The Relationship between Intelligence and Divergent Thinking—A Meta-Analytic Update

Abstract

This paper provides a meta-analytic update on the relationship between intelligence and divergent thinking (DT), as research on this topic has increased, and methods have diversified since Kim’s meta-analysis in 2005. A three-level meta-analysis was used to analyze 849 correlation coefficients from 112 studies with an overall N = 34,610. The overall effect showed a significant positive correlation of r = .25. This increase of the correlation as compared to Kim’s prior meta-analytic findings could be attributed to the correction of attenuation because a difference between effect sizes prior-Kim vs. post-Kim was non-significant. Different moderators such as scoring methods, instructional settings, intelligence facets, and task modality were tested together with theoretically relevant interactions between some of these factors. These moderation analyses showed that the intelligence–DT relationship can be higher (up to r = .31–.37) when employing test-like assessments coupled with be-creative instructions, and considering DT originality scores. The facet of intelligence (g vs. gf vs. gc) did not affect the correlation between intelligence and DT. Furthermore, we found two significant sample characteristics: (a) average sample age was positively associated with the intelligence–DT correlation, and (b) the intelligence–DT correlation decreased for samples with increasing percentages of females in the samples. Finally, inter-moderator correlations were checked to take potential confounding into account, and also publication bias was assessed. This meta-analysis provides a comprehensive picture of current research and possible research gaps. Theoretical implications, as well as recommendations for future research, are discussed.

How Is Intelligence Test Performance Associated with Creative Achievement? A Meta-Analysis

“…Still, however, only seven studies included in this meta-analysis had Gc measures, and thus future studies are needed to provide a more solid test of the role of the intelligence facet for creative achievements, especially across domains. Given that a recent comprehensive meta-analysis (Gerwig et al 2021) of the links between intelligence and divergent thinking did not reveal such a difference for the relationships between divergent thinking and Gc (r = .28), as compared to the relationship between divergent thinking and Gf (r = .23), it seems worthwhile to recommend that future research uses a more comprehensive measurement of intelligence, likely based on the Cattell-Horn-Carroll approach (McGrew 2009) as well as a more fine-grained, domain-specific measurement of creative achievement.…”

“…Initially operationalized as a threshold hypothesis (Karwowski and Gralewski 2013;Weiss et al 2020b) and more recently as a necessary-condition pattern (Karwowski et al 2016), this approach searched for the non-linear relationship between intelligence and creative thinking (Karwowski et al 2016) and achievement (Karwowski et al 2017). However, such complex relationships cannot be reasonably treated in a meta-analysis (see Gerwig et al 2021), and, hence, we focus here mainly on three moderators: domain of creative achievement, intelligence sub-factor, and creative achievement measure.…”

“…Therefore, there are reasons to expect that creative achievement will benefit not only from general intelligence (g) but that it will be driven by domain-general mental effectiveness (Gf ), domain-specific knowledge-based thinking (Gc), effective retrieval (Gr), or processing speed (Gs, see Forthmann et al 2019) as well. While these different aspects of intelligence were already studied in relation to creative thinking, including a large recent meta-analytical summary (Gerwig et al 2021), they were rather overlooked when it comes to creative achievement (but see Prabhakaran et al 2014;Zabelina and Ganis 2018).…”

Developmental Histories Facilitating the Emergence of Creative Scientific Expertise: The Role of Developed Cognitive Talents, Education, and Social and Cultural Contexts

“…To date, however, there has not yet been a major factor analytic study similar to that done by Carroll (1993) which also includes all of the creativity measures as well. The structure of creativity is not agreed upon (e.g., Plucker et al, 2020), however, the incremental validity of the structure of creativity over and above the largely established hierarchical model of aptitudes (Carroll, 1993) is nowhere near understood (for discussion see Plucker and Esping, 2015;Gerwig et al, 2021). Relative to cognitive aptitudes, which are generally measured using standardized tests, there has also been little consensus regarding how creative aptitudes should be assessed (Said-Metwaly et al, 2017).…”

“…The relationship in these types of studies has been argued to be low by some scholars (e.g., Barron and Harrington, 1981;Kim, 2005). However, a recent meta-analysis by Gerwig et al (2021) on DT tests showed that the overall correlation between creativity and cognitive aptitude was r = 0.25 and that when "employing test-like assessments coupled with becreative instructions and considering DT originality scores" the correlation could be higher (r = 0.31-0.37), concluding that the intelligence-DT correlation is quite robust. Scholars have also argued that true measures of the constructs and their overlap have been underestimated in many studies due to the focus on observable scores (Silvia, 2008).…”