Chapter 38 - Intelligence and Creativity

Summary

The roots of creativity as a scientific discipline are planted in the intelligence literature. Sternberg has provided a framework for examining the research on this topic. This framework is found to be helpful because it emphasizes that one's conclusions about the creativity-intelligence relationship will largely be determined by one's theoretical conceptualization of each construct. This chapter discusses different theories of creativity such as cognitive theory, that encompass Intelligence. Intelligence is strongly valued in schools, and extensive and popular measures are often used to measure it. There are usually hundreds of empirical studies about each intelligence test. Creativity may be theoretically desired in school, but it is often considered less important than intelligence. Researchers and theorists do not believe that intelligence and creativity are completely orthogonal, but beyond that, the exact nature of that relationship remains an open question. The basic need for both creativity and intelligence, however, remains undisputed.