Aesthetic Endowment and Intelligence

Abstract

The article ponders on two issues: on the existence of general aesthetic endowment and on the relationship between aesthetic endowment and intellectual abilities. An attempt is made to settle these issues via analysis of the data obtained in the approbation of the test for measuring aesthetic endowment in the domain of literary creativity, during which part of the participants was also administered the Visual Aesthetic Sensitivity Test (VAST) and/or intelligence test (Raven’s Matrices), as well as via analysis of the data of a special study in which, except for the test for measuring aesthetic endowment in literary creativity and Raven’s Matrices, three subtests of the Amthauer’s Intelligence Structure Test (Information, Analogies and Generalizations) were used. The results obtained were as follows. The tests for measuring aesthetic endowment in literary creativity and fine art do not correlate, and there is  a divergence in their correlations with the test on general intelligence: while the test for measuring aesthetic endowment in literary creativity does not correlate with the Raven’s Matrices, there is a low but significant correlation between the VAST and Raven’s Matrices. Thus, the conducted analysis did not reveal evidence for existence of general aesthetic endowment. Aesthetic endowment in literary creativity does not correlate with general intelligence, which is proved by the absence of its correlation with both the Raven’s Matrices and the subtest Information, but it does correlate with verbal abilities: there is a low but significant correlation with the subtest Analogies, and a positive correlation with a latent variable formed from the subtests Analogies and Generalizations.