Joy Paul Guilford was an American psychologist, considered by many to be one of the greatest exponents in factor analysis when it came to tackling the complex field of individual differences and personality.

He is well known for his psychometric studies addressing intelligence and, in a very original way, creativity. His vision of intelligence was contrary to that of most psychologists of his time, who saw it as something unitary.

He knew how to value human diversity, and tried to find out how this could be explained. Furthermore, he argued that traditional IQ tests did not know how to best assess skills that did not recur within the school setting.

Today we are going to talk about the life and theory of one of the great thinkers of the 20th century throughout this short biography of Joy Paul Guilford , who also had a working life characterized by working in various universities and serving his country during the Second World War.

Biography of Joy Paul Guilford

Joy Paul Guilford was born on March 7, 1897 in Marquette, Nebraska. Even as a child he showed an interest in individual differences , observing how his family members showed differences in different abilities. When he was about to graduate from the University of Nebraska, he started working as an assistant in the psychology department.

While graduating from Cornell University, between 1919 and 1921, he studied under Edward Titchener, who is credited with founding the first psychological laboratory in the United States. While at that university, Guilford administered intelligence questionnaires to children , in addition to working as director of the university psychological clinic.

J. P. Guilford went back to work at another university between 1927 and 1928, specifically in Kansas, but changed his job to finally be hired as an associate professor at the university of his native Nebraska, working from 1928 to 1940.

During World War II (1939-1945) he worked at the U.S. Air Force Psychological Research Unit , at Santa Ana Air Force Base in California. It was during the conflict that he began working at the University of Southern California, participating in a project on skills in soldiers. The goal was to select those who had the best skills to handle combat aircraft.

After the end of the conflict he continued working in California, continuing his research on intelligence questionnaires . In addition, he focused on aspects that had not traditionally been treated with due importance: divergent thinking and creativity. He worked there until he left university research in 1967. J. P. Guilford died on November 26, 1987, in Los Angeles, California.

Work and theory on intelligence

From a young age, Guilford’s greatest interest was in individual differences. His work focused on how people were different both in aspects related to intelligence and creativity .

Even in the mid-20th century there was a more or less accepted view that differences in intellectual performance meant that there were better and worse people, and that group characteristics such as race, ethnicity or gender influenced this.

Since intelligence was seen as something unitary, it was considered that a person who scored low on an IQ questionnaire was simply not worth it. Although this view may seem very exaggerated, the truth is that there were not a few researchers who defended it.

Guilford, rather than seeing the individual differences as something negative, knew how to value them and tried to observe what mechanisms could be behind them that would explain them . Furthermore, he tried to see how human intelligence manifested itself.

Divergent thinking

First, in the 1950s, Guilford raised the idea of “divergent intelligence”. He formulated this concept when he saw that creative people had a certain tendency to think in a way that was outside the norm or that they came up with solutions that were not what one would normally expect for the same problem. According to Guilford, the characteristics of this type of thinking are the following:

1. Fluidity

Ability to produce multiple ideas or solutions to a problem in a short period of time.

2. Flexibility

Ability to pose different approaches s for a particular problem.

3. Originality

To be able to produce new ideas , something different from what is already known.

4. Elaboration

Aptitude to develop, expand and present ideas in an interesting way, making the most of them .

Criticism of the intelligence test

According to Guilford, traditional IQ questionnaires did not favour divergent thinking. He felt that they focused only on those skills that were useful in the school curriculum of the time. Given that numerical and visuospatial skills were given priority over creativity , it was possible for a person to be bad at math but very good at drawing art, but to be considered unintelligent.

That is why during the years he worked at the University of Southern California he developed several questionnaires to measure the intellectual abilities of creative people.

Laying the Foundations of Multiple Intelligence

During the first half of the 20th century, the idea was that intelligence was something unitary, which can be defined by a single parameter. This was the concept of intelligence that Charles Spearman had, shown with his idea of the g-factor or general intelligence.

Guilford was not of the same opinion, and considered that intelligence consisted of several intellectual abilities that differed from person to person . Based on this idea, he proposed a three-dimensional or cubic model, in which he explained in more detail his vision of how human intelligence was composed.

The 3 dimensions of the model are explained below in addition to detailing its components

Mental operations

This dimension originally had only 5 components, since “Coding” and “Recall” were one factor, called “Memory”.

Cognition

Understand, comprehend, discover and be aware of information.

2. Memory

It includes coding and remembering the information.

3. Divergent production

Generate multiple solutions for the same problem.

4. Convergent production

Deduce a single solution to a problem.

5. Evaluation

The ability to judge whether an answer/solution is appropriate, consistent and valid for the problem posed.

Contents

This category contains these elements:

1. Figurative

Information that comes in the form of drawings or that is not verbalized . It includes auditory and visual content.

2. Symbolic

Symbols that have meaning: numbers, letters…

3. Semantics

Information that is captured through words and phrases , whether oral, written or thought out.

4. Behavioral

That which is interpreted from the behavior of others.
The dimension of the contents originally had four factors, but in later “figurative” reviews it was divided into “auditory” and “visual”.

Productive

They contain these elements:

1. Units

They represent the smallest information items that can be captured.

2. Classes

Sets of items that share attributes.

3. Relationships

These are the connections between the items, either because they are associated or antagonistic.

4. Systems

Organized items that interact with each other.

5. Transformations

All the changes in the knowledge you have.

6. Implications

Inferences and predictions that can be made based on the knowledge one has.

Legacy

Guilford, together with Thurstone, was one of the first psychologists to consider that the idea of intelligence was not a unitary concept , that is, that it could not be described with a single score, but with taking into account several factors that represented each one of them interrelated sets of abilities.

Today, thanks to the development of sciences that in Guilford’s time were little elaborated, such as developmental psychology, neurology and artificial intelligence, they have shown that intelligence and, in general terms, the mind is built from the interaction of several relatively independent neurological modules .

Over time, J. P. Guilford’s ideas have been revised and some of his discoveries about the theory of multiple intelligences have been updated. The 3 dimensions of the model are explained below in addition to detailing its components

Mental operations

This dimension originally had only 5 components, since “Coding” and “Recall” were one factor, called “Memory”.

Cognition

Understand, comprehend, discover and be aware of information.

2. Memory

It includes coding and remembering the information.

3.
Divergent production

Generate multiple solutions for the same problem.

4.
Convergent production

Deduce a single solution to a problem.

5. Evaluation

The ability to judge whether an answer/solution is appropriate, consistent and valid for the problem posed.

Contents

This category contains these elements: