Inductivist

In a study of almost 1,000 Hong Kong children from the 5th through 7th grades, researchers found that while boys and girls had similar means on all ten sub-scales of creativity, the variation for boys was significantly higher for the overall score and for five out of ten sub-scale scores. Boys were particularly diverse on the boundary-breaking sub-scales.

These findings are similar to IQ research which shows higher variation among males. More of the dummies and the uncreative are found among boys, but so are geniuses and the highly creative. This lab research is consistent with history which is a tale of male accomplishment.

If I understand Dr. Charlton correctly from the last post (he can correct me if I'm wrong), complex agricultural societies selected against creativity, so levels should be depressed among, for example, the Chinese compared to, say, American Indians.

Allow me a weak attempt at testing this. GSS asked people how much do they agree that they have an active imagination. Here are the means by race:

Mean creativity scores (sample size = 1,500)

Whites 3.96
Blacks 3.99
NE Asians 4.10
American Indians 4.09
Jewish 4.23
All Americans 3.96

While American Indians have a mean that is a bit above average, so do Northeast Asians (Japanese and Chinese) which is not expected. Whites and blacks are also basically the same which would not be predicted. Jews, I think, should also have low scores, but theirs is the highest.

It's dangerous business comparing racial/ethnic groups on self-reported traits, so take these numbers for what they are worth (perhaps nothing).

Dennis Mangan is skeptical of Bruce Charlton's claim that IQ is inversely related to creativity. Dr. Charlton makes the reasonable argument that centuries of civilization selected for intelligence and docility, traits which have become the mark of a civilized man.

A 2005 meta-analysis estimated that the correlation between intelligence and creativity is .17--weak but positive.

Much of the old research did not use structural equation modeling--an advanced method that allows one to estimate g (general intelligence). Using this method, Silvia (2008) found a moderate-to-strong positive association which is reduced some when openness to experience is controlled. In other words, part of the reason why IQ and creativity tend to go together is that the trait of openness is linked to both.

Caveats: The sample was of college students--mostly women--of unidentified race (it's not unusual for race-o-phobic psychologists to treat race/ethnicity as unimportant). The results would probably be stronger if the sample were more diverse on IQ and creativity. Of course, the results do not necessarily apply to other populations.

A study published in the December 2010 issue of Personality and Individual Differences reported evidence that creative people have more flexible and efficient association networks. For example, an uncreative person might easily see that a connecting word between cat and cheese could be mouse. But a creative person sees less distance between even seemingly unrelated words like subject and marriage. (The connecting word that popped into my head was novel. How about you?)  So creative people see connections where others do not, and they are less rigid in how they look at things. Similarly, Eysenck hypothesized that they have low cognitive inhibition. Shall we call it "mental sluttiness"? 

According to this study, the heritability of creativity is moderate.