Two Creative Ways to Measure Creativity

Although researchers define creativity as the ability to think of a novel idea that has some benefit to society, they do not always measure creativity by evaluating people’s ability to create. An approach like that is very subjective, and it is very possible that two coders will not agree on the extent to which an idea is creative. Instead, they have found correlates of creativity they can measure instead of directly trying to measure creativity itself. Here are two creative ways to measure creativity.

The Barron-Welsh Art Scale (BWAS) measures aesthetic preference as a proxy for creativity. Participants are shown drawings and are asked about how much they like them. More creative people, like artists, inventors and scientists tend to prefer drawings that are more complex and asymmetrical. Participants’ scores on the BWAS correlate with their level of art education (Rump, 1977).

Creative people can also be distinguished from less creative people by comparing their response times to the Kent-Rosanoff Word Association Test. Participants in creativity studies are sometimes administered this test. The experimenter reads a list of 100 words, and participants are asked to say the first word that comes to mind out loud, no matter how embarrassing or strange it might seem. Creative people have been shown to have faster response times than less creative people. This test has also been used to study the links between creativity and mental illness. The Nobel Prize winners in this study on average had faster reaction times than depressive patients, which did not support the hypothesis that there is a link between depressive disorders and creativity (Rothenberg & Burkhardt, 1984). Interestingly enough, in this study, the experimenters did not consider the content of responses, but only the reaction times of participants.

The problem with approaches like these is that we cannot really be certain that we are tapping into creativity. The BWAS measures aesthetic preference, and creative people on average tend to like asymmetrical pictures. This means that not all people we define as creative will prefer them. Does it measure creativity, or the number of art history electives you’ve taken for what you thought would be easy A’s?

Simply put, the measurement of creativity is plagued by the same issues that arise when we try to measure other latent traits, such as intelligence or anger. That does not mean that they are not worth studying, but rather that we need to be very careful in how we do so.

References

Rothenberg, A., & Burkhardt, P. E. (1984). Difference in response time of creative persons and patients with depressive and schizophrenic disorders. Psychological Reports, 54(3), 711–717.
Rump, E. E. (1977). Study of Graves Design Judgment Test and Barron-Welsh Revised Art Scale. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 45(3), 843–847.

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