• Jürgen Schmidhuber's formal theory of creativity postulates that creativity, curiosity, and interestingness are by-products of a simple computational principle for measuring and optimizing learning progress.
• Consider an agent able to manipulate its environment and thus its own sensory inputs. The agent can use a black box optimization method such as reinforcement learning to learn (through informed trial and error) sequences of actions that maximize the expected sum of its future reward signals. There are extrinsic reward signals for achieving externally given goals, such as finding food when hungry. But Schmidhuber's objective function to be maximized also includes an additional, intrinsic term to model "wow-effects". This non-standard term motivates purely creative behaviour of the agent even when there are no external goals.
• A wow-effect is formally defined as follows: As the agent is creating and predicting and encoding the continually growing history of actions and sensory inputs, it keeps improving the predictor or encoder, which can be implemented as an artificial neural network or some other machine learning device that can exploit regularities in the data to improve its performance over time. The improvements can be measured precisely, by computing the difference in computational costs (storage size, number of required synapses, errors, time) needed to encode new observations before and after learning. This difference depends on the encoder's present subjective knowledge, which changes over time, but the theory formally takes this into account. The cost difference measures the strength of the present "wow-effect" due to sudden improvements in data compression or computational speed. It becomes an intrinsic reward signal for the action selector. The objective function thus motivates the action optimizer to create action sequences causing more wow-effects.
• Irregular, random data (or noise) do not permit any wow-effects or learning progress, and thus are "boring" by nature (providing no reward). Already known and predictable regularities also are boring. Temporarily interesting are only the initially unknown, novel, regular patterns in both actions and observations. This motivates the agent to perform continual, open-ended, active, creative exploration.
• Schmidhuber's work is highly influential in intrinsic motivation which has emerged as a research topic as part of the study of artificial intelligence and robotics.
• According to Schmidhuber, his objective function explains the activities of scientists, artists, and comedians. For example, physicists are motivated to create experiments leading to observations that obey previously unpublished physical laws, permitting better data compression. Likewise, composers receive intrinsic reward for creating non-arbitrary melodies with unexpected but regular harmonies that permit wow-effects through data compression improvements. Similarly, a comedian gets intrinsic reward for "inventing a novel joke with an unexpected punch line, related to the beginning of the story in an initially unexpected but quickly learnable way that also allows for better compression of the perceived data."
• Schmidhuber augured that computer hardware advances would greatly scale up rudimentary artificial scientists and artists. He used the theory to create low-complexity art and an attractive human face.
• So-called malevolent creativity is the "dark side" of creativity. This type of creativity is not typically accepted within society and is defined by the intention to cause harm to others through original and innovative means. While it is often associated with criminal behaviour, it can also be observed in ordinary day-to-day life as lying, cheating, and betrayal.
• Malevolent creativity should be distinguished from negative creativity in that negative creativity may unintentionally cause harm to others, whereas malevolent creativity is explicitly malevolently motivated.
• Various research studies set out to establish that organizational effectiveness depends on the creativity of the workforce to a large extent. For any given organization, measures of effectiveness vary, depending upon its mission, environmental context, nature of work, the product or service it produces, and customer demands. Thus, the first step in evaluating organizational effectiveness is to understand the organization itself – how it functions, how it is structured, and what it emphasizes.
• Teresa Amabile, Ceri Sullivan, and Grame Harper argue that to enhance creativity in business, three components are needed:
• 1. Expertise (technical, procedural and intellectual knowledge)
• 2. Creative thinking skills (how flexibly and imaginatively people approach problems)
• 3. Motivation (especially intrinsic motivation)
• There are two types of motivation:
• • extrinsic motivation – external factors, for example threats of being fired or money as a reward,
• • intrinsic motivation – comes from inside an individual: satisfaction, enjoyment of work, etc.
• According to Amabile, people are more creative when their motivation is intrinsic. Indeed, research has shown that extrinsic motivators can undermine intrinsic motivation.
• Six managerial practices to encourage motivation are:
• 1. Challenge – matching people with the right assignments
• 2. Freedom – giving people autonomy in choosing means to achieve goals
• 3. Resources – such as time, money, space, etc. There must be balance among resources and people
• 4. Work group features – diverse, supportive teams, where members share the excitement, willingness to help, and recognize each other's talents
• 5. Supervisory encouragement – recognition, cheering, praising
• 6. Organizational support –value emphasis information sharing, collaboration
• Ikujiro Nonaka, an organizational theorist who has examined several successful Japanese companies, saw that creativity and knowledge creation were important to the success of organizations. In particular, he emphasized the role that tacit knowledge has in the creative process.
• In business, however, originality is not enough. An idea must also be appropriate – useful and actionable. Creative competitive intelligence solves this problem. According to Reijo Siltala it links creativity to the innovation process and links competitive intelligence to creative workers.
• Creativity can be encouraged in people and professionals and in the workplace. It is essential for innovation, and affects economic growth and businesses. In 2013, the sociologist Silvia Leal Martín, using the Innova 3DX method, suggested measuring the various parameters that encourage creativity and innovation: corporate culture, work environment, leadership and management, creativity, self-esteem and optimism, locus of control and learning orientation, motivation, and fear.
• Similarly, social psychologists, organizational scientists, and management scientists (who research factors that influence creativity and innovation in teams and organizations) have developed integrative theoretical models that emphasize the roles of team composition, team processes, and organizational culture. These theoretical models also emphasize the mutually reinforcing relationships between them in promoting innovation.
• Research studies of the knowledge economy may be classified into three levels: macro, meso, and micro. Macro studies are at a societal or transnational dimension. Meso studies focus on organizations. Micro investigations centre on the minutiae workings of workers. There is also an interdisciplinary dimension such as research from businesses, economics, education, human resource management, knowledge and organizational management, sociology, psychology, knowledge economy-related sectors – especially software, and advertising.
• Sai Loo conducted a study on creative work in the knowledge economy. This investigation focused on how workers in the advertising and IT software sectors leverage their creativity and expertise. The study observed this phenomenon in three developed countries: England, Japan, and Singapore, offering global perspectives. Loo's research is based on qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with professionals in roles such as creative directing, copywriting (in advertising), and systems software development and program management.
• The study offers a conceptual framework of a two-dimensional matrix of individual and collaborative working styles, and single and multi-contexts. The investigation draws on literature sources from the four disciplines of economics, management, sociology, and psychology.
• Themes derived from the analysis of knowledge work and creativity literature establish a theoretical framework for creative knowledge work. In science, technology, or cultural industries, these workers utilize their cognitive abilities, creative attributes, and skill sets to conceive new possibilities, such as media, products, or services. These activities can be carried out individually or collaboratively. Achieving these creative tasks requires education, training, and "encultured environments." Creative acts involve posing new questions beyond those asked by intelligent individuals, pursuing novelty when evaluating a situation, and generating distinct and innovative outcomes—variations on existing ideas within a specific domain.
• This investigation outlines a definition of creative work, identifies three work types, and highlights the essential conditions for its occurrence. Creative workers employ various creative tools, including anticipatory imagination, problem-solving, problem seeking, idea generation, and aesthetic sensibilities. Aesthetic sensibilities, for example, differ based on the sector, like visual imagery for creative directors in advertising or innovative technical expertise for software programmers. Specific applications also exist within sectors, such as emotional connection in advertising and power of expression in software. Apart from creative tools, creative workers need pertinent skills and aptitudes. Passion for one’s job is generic. For copywriters, this passion is identified with fun, enjoyment, and happiness alongside attributes such as honesty (regarding the product), confidence, and patience in finding the appropriate copy. Knowledge is also required in the disciplines of the humanities (e.g. literature), the creative arts (e.g. painting and music), and technical-related know-how (e.g. mathematics, computer sciences, and physical sciences). In software, technical knowledge of computer languages is significant for programmers whereas the degree of technical expertise may be less for a programme manager.
• There are three work types. The first is intra-sectoral, exemplified by terms like 'general sponge' and 'in tune with the zeitgeist' (advertising), or 'power of expression' and 'sensitivity' (software). The second is inter-sectoral, such as 'integration of advertising activities' (advertising) or 'autonomous decentralized systems (ADS)' (software). The third type involves cultural/practice changes in sectors, like 'three-dimensional trust' and 'green credentials' (advertising), or 'collaboration with Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and industry' and 'ADS system in the Tokyo train operator' (software).
• For creative work to thrive, essential conditions include a supportive environment comprising information, communications, and electronic technologies (ICET) infrastructure, along with training, work environment, and education.
• This investigation has implications for lifelong learning of these workers informally and formally. Educational institutions should provide interdisciplinary knowledge in humanities, arts, and sciences, influencing program structures, delivery methods, and assessments. On a larger scale, governments should offer diverse cultural, outdoor, and sports activities to inspire potential creative workers in fields like video gaming and advertising. For work organizations, the study suggests promoting collaborative and individual work, facilitating continuous professional development, and creating an environment conducive to experiential learning and experimentation.
• Several researchers have proposed methods of increasing a person's creativity. Such ideas range from the psychological-cognitive, such as the Osborn-Parnes Creative Problem-Solving Process, Synectic’s, science-based creative thinking, Purdue Creative Thinking Program, and Edward de Bono's lateral thinking; to the highly structured, such as TRIZ (the Theory of Inventive Problem-Solving) and its variant Algorithm of Inventive Problem Solving (developed by the Russian scientist Genrich Altshuller), and Computer-Aided morphological analysis.
• Daniel Pink, in his 2005 book A Whole New Mind, argues that we are entering a new age when creativity is increasingly important. In this conceptual age, we need to foster and encourage right-directed thinking (representing creativity and emotion) over left-directed thinking (representing logical, analytical thought). However, this simplification of 'right' versus 'left' brain thinking is not supported by the research data.
• Nickerson provides a summary of the various creativity techniques that have been proposed. These include approaches that have been developed by both academia and industry:
• 1. Establishing purpose and intention
• 2. Building basic skills
• 3. Encouraging acquisitions of domain-specific knowledge
• 4. Stimulating and rewarding curiosity and exploration
• 5. Building motivation, especially internal motivation
• 6. Encouraging confidence and a willingness to take risks
• 7. Focusing on mastery and self-competition
• 8. Promoting supportable beliefs about creativity
• 9. Providing opportunities for choice and discovery
• 10. Developing self-management (metacognitive skills)
• 11. Teaching techniques and strategies for facilitating creative performance
• 12. Providing balance
• An empirical synthesis of which methods work best in enhancing creativity was published by Haase et al. Summarising the results of 84 studies, the authors found that complex training courses, meditation, and cultural exposure were most effective in enhancing creativity, while the use of cognitive manipulation drugs was noneffective. Managing the need for closure Experiments suggest the need for closure of task participants, whether as a reflection of personality or induced (through time pressure), negatively impacts creativity. Accordingly, it has been suggested that reading fiction, which can reduce the cognitive need for closure, may help to encourage creativity.
• A study by psychologist J. Philippe Rushton found creativity to correlate with intelligence and psychoticism. Another study found creativity to be greater in people with schizotypal personality disorder than in people with either schizophrenia or those without mental health conditions. While divergent thinking was associated with bilateral activation of the prefrontal cortex, schizotypal individuals were found to have much greater activation of their right prefrontal cortex. That study hypothesized that such individuals are better at accessing both hemispheres, allowing them to make novel associations at a faster rate. Consistent with this hypothesis, ambidexterity is also more common in people with schizotypal personality disorder and schizophrenia. Three studies by Mark Batey and Adrian Furnham demonstrated the relationships between schizotypal personality disorder and hypomanic personality and several different measures of creativity.
• Strong links have been identified between creativity and mood disorders, particularly manic-depressive disorder (a.k.a. bipolar disorder) and depressive disorder (a.k.a. unipolar disorder). In Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament, Kay Redfield Jamison summarizes studies of mood-disorder rates in writers, poets, and artists. She also explores research that identifies mood disorders in such famous writers and artists as Ernest Hemingway (who shot himself after electroconvulsive treatment), Virginia Woolf (who drowned herself when she felt a depressive episode coming on), composer Robert Schumann (who died in a mental institution), and even the famed visual artist Michelangelo (although this claim is based on anecdotal evidence).
• A study of 300,000 persons with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or unipolar depression, and their relatives, found overrepresentation in creative professions for those with bipolar disorder as well as for undiagnosed siblings of those with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. There was no overall overrepresentation, but overrepresentation for artistic occupations, among those diagnosed with schizophrenia. There was no association for those with unipolar depression or their relatives.
• Another study involving more than one million people, conducted by Swedish researchers at the Karolinska Institute, reported a number of correlations between creative occupations and mental illnesses. Writers had a higher risk of anxiety and bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, unipolar depression, and substance abuse, and were almost twice as likely as the general population to kill themselves. Dancers and photographers were also more likely to have bipolar disorder. Those in the creative professions were no more likely to have psychiatric disorders than other people, although they were more likely to have a close relative with a disorder, including anorexia and, to some extent, autism, the Journal of Psychiatric Research reported.
• People who have worked in the arts industry throughout history have faced many environmental factors that are associated with and can sometimes influence mental illness—things such as poverty, persecution, social alienation, psychological trauma, substance abuse, and high stress. According to psychologist Robert Epstein, creativity can also be obstructed through stress. So, while research has found that people are the most creative when in positive moods, a creative career may cause some problems.
• Conversely, research has shown that creative activities such as art therapy, poetry writing, journaling, and reminiscence can promote mental well-being.
• Nancy Andreasen was one of the first researchers to carry out a large-scale study on creativity and whether mental illnesses have an impact on someone's ability to be creative. She expected to find a link between creativity and schizophrenia but her research sample (the book authors she pooled) had no history of schizophrenia. Her findings instead showed that 80% of the creative group previously had some form of mental illness episode in their lifetime. When she performed follow up studies over a 15-year period, she found that 43% of the authors had bipolar disorder, compared to the 1% of the general public.
• In 1989 another study, by Kay Redfield Jamison, reaffirmed those statistics by having 38% of her sample of authors having a history of mood disorders. Anthony Storr, a prominent psychiatrist, remarked:
• The creative process can be a way of protecting the individual against being overwhelmed by depression, a means of regaining a sense of mastery in those who have lost it, and, to a varying extent, a way of repairing the self-damaged by bereavement or by the loss of confidence in human relationships which accompanies depression from whatever cause.
• A study done by Shapiro and Weisberg showed a positive correlation between the manic upswings of the cycles of bipolar disorder and the ability for an individual to be more creative. The data showed that it was not the depressive swing that brings forth dark creative spurts, but the act of climbing out of the depressive episode that sparks creativity. The reason behind this spur of creative genius could come from the type of self-image that the person has during a time of hypomania. A hypomanic person may feel a bolstered sense of self-confidence, creative confidence, and sense of individualism.
• People diagnosed with bipolar disorder report themselves as having a larger range of emotional understanding, heightened states of perception, and an ability to connect better with those in the world around them. Other reported traits include higher rates of productivity, higher senses of self-awareness, and a greater understanding of empathy. Those who have bipolar disorder also understand their own sense of heightened creativity and ability to get immense amounts of tasks done all at once. In one study, of 219 participants (aged 19 to 63) diagnosed with bipolar disorder, 82% of them reported having elevated feelings of creativity during the hypomanic swings.
• Giannouli believes that the creativity a person diagnosed with bipolar disorder feels comes as a form of "stress management". In the realm of music, one might be expressing one's stress or pains through the pieces one writes in order to better understand those same feelings. Famous authors and musicians, along with some actors, would often attribute their wild enthusiasm to something like a hypomanic state. The artistic side of society has been notorious for behaviours that are seen as maladapted to societal norms. Symptoms of bipolar disorder match up with behaviours in high-profile creative personalities such as alcohol addiction; drug abuse including stimulants, depressants, hallucinogens and dissociative, opioids, inhalants, and cannabis; difficulties in holding regular occupations; interpersonal problems; legal issues; and a high risk of suicide.
• Weisberg believes that the state of mania sets "free the powers of a thinker". He implies that not only has the person become more creative, but they have fundamentally changed the kind of thoughts they produce. In a study of poets, who seem to have especially high percentages of bipolar authors, over a period of three years those poets would have cycles of really creative and powerful works of poetry. The timelines over the three-year study looked at the poets' personal journals and their clinical records and found that the timelines between their most powerful poems matched that of their upswings in bipolar disorder.
• The term "dialectical theory of creativity" dates back to psychoanalyst Daniel Dervin and was later developed into an interdisciplinary theory. The dialectical theory of creativity starts with the ancient concept that creativity takes place in an interplay between order and chaos. Similar ideas can be found in neuroscience and psychology. Neurobiologically, it can be shown that the creative process takes place in a dynamic interplay between coherence and incoherence that leads to new and usable neuronal networks. Psychology shows how the dialectics of convergent and focused thinking with divergent and associative thinking leads to new ideas and products.
• Personality traits like the "Big Five" seem to be dialectically intertwined in the creative process: emotional instability vs. stability, extraversion vs. introversion, openness vs. reserve, agreeableness vs. antagonism, and disinhibition vs. constraint. The dialectical theory of creativity applies also to counselling and psychotherapy.
• Lin and Vartanian developed a neurobiological description of creative cognition. This interdisciplinary framework integrates theoretical principles and empirical results from neuroeconomics, reinforcement learning, cognitive neuroscience, and neurotransmission research on the locus coeruleus system. It describes how decision-making processes studied by neuroeconomics as well as activity in the locus coeruleus system underlie creative cognition and the large-scale brain network dynamics associated with creativity. It suggests that creativity is an optimization and utility-maximization problem that requires individuals to determine the optimal way to exploit and explore ideas (the multi-armed bandit problem). This utility maximization process is thought to be mediated by the locus coeruleus system, and this creativity framework describes how tonic and phasic locus coeruleus activity work in conjunction to facilitate the exploiting and exploring of creative ideas. This framework not only explains previous empirical results but also makes novel and falsifiable predictions at different levels of analysis (ranging from neurobiological to cognitive and personality differences).
• B.F. Skinner attributed creativity to accidental behaviours that are reinforced by the environment. In behaviourism, creativity can be understood as novel or unusual behaviours that are reinforced if they produce a desired outcome. Spontaneous behaviours by living creatures are thought to reflect past learned behaviours. In this way, a behaviourist may say that prior learning caused novel behaviours to be reinforced many times over, and the individual has been shaped to produce increasingly novel behaviours. A creative person, according to this definition, is someone who has been reinforced more often for novel behaviours than others. Behaviourists suggest that anyone can be creative, they just need to be reinforced to learn to produce novel behaviours.
• Researchers have taken a social-personality approach by using personality traits such as independence of judgement, self-confidence, attraction to complexity, aesthetic orientation, and risk-taking as measures of the creativity of people. A meta-analysis by Gregory Feist showed that creative people tend to be "more open to new experiences, less conventional and less conscientious, more self-confident, self-accepting, driven, ambitious, dominant, hostile, and impulsive." Openness, conscientiousness, self-acceptance, hostility, and impulsivity had the strongest effects of the traits listed. Within the framework of the Big Five model of personality, some consistent traits have emerged as being correlated to creativity. Openness to experience is consistently related to a host of different assessments of creativity. Among the other Big Five traits, research has demonstrated subtle differences between different domains of creativity. Compared to non-artists, artists tend to have higher levels of openness to experience and lower levels of conscientiousness, while scientists are more open to experience, conscientious, and higher in the confidence-dominance facets of extraversion compared to non-scientists.
• Biographical methods use quantitative characteristics such as the number of publications, patents, or performances of a work can be credited to a person. While this method was originally developed for highly creative personalities, today it is also available as self-report questionnaires supplemented with frequent, less outstanding creative behaviours such as writing a short story or creating your own recipes. For example, the Creative Achievement Questionnaire, a self-report test that measures creative achievement across ten domains, was described in 2005 and shown to be reliable when compared to other measures of creativity and to independent evaluation of creative output. Besides the English original, it was also used in a Chinese, French, and German version. It is the self-report questionnaire most frequently used in research.
• A number of researchers include creativity, either explicitly or implicitly, as a key component of intelligence, for example:
• • Sternberg's Theory of Successful Intelligence (see Triarchic theory of intelligence) includes creativity as a main component and comprises three sub-theories: contextual (analytic), contextual (practical), and experiential (creative). Experiential sub-theory—the ability to use pre-existing knowledge and skills to solve new and novel problems – is directly related to creativity.
• • The Cattell–Horn–Carroll theory (CHC) includes creativity as a subset of intelligence, associated with the broad group factor of long-term storage and retrieval (Glr). Glr narrow abilities relating to creativity include ideational fluency, associational fluency, and originality/creativity. Silvia et al. conducted a study to look at the relationship between divergent thinking and verbal fluency tests and reported that both fluency and originality in divergent thinking were significantly affected by the broad-level Glr factor. Martindale extended the CHC-theory by proposing that people who are creative are also selective in their processing speed. Martindale argues that in the creative process, larger amounts of information are processed more slowly in the early stages, and as a person begins to understand the problem, the processing speed is increased.
• • The Dual Process Theory of Intelligence posits a two-factor or type model of intelligence. Type 1 is a conscious process and concerns goal-directed thoughts, which are explained by. Type 2 is an unconscious process, and concerns spontaneous cognition, which encompasses daydreaming and implicit learning ability. Kaufman argues that creativity occurs as a result of Type 1 and Type 2 processes working together in combination. Each type in the creative process can be used to varying degrees.
• In this relationship model, intelligence is a key component in the development of creativity, for example:
• • Sternberg & Lubart's Investment Theory, using the metaphor of a stock market, demonstrates that creative thinkers are like good investors—they buy low and sell high (in their ideas). Like undervalued or low-valued stock, creative individuals generate unique ideas that are initially rejected by other people. The creative individual has to persevere and convince others of the idea's value. After convincing the others and thus increasing the idea's value, the creative individual ‘sells high' by leaving the idea with the other people and moves on to generate another idea. According to this theory, six distinct, but related elements contribute to successful creativity: intelligence, knowledge, thinking styles, personality, motivation, and environment. Intelligence is just one of the six factors that can, either solely or in conjunction with the other five factors, generate creative thoughts.
• • Amabile's Componential Model of Creativity posits three within-individual components needed for creativity—domain-relevant skills, creativity-relevant processes, and task motivation—and one component external to the individual: their surrounding social environment. Creativity requires the confluence of all components. High creativity will result when a person is intrinsically motivated, possesses both a high level of domain-relevant skills and has high skills in creative thinking, and is working in a highly creative environment.
• • The Amusement Park Theoretical Model is a four-step theory in which domain-specific and generalist views are integrated into a model of creativity. The researchers make use of the metaphor of the amusement park to demonstrate that within each of the following creative levels, intelligence plays a key role:
• • To get into the amusement park, there are initial requirements (e.g., time/transport to go to the park). Initial requirements (like intelligence) are necessary, but not sufficient for creativity. They are more like prerequisites for creativity, and if a person does not possess the basic level of the initial requirement (intelligence), then they will not be able to generate creative thoughts/behaviour.
• • Secondly, there are the subcomponents—general thematic areas—that increase in specificity. Like choosing which type of amusement park to visit (e.g., a zoo or a water park), these areas relate to the areas in which someone could be creative (e.g. poetry).
• • Thirdly, there are specific domains. After choosing the type of park to visit, e.g., a waterpark, you then have to choose which specific park to go to. For example, within the poetry domain, there are many different types (e.g., free verse, riddles, sonnets, etc.) that have to be selected from.
• • Lastly, there are micro-domains. These are the specific tasks that reside within each domain, e.g., individual lines in a free verse poem / individual rides at the waterpark.
• This possible relationship concerns creativity and intelligence as distinct, but intersecting constructs, for example:
• • In Renzulli's Three-Ring Conception of Giftedness, giftedness is an overlap of above-average intellectual ability, creativity, and task commitment. Under this view, creativity and intelligence are distinct constructs, but they overlap under the correct conditions.
• • In the PASS theory of intelligence, the planning component—the ability to solve problems, make decisions, and take action – strongly overlaps with the concept of creativity.
• • Threshold Theory (TT) derives from a number of previous research findings that suggested that a threshold exists in the relationship between creativity and intelligence – both constructs are moderately positively correlated up to an IQ of ~120. Above this threshold, if there is a relationship at all, it is small and weak. TT posits that a moderate level of intelligence is necessary for creativity.
• In support of TT, Barron found a non-significant correlation between creativity and intelligence in a gifted sample and a significant correlation in a non-gifted sample. Yamamoto, in a sample of secondary school children, reported a significant correlation between creativity and intelligence of r = 0.3 and reported no significant correlation when the sample consisted of gifted children. Fuchs-Beauchamp et al., in a sample of preschoolers, found that creativity and intelligence correlated from r = 0.19 to r = 0.49 in the group of children who had an IQ below the threshold, and in the group above the threshold, the correlations were r = 0.12. Cho et al. reported a correlation of 0.40 between creativity and intelligence in the average IQ group of a sample of adolescents and adults and a correlation of close to r=0.0 for the high IQ group. Jauk et al. found support for the TT, but only for measures of creative potential, not creative performance.
• By contrast, other research reports findings against TT. Wai et al., using data from the longitudinal Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth—a cohort of elite students from early adolescence into adulthood—found that differences in SAT scores at age 13 were predictive of creative real-life outcomes 20 years later. Kim's meta-analysis of 21 studies did not find any supporting evidence for TT, and instead negligible correlations were reported between intelligence, creativity, and divergent thinking both below and above IQs of 120. Preckel et al., investigating fluid intelligence and creativity, reported small correlations of r = 0.3 to r=0.4 across all levels of cognitive ability.
• Under this view, researchers posit that there are no differences in the mechanisms underlying creativity between those used in normal problem solving, and in normal problem solving, there is no need for creativity. Thus, creativity and intelligence (problem solving) are the same thing. Perkins referred to this as the "nothing-special" view.
• Weisberg & Alba examined problem solving by having participants complete the nine dots puzzle – where the participants are asked to connect all nine dots in the three rows of three dots using four straight lines or less without lifting their pen or tracing the same line twice. The problem can only be solved if the lines go outside the boundaries of the square of dots. Results demonstrated that even when participants were given this insight, they still found it difficult to solve the problem, thus showing that to successfully complete the task it is not just insight (or creativity) that is required.
• In this view, creativity and intelligence are completely different, unrelated constructs.
• Getzels and Jackson administered five creativity measures to a group of 449 children from grades 6–12 and compared these test findings to results from previously administered (by the school) IQ tests. They found that the correlation between the creativity measures and IQ was r=0.26. The high creativity group scored in the top 20% of the overall creativity measures but was not included in the top 20% of IQ scorers. The high intelligence group scored the opposite: they scored in the top 20% for IQ, but were outside the top 20% scorers for creativity, thus showing that creativity and intelligence are distinct and unrelated.
• However, this work has been heavily criticized. Wallach and Kogan highlighted that the creativity measures were not only weakly related to one another (to the extent that they were no more related to one another than they were to IQ), but they seemed to also draw upon non-creative skills. McNemar noted that there were major measurement issues in that the IQ scores were a mixture from three different IQ tests.
• Wallach and Kogan administered five measures of creativity, each of which resulted in a score for originality and fluency; and ten measures of general intelligence to 151 5th grade children. These tests were untimed, and given in a game-like manner (aiming to facilitate creativity). Inter-correlations between creativity tests were on average r=0.41. Inter-correlations between intelligence measures were on average r=0.51 with each other. Creativity tests and intelligence measures correlated r=0.09.