professional work.
Moreover, you do not need to be gifted or a genius in order to be creative. According to the 4C model of creativity, everyone has the capacity to be creative in their everyday lives, no matter what they do professionally.
All the the experiments showed that there was a slight correlation between intelligence and creativity. However, the correlation between rising intelligence and creativity was in most cases only weakly positive. Therefore, there must be other factors at play which improve creativity more than intelligence.
The more intelligent you are, the higher your creative potential is likely to be. While a few experiments showed that after a certain IQ level, creative performance does not rise as quickly anymore, there was little evidence to suggest that it actively fell above an IQ level of 120.
But this is just potential. Most of the experiments relied on measures of creativity like divergent thinking tests, which output how easily a person can come up with ideas.
It says nothing about what that person then does with the ideas.
After all, we know that just having ideas is not enough. You need to execute on those ideas in order to create something and be creative.
And that is where other aspects like hard work, deliberate practice and grit come in.
We have all heard stories of people with innate talent, but who never achieved much in their life because they did not put in the effort to actually produce creative things. Talent will only get you so far.
The most creative people are the ones that create.
It might come more easily to some people compared to others, but at the end of the day, it is about producing something for the world to experience.
What do you think? Do you think you need to be intelligent in order to be creative? Let me know in the comments below.
Hey, thanks for stopping by. I write about evidence-based ways to get more from your creativity and build your innovation capabilities. You can find all my 100's of previous articles at www.ideatovalue.com
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3 年Putting an "uncreative" person into a creative group might even improve overall creativity if the creative group is truly creative. Similarly, putting a "low IQ scoring" person in a "high IQ scoring" group might improve overall outcome. Diversity helps and we are in it together. Thanks for compiling the research Nick Skillicorn.