Although psychometric studies of creativity had been conducted by The London School of Psychology as early as 1927 with the work of H.L. Hargreaves into the Faculty of Imagination. The formal psychometric measurement of creativity, from the standpoint of orthodox psychological literature, is usually considered to have begun with psychologist J.P. Guilford's address to the American Psychological Association in 1950. That address helped to popularize the study of creativity and to focus attention on scientific approaches to conceptualizing creativity. Statistical analyzes led to the recognition of creativity as a aspect of human cognition separate from IQ-type intelligence, under the study of which it had previously been subsumed. Guilford's work suggested that above a threshold level of IQ, the relationship between creativity and classically measured intelligence broke down.
Although psychometric studies of creativity had been conducted by The London School of Psychology as early as 1927 with the work of H.L. Hargreaves into the Faculty of Imagination. The formal psychometric measurement of creativity from the standpoint of orthodox psychological literature, is usually considered to have begun with psychologist J.P. Guilford's address to the American Psychological Association in 1950. That address helped to popularize the study of creativity and to focus attention on scientific approaches to conceptualizing creativity. Statistical analyzes led to the recognition of creativity as a aspect of human cognition separate from IQ-type intelligence, under the study of which it had previously been subsumed. Guilford's work suggested that above a threshold level of IQ, the relationship between creativity and classically measured intelligence broke down.