How do intelligence and creative ability interact? Do we get more creative with more intelligence?
Dean Keith Simonton, PhD thinks “Intelligence is purely a cognitive construct. Creativity on the other hand, I see as being much more complex.”
Like other writers on creativity, he makes a distinction between “little c creativity” and “big C creativity.”
He says creativity in everyday life, solving everyday problems, or “little c creativity,” “is very closely related to intelligence because intelligence includes, as part of it, problem-solving abilities.
But, he adds, “when you are talking about ‘big C creativity,’ you’re talking about being able to generate new ideas, generate some kind of product that’s going to have some kind of impression on other people…a poem, a patent, a short story, a journal article or whatever.
“But it’s something that is a concrete, discrete product that is original and serves some kind of adaptive function.
“And that kind of creativity, that big c creativity, involves a whole bunch of other characteristics besides intelligence.”
[Photo: Stefani Germanotta was identified as gifted in adolescence. We know her now as Lady Gaga.]
Dean Keith Simonton, PhD thinks “Intelligence is purely a cognitive construct. Creativity on the other hand, I see as being much more complex.”
Like other writers on creativity, he makes a distinction between “little c creativity” and “big C creativity.”
He says creativity in everyday life, solving everyday problems, or “little c creativity,” “is very closely related to intelligence because intelligence includes, as part of it, problem-solving abilities.
But, he adds, “when you are talking about ‘big C creativity,’ you’re talking about being able to generate new ideas, generate some kind of product that’s going to have some kind of impression on other people…a poem, a patent, a short story, a journal article or whatever.
“But it’s something that is a concrete, discrete product that is original and serves some kind of adaptive function.
“And that kind of creativity, that big c creativity, involves a whole bunch of other characteristics besides intelligence.”
[Photo: Stefani Germanotta was identified as gifted in adolescence. We know her now as Lady Gaga.]
Continued in More Intelligence, More Creative?
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