The Creative Personality
I recently saw a link to this Psychology Today article on the creative personality at Conservative Grapevine and thought I would share it with you (it is several years old but still worth a read). Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of such books as Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention,
summarizes the ten points of the creative personality. You can read the article to see all ten but here are a few of the highlights that caught my eye:
I have conducted thousands of IQ tests in my career and I must say that IQ is overrated. I have seen lawyers with 105 IQs who are performing well at their jobs and seem to be creative and others who scored over 140 who are unemployed and talking about what geniuses they are. It seems like the more a person talks about how smart and bright they are, the less creative and really productive they really are. Have you noticed that?
summarizes the ten points of the creative personality. You can read the article to see all ten but here are a few of the highlights that caught my eye:Creative people have a great deal of physical energy, but they're also often quiet and at rest. They work long hours, with great concentration, while projecting an aura of freshness and enthusiasm. This suggests a superior physical endowment, a genetic advantage. Yet it is surprising how often individuals who in their seventies and eighties exude energy and health remember childhoods plagued by illness. It seems that their energy is internally generated, due more to their focused minds than to the superiority of their genes....
The earliest longitudinal study of superior mental abilities, initiated at Stanford University by the psychologist Lewis Terman in 1921, shows rather conclusively that children with very high IQs do well in life, but after a certain point IQ does not seem to be correlated any longer with superior performance in real life. Later studies suggest that the cutoff point is around 120; it might be difficult to do creative work with a lower IQ, but an IQ beyond 120 does not necessarily imply higher creativity....
Creative people are humble and proud at the same time. It is remarkable to meet a famous person who you expect to be arrogant or supercilious, only to encounter self-deprecation and shyness instead....
Creative people are both rebellious and conservative. It is impossible to be creative without having first internalized an area of culture. So it's difficult to see how a person can be creative without being both traditional and conservative and at the same time rebellious and iconoclastic.
I have conducted thousands of IQ tests in my career and I must say that IQ is overrated. I have seen lawyers with 105 IQs who are performing well at their jobs and seem to be creative and others who scored over 140 who are unemployed and talking about what geniuses they are. It seems like the more a person talks about how smart and bright they are, the less creative and really productive they really are. Have you noticed that?
Labels: personality, psychology
posted by Helen at 6:37 AM
62 Comments:
High IQ seems to be highly correlated with inability to hold down a job.
Interesting article.
Instead of using IQ to measure intelligence, I tend to rank people along a continuum that has "No Education - High Level of Commonsense" at one end, and "Book Smart - Dumper than a Box of Rocks" at the other end.
Most people are on that continuum somewhere, and if I have to hire someone, I lean toward the commonsense side of the line.
It's not about how much you got, it's about how you use it.
In my experience, some use it better than others and thus reap the rewards.
It seems like the more a person talks about how smart and bright they are, the less creative and really productive they really are. Have you noticed that?
Well, Wyle E. Coyote frequently talked about what a genius he was but he never caught the roadrunner.
Then there's Obama and Biden. They're convinced they're the brightest people in any room but the evidence is lacking, IMO.
Instead of using IQ to measure intelligence, I tend to rank people along a continuum that has "No Education - High Level of Commonsense" at one end, and "Book Smart - Dumper than a Box of Rocks" at the other end.
Over the years, I've worked with Ivy League and service academy grads. Most of them waste little time in telling you where they went to college (the academy grads were known as "ring knockers"). When it came to job performance, their work ran the range from poor through quite good. I saw little correlation between their job performance and where they went to school.
On the other hand, I have a brother-in-law that, as far as I know, never graduated high school. When it comes to real life, though, he's one of the wisest men I've ever met. Wisdom is different from intelligence and IMO more important.
Wisdom is different from intelligence and IMO more important.
Agree. Well put.
I too think IQ tests are overrated, but then I think all standardized tests (SAT, GRE, etc.) are overrated. All they really test is test-taking ability.
It's like the Wunderlick (sp?) test given to football players. Strange that quarterbacks who score high, and on that basis are drafted high, like Ryan Leaf, can't play well in the NFL and are often busts.
However, the same is not true of licensing exams. The CPA exam, for example, is the most rigorous test in existence and, not coincidentally, has the highest failure rate. You have to really know your stuff to pass that test.
It would be interesting to see the correlation between the IQ test scores and the CPA exam scores of those who passed or failed the latter.
That said, my mother never attended college. She took a couple of real estate courses and passed the licensing exam. I remember, when I was young, seeing her sitting on the couch reading a thick book on real estate law.
Today, lawyers--these would be college graduates who scored well on the SAT and the LSAT, attended law school and passed the bar exam--routinely call her for advice on real estate law. Go figure. A high school graduate, she just sat down a read a book. Yet licensed lawyers call her when they have a question about the law.
I have no idea what her IQ is. In fact, I seriously doubt she's ever taken an IQ test. But she's more intelligent than any lawyer I know.
randian said: "High IQ seems to be highly correlated with inability to hold down a job."
That might be correct, and I tend to agree with the notion; however, my experience suggests that those with high IQs are inable to let jobs hold them down. High IQs tend to imply insatiable curiosity and a desire to manifest oneself in the workplace, and jobs tend to quash this impulse.
Most jobs are very overrated.
"I must say that IQ is overrated."
I concur. Kindness beats intelligence 7 days a week.
And I am saying a thankful prayer that I have not given thousands of IQ tests! I am doing two evals this weekend and I am dreading those a little!
Trey
Trey,
Count yourself lucky, last count I did I found I had conducted over 6000 of them...
It's always seemed to me that emotional intelligence and maturity are much better indicators of ability than IQ. So it may be that a higher IQ up to about 120 helps people develop these other types of intelligence while above that it's just effort and perspective.
To put IQ tests in perspective, My brother has a 140 IQ, really. He's a cook at a barbecue joint, he didn't graduate high school. Now, he's a hard worker. However, when he was in school he though everything should be easy because he was so smart.
Some really smart people understand that being smart in only one part of the equation. There is a culture that says if your smart your better, but they don't understand that cynicism is not a sign of intelligence, it's a sign of laziness.
Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.
– Immanuel Kant
Today, lawyers--these would be college graduates who scored well on the SAT and the LSAT, attended law school and passed the bar exam--routinely call her for advice on real estate law. Go figure. A high school graduate, she just sat down a read a book. Yet licensed lawyers call her when they have a question about the law.
Actually, I don't find this surprising at all. There are reportedly over a million lawyers in the US. That's 1 out of every 300 men, women, and children in the country. "The law" is very broad with many specialties just like medicine. Most lawyers seem specialize in at most a few areas. Real estate law is a special area of expertise and, from the sound of it, your mother is very knowledgeable in that area. Rather than spend a lot of time trying to get up to speed on a specialty area, a lawyer would be better served asking for information from someone like your mother with the specialized knowledge.
My daughter-in-law is a lawyer who works for a major corporation handling francising. While she's very intelligent and passed the California Bar exam, she knows that her expertise is limited and doesn't want to give advice on other areas.
6000?
Wow.
The horror.
Trey
I have a friend with a high IQ and a near-photographic memory. He has always taken great pride in telling everyone how smart he is and constantly reminds us all how important he is even today. But whenever anything creative was required, no matter what it was, he always stole someone else's idea and claimed it as his own. He's a wealthy and successful man, but I can't recall a single original thought that he ever had.
I have to disagree with the some of the comments above. as someone who has studied intelligence, i can tell you that IQ matters. in fact if i had my own university, i would base admissions solely on IQ test scores and nothing else. it's the best predictor we have of intellectual ability and performance. not only are higher IQ individuals better at academic tasks, they can learn almost anything faster than a lower IQ person. Not to insult anyone, but I've also found that dumb people always say that IQ is unimportant. it's a defense mechanism. check out this article on the importance of IQ:
http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/users/reingold/courses/intelligence/cache/1198gottfred.html
Years ago when I worked for the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, we had a man in the Self-Study department who had two Ph.D.s and was on the threshold of "Rain Man" ability for detecting flaws and weaknesses in accounting systems. His IQ, though he never disclosed it, was universally accepted to be responsible for scraping the paint off the attic ceiling. In addition to his intellectual ability, he was a certifiable a$$hole who hadn't a single friend in the organization. Although he was a 12-year staffer, numerous less able people rose to far higher ranks than what afforded him a cubicle near the men's room.
Ya wanna talk about what it takes to suceed? A winning personality and the ability to bring out the best in your coworkers somehow suggests itself.
Only people with high IQs say IQ is important. It's a defense mechanism.
James:
You are full of it.
All IQ tests can measure is...how well someone takes tests and/or regurgitates the biases of the test designers (which is shown by the questions and answers). Test taking ability (and/or rote memory) means squat, really, once outside of the academic world.
Unless one is trying to advance in Government service... :-P
Neither does the rate one can learn at matter all that much:
The speed at which one learns something has less to do with "intelligence" than motivation and/or interest in the subject at hand (with physiological capability added if the task so requires). The more one is interested in something (or the more one NEEDS to know something), the more effort one will make to learn, and vice-versa.
Kevin m has the right idea:
"Ya wanna talk about what it takes to suc[c]eed? A winning personality and the ability to bring out the best in your coworkers somehow suggests itself."
The ability to inspire people to do THEIR best, when it comes to being a "success" in life and in one's work, is ultimately what counts.
re observer's comments on motivation: A neighbor of mine in high school, a 16-year old boy, was failing badly in French class right up until a bombshell hottie from Montreal moved two doors down the street. Straight A's across the board from then on.
Europeans think Americans are dullards because most of us only speak English, while they commonly speak two to six languages. Well, DUH! You only live 100 miles from four foreign countries, so it's hardly surprising that the relevance of German, Dutch, French and Italian are a tad higher than they are here.
IQ tests keep guidance counselors employed and distract people from far more important matters: character, personality, social skills, an optimistic outlook on life...I needn't go on.
james wrote: "in fact if i had my own university, i would base admissions solely on IQ test scores and nothing else."
Wow, I am thinking of all the stuff the smart antisocial people would steal from you and how little work the passive aggressive people would do and how the narcissists would get in fights in class in order to have more time to show people how smart they are.
James, it would be a dismal failure and a flocking ground for smart sociopaths I fear.
Regarding IQ test being useless, that is just inaccurate. IQ tests are a HUGE help when I work with ADHD people because I can see if they have a non-verbal learning disorder, I can screen for dyslexia, I use them in forensic cases to see what kind of treatment people will need, the list goes on and on.
These are not internet tests we are talking about! The tests are scientific instruments and very helpful tools.
Having said all that, give me kind over smart any day!
Trey
Helen --
Have IQ tests broadened since I took them? I remember thinking even at that age that there were so many areas they totally neglected that actually are decent indicators of workable intelligence.
Elwood P. Dowd --
Years ago my mother used to say to me, she'd say, "In this world, Elwood, you must be" - she always called me Elwood - "In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant." Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me.
I always have a wonderful time, wherever I am, whomever I'm with.
James' views have been the consensus about IQ and IQ testing in the field for some 25 years, ever since Jensen's definitive Bias in Mental Testing in 1980.
Its amazing how much mis- and dis- information is out there about IQ and IQ testing.
Psychology has come up with no better and more valuable instrument... for assessing such an important variable.
i can tell you that IQ matters. in fact if i had my own university, i would base admissions solely on IQ test scores and nothing else.
Then you may end up with a low graduation rate. Surely you would admit my very best friend, who is delightful and has an IQ of 181, but then he would leave which is what he did when he went to college. That's not to say that he isn't successful, but if what you want to achieve is a successful university, I'm not sure that high IQ, even if it means that the people will learn faster, is the way to go.
Is it at all interesting to administer IQ tests? Does it become more difficult the farther the testee is to either end of the curve?
I've known lots of successful and not-so-successful people. The successful people tend to all be above some minimum level of IQ, probably mid-normal or better. Most of the less successful people I've known were less intelligent but some were very smart, probably in the top 1%.
I have found creativity to be much the same. Many farmers and blue collar workers I've known are tremendously creative in how they solve problems. Yet they are not college educated. And, I know highly educated people who haven't had a flash of true creativity in years if ever. They're just real good at rote learning.
Over the years, I've also seen studies that show many things correlate with success more than IQ or grades including emotional "intelligence", hard work and height.
"I have seen lawyers with 105 IQs who are performing well at their jobs and seem to be creative and others who scored over 140 who are unemployed and talking about what geniuses they are. It seems like the more a person talks about how smart and bright they are, the less creative and really productive they really are. Have you noticed that?" - Dr Helen
Well, I guess if someone is not successful by any appreciable standard outside their IQ test score or similar measure, they will focus on that stat in dicussing things with others in an attempt to build themselves up.
Of my four "brightest" (and closest) friends - one is an investment banker and successful, one a lawyer and successful, one an energy trader and massively successful, and one who is working construction running a crew for his dad and consistently starting college degrees then dropping out. Guess which one is the most likely to bring up intellect or some derivative of mental capabilities? Yep. Him.
I do think IQ is a very strong indicator of overall success, however it isn't close to being the deciding factor.
Motivation is the deciding factor, in my opinion. A motivated moron can accomplish a hell of a lot more than a lazy genius.
It seems like the more a person talks about how smart and bright they are, the less creative and really productive they really are. Have you noticed that?
Heh. I don't know anyone who talks about how smart they are, but in my experience this is absolutely true for creativity. A few years ago I was in a band that was auditioning singers. The more wonderful and special they told me they were, the less likely they'd even show up when they said they would.
I'm not sure if they believed their specialness exempted them from the obligations other peons had to keep, or if they secretly feared they could never live up to their own hype.
Oligonicella,
"Have IQ tests broadened since I took them?"
The standard IQ test we use in the field is the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS-III) which is updated periodically. It still measures Verbal IQ, Performance IQ and Full Scale IQ. Here is information on the subtests and what they measure:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wechsler_Adult_Intelligence_Scale
Freeman Hunt,
"Is it at all interesting to administer IQ tests? Does it become more difficult the farther the testee is to either end of the curve?"
It is interesting sometimes, for example, I had a client with a stroke who was a PHD chemist. He still had over a 150 IQ but some of his scores had fallen in certain areas and it was important to find what limitations he had. It is hardest when one is pressed for time and trying to get someone at either end of the curve tested accurately. As long as there is sufficient time, then testing is not a problem. It can become extremely tedious though because it is so repetitive. I used to do up to four or more IQ tests a day and by the last one, was pretty tired of it.
tmink:
For grins and savage amusement, I have made numerous attempts to take eye cue tests on line. I often find myself somewhere else about a half dozen questions into the "test". Having been told I am ADHD about 11 years ago, and then reading many books on the subject, I learned a few things. I have also forgotten more than I learned.
Things i do every day, I am very good at. New stuff, if not deeply interesting, not so good. But if it is new and interesting both, I can hyper focus on it and pick it up fast.
Reading books is extremely frustrating (maddening, actually). I have to read each page 2 to 3 times, realizing at the bottom of each page that I have no idea what I just read. Retaining it is always a treat.
I have discovered there are many who do not believe in ADHD - my sister included. I try to point out to her that if she does not believe in ADHD, or that she too has it, why then does she have at least 20 post it notes on the inside of her front door, and keep piles of stuff at her front door so she can't forget it when she leaves her home every morning to teach kids (at their homes) who are mentally and physically disabled?
As has been said above a couple times in this thread, and trumpeted numerous times by many on this blog, knowledge and wisdom are not the same thing. An obvious no brainer.
You're a rare bird, tmink. If the distance between us were not so great, I would seek you out for ADHD therapy. I know what it has done for the frustration level in my life. I know the veil that was removed once I knew what it was that was troubling me so for the first 44 years of my life.
I have two words for those who do not believe ADD or ADHD is real: Swell Up.
I almost get the feeling when I read the discussion here that intelligence and social skills, or book knowledge and common sense, are inversely proportionate and that you can only have one or the other.
One poster ranks people on a continuum of:
"No Education - High Level of Commonsense" at one end, and "Book Smart - Dumper than a Box of Rocks" at the other end
He tends to take the common-sense people, apparently. Does anyone exist with book smarts and a bit of common sense? Apparently not.
Another thing I've always wondered about is social skills. I know that there are some "emotional IQ" tests and the like, but usually you just have to believe a person who maintains that he or she has "social skills". My impression over the years is that a whole lot of "people persons" and "people with social skills" are dicks who are impossible to work with. And stupid dicks on top of it.
One more thing: Achieving something in life is based on TWO things, no matter what TV shows say and no matter how many heroes there are in the movies: Individual initiative and luck. I don't know what the mix is (maybe 50/50, maybe luck is much more important), but I am absolutely sure that luck is part of it. If your name is Ford, you are likely to do better at Ford Motor Company than a smart guy who works hard.
And if that's the case, then there will be smart people who don't get rich. And dumb people who get rich. I think that the big wave of "Life" washes over much smaller advantages in terms of intelligence or insight etc.
Lastly: Usually there are people popping up left and right in discussions like this who have to mention as a side note that they have an IQ of 200 or 250 or 1000 or whatever - all unverifiable, of course, and usually the biggest claims come from the people with the worst logic skills otherwise and even the worst spelling. I'm surprised that there haven't really been any here.
JG,
Anyone who tells you they have an IQ of 200 etc. is misinformed. This is statistically very very rare and the WAIS has a ceiling of "150 or over." Some IQ tests have a higher ceiling such as the Stanford Binet but again, there are almost no 200's. Most people have never take an actual IQ test, that is a test given by a psychologist or psych examiner. They will tell you some number that they have misinterpreted from a standardized school test or something else that they misunderstood--perhaps but unless the test was a standardized IQ test from a psychologist, it is probably questionable.
To change the subject a bit. Dr Helen referenced the work done by the psychologist from the Univ of Chicago, Dr Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
he has a book titled "Flow" that I highly recommend, where he examines the creative process.
I have a question:
Does anyone know if the MENSA test that MENSA uses to grant people admission, a legit intelligence test?
Do you know how to pronounce Dr Csikszentmihalyi's very Hungarian name?
Answer: it is pronounced "chit-zen-mihai"
br549, my bud, wrote: " New stuff, if not deeply interesting, not so good."
Me too brother. Our brains are interest seeking to the extreme! For some really great research and tips on ADD go to brainplace.org.
There is too much self promotion on the site, but there is also the best collection of research and brain scans anywhere! The cool thing about Dr. Amen, the doc that runs the site, is that he is as interested in diet and supplements as he is in medicine. That is RARE among physicians.
Give your sis a tour of the site, it is easy to say that there is no such thing as ADHD when you are not looking at the brain scans! Trust me, I have no training in reading brain scans but I can go there and learn a lot.
He wrote a book called Healing ADHD that I recommend. One weird thing he believes is that there are 6 kinds of ADHD. Most of us stick with two, but then he has the brain scans and he could be right. The book is cheap on Amazon.
Thanks for the kind words pal. Rock on.
Trey
About the IQ tests, giving them to cognitively impaired people is quick, they miss enough questions for it to go by quickly.
The longest one I ever gave was while I was getting my M.A. The course was a bear because the teacher was obsessive compulsive. So I was trying to get out of a little work and decided to test a blind friend of mine. I figured since he was blind, I would not have to give any of the visual tests and it would take half the time!
So I showed up with a cooler of beer for me and the "subject," my old college roomate. We popped a cold one, I started the tape recorder (it was for class) and began.
Stupid me, I choose a blind LAWYER to test. The less he knew, the more he talked! After an hour of listening to him blabber on and on I stopped the tape, threatened him with bodily harm, and continued.
Again, because he was a lawyer, he got MORE verbose. It took me 2 hours to do 30 minutes worth of testing!
Yet another example of how when you try to get tricky you always end up tricking yourself eventually.
Trey
Does anyone exist with book smarts and a bit of common sense?
You apparently don't understand the concept of a continuum, so let me explain.
The two ends of the continuum represent extremes, while the points in between represent varying degrees of the qualities represented by those extremes.
So the answer to your question is yes, everyone who is in between the extremes has common sense and book smarts, just different amounts of both.
You think people with a lot of book smarts don't have much common sense and vice versa? High book smarts automatically means low common sense?
If not, you've got two different continuums going, not one.
You think people with a lot of book smarts don't have much common sense and vice versa? High book smarts automatically means low common sense?
It has been my experience that common sense tends to diminish as the number of pieces of paper hanging on the wall increase.
I prefer to work and associate with people who have a balance between the two, hence one continuum.
If you look back at the number of times somebody said something and punctuated their remarks with, "I mean, that's just common sense," what they are really implying is "that's the way I see matters, and I can't comprehend how anybody could see things differently." This is why liberals and conservatives both think that they are blessed with common sense while the opposing camp are a pack of fascists (seriously, why is it that liberals brand conservatives "fascists" and vice versa??).
Common sense, for all its popularity, does not even exist. Try to define it, and then see how often you encounter it in life.
As re dogwood's assertion that "common sense tends to diminish as the number of pieces of paper hanging on the wall increase" that may very well be the case, but I once worked for a world famous ophthalmologist whose wall was festooned (I always wanted to use that word) with degrees, diplomas and certificates of achievement, and I can't recall an individual who was more grounded in "common sense."
Common sense, in my experience, only lives in broad generalities and oversimplifications. If it's common sense to, for example, drill ANWR for oil because we rely too heavily on Arab oil, consider what common sense would look like if you were privy to the President's secret cabinet meetings with members of the Rand Corporation...you know: all the stuff the gov't doesn't want the population to know?? You might be surprised at how dangerous common sense is (a little knowledge is a dangerous thing). You get my drift.
Oh yeah, and photography lessons, too!
Courtesy of Webster's
Common Sense
sound practical judgment that is independent of specialized knowledge, training, or the like; normal native intelligence.
My personal definition: those people with common sense are more interested in practical and pragmatic solutions to problems rather than abstract, theoretical or ideological solutions that look good on paper but won't or don't work very well in reality.
Your definition may be different.
"It seems like the more a person talks about how smart and bright they are, the less creative and really productive they really are."
Say a very smart person is not being productive for whatever reason (say, severe depression.)
Then they may want to talk about how smart they are in a quest for higher respect, love, status, or whatever.
Perhaps it is not that they are unproductive because they talk about being smart. Perhaps they talk about being smart because they are unproductive.
When it comes to dealing with people and getting things done, I value wisdom over intelligence. Here's a link to a Victor Davis Hanson article that touches on the subject of wisdom:
A Sense of Balance
I am not calling for yokelism, or a proponent of false-populism. Rather, I wish to remind everyone that there are two fonts of wisdom: formal education, and the tragic world of physical challenge and ordeal. Both are necessary to be broadly educated. Familiarity with Proust or Kant is impressive, but not more impressive than the ability to wire your house or unclog the labyrinth of pipes beneath it.
In this regard, I think Palin can speak, and reason, and navigate with bureaucrats and lawyers as well as can Obama; but he surely cannot understand hunters, and mechanics and carpenters like she can. And a Putin or a Chavez or a Wall-Street speculator that runs a leverage brokerage house is more a hunter than a professor or community organizer. Harvard Law School is not as valuable a touchstone to human nature as raising five children in Alaska while going toe-to-toe with pretty tough, hard-nose Alaskan males.
What Is Wisdom?
Not necessarily degrees, glibness, poise, or factual recall, but the ability to understand human nature. And that requires two simple things: an inductive method of reasoning to look at the world empirically, and a body of knowledge and experience to draw on for guidance.
Palin in empirical fashion bucked the Republican establishment and the old-boy network when she thought it was unreasonable; Obama never figured out or at least never questioned Tony Rezko or the Chicago machine, Trinity Church or the Pelosi-Kennedy liberal mantra — unless it proved advantageous. Palin draws on everything from position papers on ANWR to how to keep four screaming kids fed and bathed; Obama on Harvard Law Review and dispensing more public money to more Chicago interest groups.
That’s a simplification, but also an answer to the old Euripidean question “What is wisdom?”
@larryj
If a young man wants wisdom, he asks God for it. And he gets it. To get a real education involves first getting wisdom.
Dr. Helen
Anyone who tells you they have an IQ of 200 etc. is misinformed. This is statistically very very rare and the WAIS has a ceiling of "150 or over." Some IQ tests have a higher ceiling such as the Stanford Binet but again, there are almost no 200's.
I don't know about that. I once had a IQ of 198 for a minute or two back in the '80s. I had gotten on a bus and saw that I was one of two riders; I could already see that the woman who had gotten on at the last stop was already berating the hapless drive: she was chewing him out and intimidating him by declaring she had an IQ of 168. Well, since I was familiar with the driver, I came to his defense; she immediately demanded to know my IQ. So, I responded with 198. She shut up tighter than a Ziploc bag and got off at the next stop. The driver thanked me when I got off later.
NJArtist,
Well done. For the good it did, you might as well have had an IQ of 198 for that moment.
:)
"Europeans think Americans are dullards because most of us only speak English, while they commonly speak two to six languages. Well, DUH! You only live 100 miles from four foreign countries, so it's hardly surprising that the relevance of German, Dutch, French and Italian are a tad higher than they are here."
The main reason is because English has no other language with which it is mutually intelligible. The closest is Frisian.
Spanish, Italian, French, and Portugese are basically different dialects of the same language.
I speak 5 langages, and read and write in 4. So, does it make me any smarter? Not at all. I learnt that language stuff due to where I lived while growing up.
I find the European way of thinking akin to Hussein Obama's snobby, elitist attitude.
Danny,
I think some people are good at picking up languages and others aren't. But I think that necessity is one of the most likely reasons people pick up other languages. If you are living in a country that demands one know the language, you learn it. When I was in Paris on a number of occasions, I learned at least the phrases I needed to get a ticket on the metro or lunch.
I have a much higher IQ than you all. -- Joe Biden
Oh! I hate that I'm late to this conversation...I read this article in PT earlier. It featured Julia Cameron, one of my favorite people ever.
I'm pretty bright, but once I figured out that I could learn to be more creative, I became a much happier person. It was the coolest thing in the world to realize I could develop this part of me, just like I used to get better at working math problems. (I had to do a million of those as an actuary!)
Learning this about myself also made me rethink what I emphasize to my kids, and it's given me a much wider view of life in general. Check out this article if you can, and check out Cameron's "Artist's Way," too.
IQ tests are a HUGE help when I work with ADHD people because I can see if they have a non-verbal learning disorder,
Trey, I was happy to see this comment from you. Our 11-year old boy went through a series of IQ and other tests this year and we discovered several reasons why he seems bright but has low skills in some academic areas. It was so helpful to him and of course his Dad and me, to get this information.
The psychologist said he was pretty interesting to test because his scores were all over the place. But maybe they say that to all the anxious parents.
tmink- the URL tha t you provided for Dr Amen, brainplace.org, seem not to work.
Re: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
I like his stuff alot, I read Flow a couple of decades ago and just now when looking for my copy of it -- I'm sure it's around here somewhere -- instead I found "Creativity...," I'd forgotten I'd even bought that one :-)
I guess, in regards to IQ, it's not how smart you are, but in how you apply your abilities. I'm sure there are many more really smart people that have overcome their handicap and succeeded than those that languish as is described in many notes above.
I have often wondered what "creative" really means when it's used to describe people. It's apparently a good thing to be. I'm pretty sure I'm not creative, whatever the hell it really means. If Dr. Helen would like to chime in with a helpful definition of the word, and perhaps an explanation of why it's good to be this way, it would solve a long-standing mystery.
Wonder,
There are many definitions of creativity. My favorite is "seeing the same thing as everybody else but thinking of something different." It's good to be able to think outside the box and come up with solutions and ideas that are different. It's important to civilization because we would never advance any other way. Without creativity, who would of thought to use fire, figure out that the earth is not flat or discover penicillin?
Here are a few more definitions of creativity if you want to take a look:
http://www.members.optusnet.com.au/~charles57/Creative/Basics/definitions.htm
Dr. Helen--
You would enjoy reading Edmund Wilson's "The Wound and the Bow" . It consists of essays about great writers and is "on the delicate theme of the relation between art and suffering."
Concerned citizen,
Thanks for the recommendation.
Although I do not believe the conventional wisdom that all creative people are weirdos, I do believe (from experience) that creative people are often hard to live with. They are simply different from non-creative people, especially those who are very linear in their thinking. Of course, this is not to say that creative people are unable to think linearly, or that linear people cannot be creative. It just means that a creative person's way of thinking can often be very different than a non-creative person's, and this can lead to conflict. It's like a MAC trying to communicate with a PC. It 'aint gonna work unless there's some middleware involved.
In general, a creative person who actually creates things in a succesful way (i.e. one who creates for a 'living') needs lots of alone time to create. That is a part of their lives that the 'other' person will normally not be privvy to, and the other person has to be OK with that. If the 'other' person is not, the relationship won't work.
Often, unless they are particlarly sharp folks in other areas or total wunderkinds, creatives need to be 'managed.' By this I mean that if you are not the creative, you will more often than not become the family administrator and caretaker. Many creatives gladly turn the responsibility of being the 'family boss' over to their non-creative (or less creative) counterparts, otherwise, they would not have time to create. The novelist Iris Murdoch is a prime example. She created a stack of famous works, while her husband (a writer of considerably less importance himself) basically ran the show at home. The Murdochs were married for aeons, and Iris actually worshipped her husband. Smart woman, that Iris.
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