Is creativity without intelligence possible? A Necessary Condition Analysis

•Eight studies tested the relationship between intelligence and creativity.•A new methodology, the Necessary Condition Analysis (NCA) was presented and applied.•NCA supported the hypothesis that intelligence is a necessary yet not sufficient condition for creativity.

This article extends the previous studies on the relationship between intelligence and creativity by providing a new methodology and an empirical test of the hypothesis that intelligence is a necessary condition for creativity. Unlike the classic threshold hypothesis, which assumes the existence of a curvilinear relationship between intelligence and creativity, the Necessary Condition Analysis (Dul, 2016) focuses on and quantifies the overall shape of the relationship between intelligence and creativity. In eight studies (total N = 12,255), using different measures of intelligence and creativity, we observed a consistent pattern that supports the necessary-but-not-sufficient relationship between these two constructs. We conclude that although evidence concerning the threshold hypothesis on the creativity–intelligence relationship is mixed, the “necessary condition hypothesis” is clearly corroborated by the results of appropriate tests.