Associative horizon

© 2005-2008 Paul Cooijmans

In my considerations about genius, I have over the years realized one of the pillars of brilliance is associative horizon (The other are intelligence and conscientiousness). To explain what I mean by this, here is a first unstructured list of words describing it.

• Fluency in association: To see many associations to any given concept;
• To see connections or similarities between remote concepts (This follows from fluency in association);
• Divergent thinking (virtually the same as lateral thinking and similar to fluency in association);
• Flexibility (ability to see things in different functions, to switch from motif to background);
• Resistance to conformism (Conformism narrows associative horizon);
• Resistance to suggestion (Suggestibility narrows associative horizon);
• Resistance to nonverbal communication ("body language" and the nonverbal components of speech); that is, not intuitively and unawarely interpreting or broadcasting such;
• Resistance to socialization (Socialization narrows associative horizon);
• Resistance to empathy; that is, not not intuitively and unawarely sensing what goes on inside the mind of the other person one is communicating with; not forming "theory of mind" when communicating;
• Ability to understand and create humour; However, this ability requires intelligence as well, so it may a result of having both a wide associative horizon and a high intelligence, rather than a feature of associative horizon; This is still to be considered.

A remark I wish to make is that what I call "associative horizon" is by others often mistaken for "creativity". But creativity is a higher-level phenomenon, a SYNERGY of things, of which associative horizon is only one. The idea that associative horizon itself IS creativity is of course attractive to who do not possess much of the other components of creativity. But it is not true.

Another observation is that some think they can measure associative horizon (which they mistakenly call "creativity" as just explained) with difficult pattern recognition problems, sometimes called "creative puzzles". But to my experience (with item analysis), those who are best at solving such problems are often simply the ones with the highest I.Q.s, and not per se creative. The "creative puzzles" are a measure of intelligence at high levels, and not per se of creativity or associative horizon. On the other hand, I do not exclude the possibility that associative horizon can be measured by certain types of problems, and keep experimenting to find out.

I know of no good, usable way to measure associative horizon currently. It seems that whatever you try in the realm of ability testing, you always end up measuring intelligence above all. This has less to do with the construction of the tests than with the omnipresent nature of intelligence, which typically blows all of the other behavioural variables away because it expresses itself in almost everything a person does or says. Tests in the realms of personality and mental illness do catch in aspects of associative horizon, but are not robust as one can manipulate them by answering dishonestly.

To my most recent insights, possible indicators of associative horizon are the Gifted Adult's Inventory of Aspergerisms (GAIA), the P.S.I.A. Aspergoid and Cold scales, and several high-range intelligence tests to be specified later.