Are Women more Creative
than men??
Rohit Mehar
Creativity
 Creativity (or creativeness) is a mental
process involving the generation of new
ideas and concepts, or new associations
between existing ideas or concepts
 Different interpretation in behavioral
psychology, social psychology, cognitive
sciences, business and management
 Attributed to divine intervention, cognitive
processes, social environment, chance,
traits
Research Definition
 Creativity is a function on intelligence
and lateral inhibition
 Higher the intelligence, lower the
latent inhibition, higher the creativity
and vice versa
 For constant lateral inhibition,
Intelligence has direct impact on
creativity
Its Controversial!!!
 Larry Summers, President of Harvard
University outlined these hypotheses
 High Powered Job hypotheses
 Variability Hypotheses
 Discrimination Hypotheses
Lost his job, intelligence can’t be more
crucial than discrimination??
Interesting Research
 Dr. Paul Irwing, based on SAT scores
of 20000 people –
 Mean difference of 5 IQ points in favor of
men
 Twice as many men with an IQ of 120+
 Thrice as many men with an IQ of 170+
 There is no difference below age groups
of 14 years
 Difference increases as the age increases
Interesting Research
 Skewed distribution in favor of men
 Makes a bold statement that “Men
have bigger brain than women”
 Many researches done on the same
lines giving similar results
Counter Facts
 Ever diminishing variability
 Ratio of boys and girls who scored at
high ends reduced four times in 20 years
 SAT scores depends heavily on career
choices
 Discrimination and Institutional
disadvantages are the major reason
(NAS)
Why this can’t be settled?
 Only IQ scores cannot differentiate
men and women (What else then??)
 History speaks (applies for both,
more pertinent in case of men but)
 Latent Inhibition is not constant
 Left Brain – Right Brain (Intuition
does not mean creativity)
 Any other view??
Fostering Creativity
 Building motivation, especially
internal motivation
 Encouraging confidence and a
willingness to take risks
 Promoting supportable beliefs about
creativity
 Providing opportunities for choice and
discovery
 Providing balance
Thank You 