Commentary: The Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking already overcome many of the perceived weaknesses that Silvia et al.'s (2008) methods are intended to correct.

Abstract

Silvia et al.’s (2008) primary motivations for exploring and proposing their subjective scoring method are their perceived deficiencies of current divergent thinking tests. First, scores on divergent thinking tests frequently correlate highly with general intelligence. Second, the scoring of divergent thinking tests has changed little since the 1960s. Third, the necessity of instructing people to be creative prior to taking divergent thinking tests is integral to obtaining useful responses and needs to be reaffirmed. Fourth, and finally, the problems posed by uniqueness scoring— confounding with fluency, ambiguity of rarity, and the seeming “penalty” imposed on large samples—that need to be addressed. First, Kim’s (2005) meta-analysis indicated that the relationship between divergent thinking test scores and IQ (r .17) is negligible, which supports the underlying belief that creativity and intelligence are separate constructs. According to Kim’s (in press) meta-analysis, divergent thinking test scores predict creative achievement (r .22) better than IQ (r .17). Further, 51.8% of the 274 correlation coefficients incorporated in the study used the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT; Torrance, 1996), and the TTCT predicted (r .33, p .0001) creative achievement better than other measures of creative potential (e.g., Wallach & Kogan Divergent Thinking Tasks [Wallach & Kogan, 1965], Guilford Divergent Thinking Tasks [Guilford, 1967], Sounds and Images [Torrance, Khatena, & Cunnington, 1973], Word Association Tests [Gough, 1976], etc.). In this meta-analysis, art, music, writing, science (including mathematics, medicine, and engineering), leadership, and social skills were used to measure creative achievement. Among these different types of creative achievement, musical achievement was predicted better by IQ than by measures of creative potential, whereas art, science, writing, and social skills were predicted by measures of creative potential better than by IQ. This finding suggests that creativity test scores account for more