Creativity and IQ
Creativity in the workplace is a common wanted trait.......in the ads.
Once people are recruited and have started their new job the organization risk to bump into either one of two possible situations.
1) The person they recruited is not really that creative
2) The organization itself turns out was not very recipient to creativity (or the boss closest to the new recruit)
Creativity is for many organizations more of a buzz word than an actual trait that they actually systematically look for. For some (in the public sector) creativity is whatever is not what we usually do. In the same kind of sector creativity is warmly and openly welcomed.....as long as it stays in the meeting room.
What is creativity really and are there ways to actually fin it?
Creativity is defined in the research society as
"a human capacity to produce ideas and products that are both novel and useful or appropriate"
(Amabile 1996; Sternberg & Lubart 1999)
Even if there have been some additions to the definition, like it needs to be surprising, the original definition stands and holds the biggest chunk of the definition.
That is to say, to put oranges in your mashed potatoes, is not very creative, yet surprising, but at the end of the day its just disgusting.
There has to be a certain level of novelty and usefulness in order to be defined as creative.
Scholars have long studied the field of creativity in its mission to try and understand it and to try to understand what drives what. How can we predict creativity?
Being creative can be expressive in its art form but it is also often a way of solving problems. People with high IQ:s are also solving problems.....
Karwowski 2016 et. al set out to figure out to test the hypothesis that intelligence is a necessary condition for creativity. Using a stunning +12,000 N Karwowski with team tested the hypothesis.
They also set out to test the classic "threshold hypothesis".
The threshold hypothesis is cool because it states that creativity and IQ has a curvilinear relationship up to an IQ of 121.
Which means that once people pass IQ 121 (High average) creativity doesn't follow proportionally.
Karwowski et al did confirm that intelligence is a "necessary-but-not-sufficient" condition for creativity.
Studies by Jauk et.al 2014 shows that while intelligence indeed predicts creative achievement it is personality (openness) that is associated with creative activity.
So next time you want to recruit "creative" individuals you must combine a personality profile high in Openness, high in Concientiousness (because it predicts stamina, loyalty and success in general) with a decent IQ........not above 121 though ;-)
