Intelligence is a construct that encompasses many ways the mind processes and expands on information and stimuli. Intelligence utilises logic and creativity utilises change. Change can happen logically but that is not necessarily creativity as most logic can be replicated or has clear standing connections, but creativity is novel… sometimes utilising intelligence. Intelligence utilizing creativity may help to not only intake and understand new ideas but expand on them in abstract analytical ways. Already when we think of Intelligence like this we see a similarity in the construct of creativity in that it is part of a group of humanistic needs including problem solving. Creativity and intelligence emerge from the same environmental factor (certification theory: Hayes, 1989)
The subsets of this construct of intelligence includes: factual knowledge; mental arithmetic; logical deductions and Spatial reasoning(which involves creativity as you have to imagine past realities and create new images formed by expansion on given information). Understanding how people feel and translating that into knowing what to do in social situations are forms of emotional and social intelligence which include creativity as you have to abstractly(but hopefully accurately) think about what could happen and base your actions on that speculation.
As a few subsetted concepts that make up intelligence utilise creativity, we can say that creativity is linked to intelligence, if not one being a subset of the other. We can explore the idea of subsets but first we must explore if creativity and intelligence are part of the same construct (coincident sets) or if they are related while being distinct separate constructs (disjoint sets: Plucker et al., 2007)
As we know that creativity is subsetted within intelligence we must now investigate the threshold theories statement; Intelligence is necessary for creativity but is only marginally correlated with it (Barron, 1969: threshold theory). From that we can conclude whether creativity is a subset of intelligence or its own separate concept.
People have different strengths. Someone who is good at processing visual information, may be poor at processing words, numbers and other symbolic content. A researcher who excels at processing symbolic content such as words and numbers and semantic meaning, might be very poor at processing behavioural data and thus relate poorly with people. As we have stated that some forms of emotionalsocial intelligence utilises creativity, we can infer creativity boosts intelligence.
Intelligence is something you work on consistently whereas creativity is something that you gather general ideas and data to build upon or analyse and thereafter an idea kind of just forms as opposed to being as conclusive as an intellectual conclusion. At its essence, creativity is just abstract thinking. It is abstracting a base or nothing to such an extent something novel is made.
Problem solving takes a degree of both factual intelligence and creative abstractness depending on the problem.
One of the most noted theories concerning the relationship between these two constructs is the threshold hypothesis. This hypothesis 'assumes that above average intelligence represents a necessary configuration of high level creativity'. In research, this holds up until IQ levels of >120. However, according to newer understandings of creativity and its boundaries, this hypothesis seems to have unexplored areas. For example, the thresholds at which they were measured weren't varied enough and weren't looked at empirically.
Memory has to do with the ability to store and retrieve various kinds of information. This is necessary for intelligent people but not as much for creativity as creativity is known as making something out of nothing, so you do not need to retrieve too much information to utilise your creative brain.
People differ in their abilities to remember not only from other people, but also among various kinds of information. Divergent production has to do with the ability to access memory.
So, does intelligence predict creativity? By answering this question we can answer the question whether creativity is a subset of intelligence or a separate but linked concept.
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From our initial observation that these two concepts do seem to be linked in some kind of way, we should perhaps look at Guildfords structure of intellect model which states that creativity is a subset of intelligence. Guilford isolated the various factors of thinking, separating the factors measured by IQ. His 'Structure of Intellect' model organized these various abilities along three dimensions. He expected that a person could be high on some of these abilities while being low on others.
Gardner (1983) describes seven types of intelligence: linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily kinaesthetic, intrapersonal, and interpersonal. It is useful to consider how these different skills could contribute to or be used creatively. Musical intelligence goes hand in hand with creativeness as does spatial. However spatial is the bridge between logic and creativity.
The reason I say this is to do with a lesser known disorder called aphantasia. Less than 2% of the human population including myself suffer with this condition. It is an inability to see or imagine things in your mind. When it comes to certain parts of intelligence tests, for example spatial testing, or creativity tests, there is a struggle of visualisation of the original concept let alone the ability to modify that visualisation to speculate how the change of data may affect the visual.
We could only list possibilities in a list form. And there's only so far you can go before it gets muddled as putting delicate images into word format can be very inefficient.
Using current intelligence tests it may be assumed that people with aphantasia would score lower than non-Aphantasia suffering people as they may be unable to do certain tasks. Which means that this lack of creative or visual thinking means that you would fail in some parts of intelligence.
However, according to a study led by the University of Exeter, People who have aphantasia may have an advantage when working in scientific and mathematical industries. These industries are typically associated with intelligent people. Therefore, there does not seem to be a positive correlation between creativity and intellect as these people with a seeming lack of some form of creativeness have an advantage when it comes to practical intellectual application.
To think creatively in abstract ways may be similar to expanding on ideas or facts presented to us by our environment.
According to one study, object visualization relates to artistic creativity and spatial visualization relates to scientific creativity, while both are distinct from verbal creativity. (Creativity, visualization abilities, and visual cognitive style, 2013)
For this we can say that while there is a correlation between intelligence and creativity, they are not part of the same construct. Where you find one you will normally find the other however that is not an exclusive relationship.
Transformations is the ability to understand changes in information, such as rotation of visual figures, or jokes and puns in the semantic area. While creativity would allow us to expand on these changes, it may not allow us to understand the whys or how these changes occurred, which is where intelligence comes in.
Implications refers to expectation. Given a certain set of information, one might expect certain other information to be true. Creativity is outside of this expectation as it is normally something that is unlikely or usual. While implications maybe unusual or you may come to creative implications (which may point to intelligence) you may make an implication that is creative but not expected or implicated by the set of information and therefore not an intelligent conclusion.
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