Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking as Predictors of Personal and Public Achievement: A Fifty-Year Follow-Up

This article presents the results of the 50-year follow-up of the longitudinal study E. Paul Torrance initiated 5 decades ago. The Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT) was administered in the late 1950s and personal and public achievement data were obtained 50 years later and used as criteria in analyses reported here. These showed that TTCT scores were moderately correlated with personal, but not with public, achievement. However, an interaction of intelligence and creativity was significantly related to public achievement but not to personal achievement. When a composite was formed from the 4 TTCT indexes (fluency, originality, flexibility, and elaboration), a significant quadratic trend was found with the personal achievement criterion. Three of the indicators (“Love of work,” Tolerance of mistakes, and Minority of one) from the Beyonder instrument developed by Torrance (2003 Torrance , E. P. ( 2003 ). The millennium: A time for looking forward and looking back . Journal of Secondary Gifted Education , 15 , 6 – 12 .[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) were related to public achievement. Only one other indicator from the Beyonder measure (“Well-roundedness”) was associated with personal achievement. Men were significantly higher in public achievement than women, but there was no significant gender difference in personal achievement.