Relationship of creativity with Intelligence -studies carried out in India and abroad

Creativity is the ability to create new ideas, and concepts and also to produce them while intelligence is the ability to acquire knowledge and utilize it.

Creativity is part of your intelligence. Therefore, these two aspects of one’s intellect are closely related. Creativity means the ability to create new things that don’t exist. It is therefore interwoven with aspects of imagination and inventiveness. Put simply, creativity is the ability to develop new ideas and concepts about existing ones.

The Oxford Dictionary defines Creativity as “the use of imagination or original ideas to create something; Inventiveness.” So, being creative isn’t a talent that everyone has. The one who is creative in his thinking and can be considered a unique and rare person outside of the ordinary.

Creativity is also the ability to view the world and the things in it in a new way, to explore the undiscovered and generate solutions from it. In other words, creativity is a fusion of the two processes of thinking in novel ways and then implementing or producing them. Creativity in some ways goes beyond the intelligence framework and connects already existing concepts with new ideas. Think, for example, of a science fiction film or an innovative creator of robotic technology. This person needs to push the boundaries of concepts and make connections between the novel and imagination with the real. And the end product of it will be a new thing that the common man has never imagined. That means creativity. So, we can say that creativity means being innovative.

The Oxford dictionary defines intelligence as “the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills”. Therefore, intelligence is not only about learning everything without using knowledge appropriately, but it is the effective and efficient use of that acquired knowledge to solve problems. The intelligence of each person such as IQ level tests. Moreover, from a psychological perspective, human intelligence can be defined as the ‘mental quality that consists of the abilities to learn from experience, adapt to new situations, understand and handle abstract concepts, and use knowledge to manipulate one’s environment.’ The fundamental fact that distinguishes the human species from all the other animal species is the advanced intelligence that only humans possess.

The relationship between intelligence and creativity is that both of them are functions of the brain that process information to determine a solution or an answer to a problem. Intelligence and creativity are different abilities that contribute to each other. Intelligence is the ability to acquire and utilize knowledge, whereas creativity is the act of having original and valuable thoughts. For some time (hundreds of centuries now) the myth that you have to be intelligent to have creative ideas have persisted. Yet research into the mind shows that you do not need a high level of intellect to think creatively, nor should you expect to have grandiose creative insights as a result of being of above-par intelligence. This implies that a creative person may or may not be very intelligent but still has the basic intellectual capacity that he utilizes in a particular area. On the other hand, intelligence is not a guarantee for creativity. A person may have an I.Q of 145 or greater and still may not have creativity skills.

Creativity and intelligence are the intellectual abilities of a person. Creativity or creative thinking is a part of one’s intelligence. Nevertheless, if one is to draw a fine line of separation to identify the difference between creativity and intelligence, the main difference that can be outlined is that creativity is the ability to perceive something in a novel manner and thus create something new out of it while intelligence is the ability to acquire knowledge and utilise it accordingly.