Consequences (Guilford's Consequences)

Authors: J.P. Guilford & J.S. Guilford

Consequences was developed by the Aptitudes Research Project at the University of Southern California as part of a systematic exploration of the "structure of intellect" Two scores are derived from Consequences. The first consists of the total number of "obvious" responses to questions beginning "What would be the result if . . . ?" The second consists of the sum of "remote" responses or remotely associated ideas which are likely to require revisions of other ideas.

The score for obvious responses has consistently and substantially correlated with a factor defined as "ideational fluency". However, the score for remote responses has proved to be a measure of "originality" regarding remote associates or revisions or transformations.

Both ideational fluency and originality are important contributors to creative thinking. All divergent production abilities are concerned with an individual’s efficiency to retrieve items of information from his memory store. The more creative person comes up with an unusually large quantity of ideas, where the less creative can think of only one or two. Abilities concerned with transformations give flexibility to thinking, another creative quality. The uncreative person is stuck with one interpretation of something, where the creative person produces several interpretations, thus showing novelty and originality.

In the Consequences test, each of the separately timed items is framed as a question beginning "What would be the result if . . .?" The contents of the items are chosen so as to bring the problems within the common knowledge of most individuals. The open-ended type of item is used, which requires subjective judgment on the part of the scorer to decide whether a response is relevant and whether it is an obvious or a remote consequence.