4.2.6 Cognitive Creative Processes (continued)

The first principle was that creative abilities fall on a continuum. Guilford did not hold to the view that only a selected number of eminent individuals were creative and should be studied. All individuals possess creative abilities to some degree, "creative acts can therefore be expected, no matter how frequent or how infrequent, of almost all individuals". Thus, creativity can be studied in normal populations.

A second principle was that creative thinking is something different from what intelligence tests measure. Intelligence tests measure logical thought processes that reflect convergent thinking. There is one best answer for a problem, not a variety of responses as in creative divergent thinking. Research has supported the concept that creative abilities are separate abilities from what we define as intelligence. Most studies find low to moderate positive correlations between creativity tests and intelligence tests. Until recently, it was widely accepted that a certain amount of intellectual ability was necessary for creativity to occur. Studies show that in the upper ranges of intelligence, the correlation with creativity is zero. This has been known as the threshold theory. However, work by Runco suggested that the relationship between creativity and intelligence is a function of the measures used and the samples studied. He concluded that the threshold theory is "at least partly a psychometric artefacts”.