Is Hollywood in a creativity depression?
By Kent R. Kroeger (July 3, 2023)
In 2011, Kyung-Hee Kim, an assistant professor in William & Mary’s School of Education at the time, published research showing that scores on the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, developed by psychologist Ellis Paul Torrance in 1966 to measure a person’s creativity, have been declining since 1990.
After examining almost 300,000 Torrance Test scores of Americans from kindergarten age to adulthood collected between 1968 to 2008, Kim found that, in the aggregate, scores began to decline in 1990, and did so across all age groups. More interestingly, that aggregate decline was greatest in the youngest age groups. Early elementary students today score much lower on the Torrance Test than did early elementary students 30 years ago.
Should we worry? Well, the Torrance Test has proven to be a better predictor of career achievement than standard IQ tests, according to Kim. So, yes, maybe we should be worried.
Figure 1: A sample question from the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking
The good news is, psychologists think they know why Torrance Test scores have been declining…
