Joy Paul Guilford: biography of this American psychologist.

A review of the life of this psychologist, known for his research on creativity.

Joy Paul Guilford was an American psychologist, considered by many to be one of the leading exponents of factor analysis in approaching the complex field of individual differences and personality. in addressing 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 valued human diversity, and tried to find out how it could be explained. In addition, he argued that traditional IQ tests did not know how to adequately assess skills that were not recurrent within the school environment.

Today we will discuss the life and theory of one of the great thinkers of the 20th century in this brief biography of Joy Paul Guilford. this brief biography of Joy Paul Guilford, who also had a working life characterized by working in several universities and serving his country during World War II.who also had a working life characterized by working in several universities and serving his country during World War II.

Biography of Joy Paul Guilford

Joy Paul Guilford was born on March 7, 1897 in Marquette, Nebraska. Even as a young child he showed an interest in individual differencesobserving how members of his family showed differences in different abilities. When he was about to graduate from the University of Nebraska, he began 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 serving as director of the university's psychological clinic.

J. P. Guilford returned to work at another university between 1927 and 1928, namely Kansas University, but changed his employment and eventually became an associate professor at the University of Nebraska, working from 1928 to 1940.

During World War II (1939-1945) he worked in the Psychological Research Unit of the University of Nebraska. he worked in the Psychological Research Unit of the U.S. Air Force at Santa Ana Air Force Base in Santa Ana, Nebraska.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 soldiers' skills. The objective was to select those with the best skills in handling combat aircraft.

After the end of the conflict continued to work in California, continuing his research on intelligence questionnaires.. He also focused on aspects that traditionally had not been treated with due importance: divergent thinking and creativity. He remained 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

Even as a young man, Guilford's main interest was in individual differences. His work focused on how people were different in aspects related to both intelligence and creativity..

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

Because intelligence was seen as a single unit, it came to be considered that a person who scored low on an IQ questionnaire was simply not good enough. Although this view may seem very exaggerated, the truth is that more than a few researchers defended it.

Guilford, rather than seeing individual differences as something negative, was able to value them and tried to observe what mechanisms could be behind them that could explain them.. He also tried to see how human intelligence manifested itself.

Divergent thinking

First, in the 1950s, Guilford put forward the idea of "divergent intelligence". He formulated this concept when he saw that creative people had a tendency to think outside the box or to come up with solutions that were not what one would normally expect for the same problem. 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. fluency

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

Flexibility

Ability to come up with different approaches2. Flexibility Ability to come up with different approaches to a particular problem.

3. Originality

Ability to produce new ideassomething different from what is already known.

4. Elaboration

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

Criticism of intelligence tests

According to Guilford, traditional IQ questionnaires were not conducive to 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 abilities were prioritized over creativity, it was possible for a person to be bad at mathematics but very good at artistic drawing.In the years that followed, it was possible for a person to be bad at mathematics but very good at artistic drawing, but still 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, there was the idea that intelligence was something unitary, which can be defined by a single parameter. This was Charles Spearman's concept of intelligence, shown by his idea of the g-factor or general intelligence.

Guilford was not of the same opinion, and considered that intelligence consisted of various 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 "Encoding" and "Recall" constituted a single factor, called "Memory".

Cognition

Understanding, comprehending, discovering and being aware of information.

Memory

Includes encoding and recalling information.

3. Divergent production

Generating multiple solutions to 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 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 contents.

2. Symbolic

Symbols that have meaning: numbers, letters...

3. Semantic

Information that is captured through words and phrases, whether spoken, written or thought.in oral, written or thought modalities.

4. Behavioral

That which is interpreted from the behavior of others. The content dimension originally had four factors, but in later revisions "figurative" was divided into "auditory" and "visual.

Productive

These contain these elements:

1. units

They represent the smallest information items that can be captured. that can be captured.

2. Classes

Sets of items that share attributes.

3. Relationships

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

4. Systems

Organized items that interact with each other.

5. Transformations

All the changes undergone by the knowledge possessed.

6. Implications

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

Legacy

Guilford, along with Thurstone, was one of the first one of the first psychologists to consider that the idea of intelligence was not a unitary concept, i.e., that it could not be described with a single score, but rather with tenacity.that is, that it could not be described by a single score, but by taking into account several factors, each representing sets of interrelated abilities.

Today, thanks to the development of sciences that in Guilford's time were little elaborated, such as developmental psychology, neurology and artificial intelligence, have shown that intelligence and, in general terms, intelligence is not a unitary concept, i.e., that it could not be described by a single score, but by taking into account several factors, each one representing a set of interrelated skills, The mind is constructed from the interaction of several relatively independent neurological modules. relatively independent.

With the passage of time, J. P. Guilford's ideas have been revised and some of his findings on the theory of multiple intelligences have been updated. Robert Sternberg and Howard Gardner are clear examples of this updating. However, no one doubts that Guilford was the one who planted the seed on the idea that intelligence is something that has several components, and that we are not all intelligent in the same way.