Dec 04 2008
Measure Creativity
How can creativity be measured? Can it be developed? Creativity is a mysterious thing, since there is no true way to measure it there are difficulties calculating it. Even tests that measure general intelligence are too narrow to fully measure creativity. In order to truly begin to understand creative intelligence, one must expand their thinking into a theory of “successful” intelligence. Successful intelligence emphasizes the importance of analytical, creative, and practical intelligence.
IQ tests have a range of problems, so conventional ones cannot be used here. The successful intelligence theory states that creative intelligence is best measured by problems assessing how the individual can cope with novelty. Thus, it is important to use tests that novel in nature. Being as creativity is an unconventional thing, unconventional methods must be used.
Eighty individuals were presented with novel reasoning problems that had a single best answer. Their task was to present states with only partial information. Another group of 60 were given more conventional questions. These were things you’d see on standard IQ tests like analogies, series completion, and classifications. However they were told to solve these questions. For example problems were either conventional such as, dancers wear shoes, or novel, dancers eat shoes. The participants had to solve the problems as though the novel facts were true. The time it took people to solve the novel was a good measure of creative intelligence, as it measured how able the participants were at coping with new forms of thought.
In another attempt to measure creative intelligence, several tests were performed at eight four-year colleges and five community colleges. The subject were 793 mostly first year students. The Sternberg Triarchic Abilities Test was used for measuring analytical, creative skills, and practical skills using multiple choice questions. There were three creative subtests in the STAT they were creative-verbal, creative-quantitive, and creative-figural. Cartoons were also used. The subjects were given 5 cartoons from the New Yorker with no captions. The subjects then had to choose 3 of the cartoons and give them a caption each. Two trained judges then rated the captions out of 5 points based on cleverness, humor, originality, and task appropriateness. The participants where then asked to write 2 stories, and to spend about 15 minutes on each. They were given the choice from 7 different titles and a team of 6 trained judges rated the stories based on originality, complexity, emotional evocativeness, and descriptiveness. For the purpose of efficiency, 64.7% of the stories were rated by one judge. Oral stories were also used and were rated based on the same scales as the cartoons and stories.
The data showed that women scored beneath men, and latinos scored higher than blacks. However this could be a cultural variance as the participant’s backgrounds were not throughly examined. Students who did well in one field usually performed poorly in another. However data could not track anything significant in the area of the development of creativity.
This article was interesting to me because I like to consider myself creative. Also as a left hander, I was hoping there would be something in the report concreting the link between hemispheres of the brain and creative intelligence. However sadly there was none so needless to say I was disappointed. Creativity is a type of personality trait and the study of personality seems creative in itself. The whole concept of using measurements, mathematical formulas, and numbers on things that cannot truly be measured seems to be a creative form of science. It also seems impractical, however I have read before that humans have a need to measure and categorize everything in their lives. To make sense of everything and give themselves self worth.
As a cinema student creativity is necessary in my major. If there was some way to truly access the levels of creativity in a person, I doubt a lot of people would have majors in creative arts or fine arts. I wish I had participated in this study. The tests looked interesting, and I would have highly enjoyed giving cartoons captions and making up stories based on titles. I wish more tests like these were used for college admittance and in classrooms.
The whole idea of using one standardized test for everything seems impractical as everyone is different in their own thought processes. If we all had to take the same test, then we are all expected to be exactly the same. However I can see why there is one standardized test, it is to reduce confusion and paper waste. We need a better test that can successfully analyze both our intelligence quota and our creative intelligence. By doing so we can broaden admittance to colleges by having two different tests which would be fair to everyone. By helping others we can build a better brighter future, and realize that everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses.
