3 - Creativity: measurement and personality correlates

Summary

Everything that exists exists in some quantity

and can therefore be measured

E. L. Thorndike

Creativity: the beginnings of measurement

If intelligence is not sufficient to account for genius, we must look for other factors, and ‘creativity’ is perhaps more frequently suggested than most. Much work has been done to clarify the nature of this concept (Glover, Ronning and Reynolds, 1989), but much diversity of opinion remains. Taylor (1988) lists six types of definition, most of which are somewhat esoteric and unusual. For the purpose of orientation, we may perhaps say that creativity is a dispositional trait or ability which enables a person to put forward ideas, or execute and produce works of imagination, having an appearance of novelty, which are immediately or in due course accepted by experts and peers as genuine contributions having social value. In due course we shall flesh out this definition by reference to a large body of experimental and observational studies.

Any such experimental study must of course rely on tests or other measuring devices which can be shown to be valid measures of the concept. In order to do this, we must demonstrate (1) that such tests are not merely measures of g or general intelligence, and (2) that they possess some degree of unity or coherence (reliability). One would have thought that the first man to see the precise nature of the problem, find ways of solving it, and be responsible for suggesting how such tests could be constructed would find an honoured place in the history of creativity research.