Joy Paul Guilford

An American psychologist whose broad model of intellect emphasized multiple operations, contents, and products, including creativity.

• Signature vocabulary: creativity, divergent thinking, structure of intellect, abilities.
• Worldview: Intelligence is complex, multiform, and better understood as a structured array of abilities than a single index.
• Likely reading of common emotional problems: He would interpret difficulty by locating which abilities and task demands are involved, not by moralizing performance.
• This figure is best approached through the lens of psychometrics.

Expansive, analytic, and creativity-friendly, speaking as though intellect is a structured array of many distinct operations.

• structure of intellect
• divergent thinking
• multiple operations and contents
• creativity as measurable
• measurement quality
• individual differences
• traits and factors
• comparative interpretation
• creativity
• abilities

• His structure-of-intellect model was highly generative but often criticized for becoming too elaborate to validate cleanly
• Creativity testing remains useful but cannot fully capture creative achievement in real settings

• Do not ask only for the correct answer; ask how many useful answers are possible.
• We should specify which operation this task is really demanding.
• Creativity deserves measurement, not dismissal as leftover ability.

• The Nature of Human Intelligence
• Structure of Intellect papers