Defying the Crowd

Book excerpt: Sternberg also looks at the role intelligence plays in determining a person's creativity. Drawing on an innovative summer program he developed for fostering creativity, Sternberg shows that the traditional high-IQ student, typically labeled "gifted" in our schools, often does very poorly when it comes to producing original, insightful ideas. As he shows, because our schools prize almost exclusively the ability to memorize and analyze material, the development of original thinking is given short shrift. Sternberg also looks at the role knowledge of a field, as well as particular styles of thinking, personality, and motivation, play in the development of creativity. He concludes that it is the right amount and balance of these factors that makes for a fully creative person.