Convergent vs divergent thinking: the difference, the tests, and why creativity needs both

Convergent thinking moves toward one correct or best answer. Divergent thinking searches in many directions and produces many possible answers. "How much is 12 + 12?" needs convergent thinking, because only one answer is correct. "Name all the uses of a brick" needs divergent thinking, because many answers are acceptable. The psychologist J. P. Guilford set out this distinction in 1956, in his model of the structure of the intellect.

Most pages about these two terms give advice for brainstorming at work. This article gives you the psychology behind them. It covers Guilford's own definitions and the tests that measure each type of thinking. It also gives a rule that sorts any exam example, and it explains what research says about creativity, intelligence and ADHD.

• Convergent thinking: the task has one keyed answer, and the thinking moves toward it.
• Divergent thinking: the task has many acceptable answers, and the thinking goes off in different directions.
• Guilford matched each type to a test format: multiple-choice items for convergent abilities, open lists for divergent abilities.
• A creativity test can have a convergent format. The Remote Associates Test asks for the one word that links three other words.
• A divergent-thinking score measures creative potential. It does not measure what a person actually creates.

The difference in one table

The two terms describe two directions of thought. The table shows how they differ in the task, the test and the score.

Where the terms come from

Guilford's 1950 address on creativity

In September 1950, J. P. Guilford gave his address as President of the American Psychological Association. His subject was creativity, and he started with a complaint: "The neglect of this subject by psychologists is appalling." According to the published address, he had checked the index of the Psychological Abstracts. Of approximately 121,000 titles from the previous 23 years, only 186 were about creativity. That is less than two-tenths of one per cent.

Guilford also said that the usual test format could not show creative ability. He wrote: "To provide the creator with the finished product, as in a multiple-choice item, may prevent him from showing precisely what we want him to show: his own creation." He suggested open tasks instead. In one example, you write many titles for a picture. In another, you list the consequences of the statement "A new invention makes it unnecessary for people to eat". The US Office of Naval Research supported his research project on the aptitudes of high-level personnel.

The 1956 structure of intellect

Six years later, Guilford published "The structure of intellect" in Psychological Bulletin. The paper sorted about 40 intellectual abilities that factor analysis had found. Seven were memory abilities. The others were thinking abilities, in three groups: cognition (discovery), production (making an answer) and evaluation (judging). Guilford divided production into two parts:

Divergent thinking was the opposite. In Guilford's words, "there is much searching or going off in various directions", and this is "most clearly seen when there is no unique conclusion". He wrote that multiple-choice tests are well adapted to measure convergent abilities. For divergent abilities, "completion tests are almost a necessity". He also thought that the distinction was new: it "seems not to have been emphasized in prior literature on thinking".

Guilford did not say that a person uses only one type at a time. He wrote that many problems need some search in different directions and then a convergence toward the solution. But he also wrote that the two processes are "logically and operationally separable, even in such activities".

How psychologists measure divergent thinking

A divergent-thinking test gives an open problem and counts the answers. The best-known format asks for uses of an everyday object.

In Guilford's Brick Uses test, you name all the uses that you can think of for a common brick, in eight minutes. Guilford described a flexibility score that counted "runs". A run is a sequence of uses of the same class, for example bricks as building material or bricks as missiles. A related test, Unusual Uses, asked for several unusual uses for each of a number of objects. The score was the number of uses given. Modern versions use other objects. A 2013 study at the University of Graz asked for uses of a can, a knife and a hairdryer.

Researchers usually score the number of ideas (fluency), their originality, or both. Some tests use four dimensions. According to a 2022 study in PLOS ONE, the psychologist E. P. Torrance first set out these four dimensions, based on the elements of divergent thinking that Guilford proposed.

The four scores are not fully independent. The Graz researchers note that fluency and originality usually correlate. If a test adds up the originality points of all answers, a person who gives more answers also gets a higher originality score. To correct this, researchers can divide originality by fluency, or score a fixed number of ideas from each person.

How psychologists measure convergent thinking

A convergent-thinking test has one keyed answer for each item. A standard multiple-choice question fits this description, and so does an arithmetic problem. The interesting case is a creativity test with a convergent format.

The Remote Associates Test

In 1962, Sarnoff Mednick defined creative thinking as "the forming of associative elements into new combinations which either meet specified requirements or are in some way useful". In his theory, the more remote the combined elements are from each other, the more creative the solution is. To measure this, Mednick built the Remote Associates Test, or RAT.

Each item gives three words, and you find a fourth word that links all three. Mednick's own example was "rat", "blue" and "cottage". The answer is "cheese", because each of the three words forms a familiar pair with it. The two college forms that Mednick described had 30 items each and a time limit of 40 minutes. The score was the number of correct answers.

Each item has exactly one keyed answer, so the RAT has a convergent format. In Mednick's first study, faculty ratings of creativity for architecture students correlated with an early form of the test at r = .70. The sample was small: the analysis had 19 degrees of freedom.

Researchers still disagree about what the RAT measures. A 2020 systematic review of 172 papers says that the RAT "is generally regarded as a convergent thinking test". The same review reports that RAT scores are related to intelligence tests, and that some studies found a positive correlation with divergent thinking. Its conclusion is that the RAT involves "the integration of divergent, convergent, and analytical thinking".

An original answer is not always a creative answer

Mednick also explained why a creative answer must meet requirements. He wrote that 7,363,474 is "quite an original answer" to the problem "How much is 12 + 12?". But the answer is not creative, because it does not solve the problem. A creative answer must be new, and it must also work. Divergent thinking can produce new answers, but something must also check which of them meet the requirements.

Classifying exam scenarios

To classify an example, ask one question: does the task have one keyed answer, or many acceptable answers? Use these steps.

1. 1.Find the task that the person does.
2. 2.Decide if the task has one correct or best answer.
3. 3.If the task has one answer and the person works toward it, the thinking is convergent.
4. 4.If the task has many acceptable answers and the person produces several of them, the thinking is divergent.
5. 5.If the person cannot see a new use for an object because of its usual use, the term is functional fixedness.

The College Board uses the same logic. The AP Psychology Course and Exam Description says that creativity includes "generating novel ideas and engaging in divergent (versus convergent) thinking". It also says that functional fixedness hinders creative thinking. Its sample exam describes a study by a Dr. Min. Five volunteers list as many alternative uses as they can for tweezers, an eraser and a paper clip, in five minutes.

Question 7 of the sample exam asks which concept applies most directly to Dr. Min's research question. The answer key gives divergent thinking. Question 5 asks about the volunteer who gave the lowest number of uses for the tweezers. The answer key gives functional fixedness.

Where the business definition differs

Workplace guides usually describe divergent thinking as brainstorming. They describe convergent thinking as the next step, in which a team judges the list and keeps the best idea. Guilford's model put this judgement in a separate group of abilities, evaluation. In his model, convergent thinking was the production of the one answer that a problem requires.

The two meanings overlap, but they are not the same. For a psychology exam, use the psychology definition: convergent thinking moves toward one correct or best answer.

Is divergent thinking the same as creativity?

No. Divergent thinking is one part of creativity. Researchers separate creative potential from creative achievement. Creative potential is the ability to produce something new and useful. Creative achievement is what a person actually produces in real life, for example a scientific discovery or a novel.

Divergent-thinking tests are the usual measure of creative potential, as the Graz study explains. A high score on a uses test therefore does not show that a person will create anything important. The link between the two exists, but it is not simple. In the 2022 PLOS ONE study of 88 undergraduates, divergent-thinking scores were positively associated with creative production in fine arts and with creative achievement. The link to achievement was stronger in students who saw themselves as creative people.

Divergent thinking and intelligence

The threshold hypothesis says that above-average intelligence is a necessary condition for high creativity. Below a certain IQ, intelligence limits creativity. Above it, differences in IQ should no longer matter. Many studies set this threshold at an IQ of 120.

The Graz study tested the hypothesis with 297 participants. It used a statistical method that finds the threshold in the data, segmented regression, instead of a fixed value. The results depended on the measure of creativity:

• For the number of ideas (fluency), the threshold was at about IQ 85.
• For a lenient originality measure (two original ideas), the threshold was at about IQ 100.
• For a strict originality measure (many original ideas), the threshold was at about IQ 120.
• For creative achievement, there was no threshold. Achievement continued to benefit from higher intelligence, even at high levels.

Above the threshold, personality factors became more predictive of creative potential. The same paper cites a meta-analysis that puts the general correlation between creative potential and intelligence at about r = .20.

Keeping the terms apart

Convergent thinking, divergent thinking, functional fixedness, mental set, algorithms and heuristics all describe how people approach a problem, so they are easy to mix up. In the AP course they belong to the same topic as prototypes, schemas, priming, framing, and the gambler's and sunk-cost fallacies. Our article on the availability and representativeness heuristics covers two more terms from this topic. Our overview of cognitive biases explains framing.

In Psychology World you can save terms like these to one list. Then you can drill the list as flashcards, as multiple-choice questions once it has four or more terms, or by typing the answer. What each study mode does is set out on the home page. Our guide to memorising psychology terminology explains which study methods have the strongest evidence.