JUDGMENTS OF ORIGINALITY AND APPROPRIATENESS AS PREDICTORS OF CREATIVITY

Most contemporary theories of creativity recognize originality and som e kind of appropriateness (e.g. fit or practicality). The present inve stigation was conducted to assess the contributions of originality and appropriateness to judgments of creativity. Three different collectio ns of ideas, or ''ideational pools'' were organized on stimulus cards, with the number of original and appropriate ideas systematically mani pulated in each. The ideas were responses from two different Instances divergent thinking tasks. Judges (71 college students) were asked to sort the pools according to three different criteria: originality, app ropriateness, and creativity. Trend analyses were used to assess the d egree to which the subjective ratings were associated with the objecti ve levels of originality and appropriateness. Regression analyses were also conducted with the subjective ratings of originality and appropr iateness (and their interaction) as predictors of subjective creativit y ratings. In general, the subjective ratings of originality and appro priateness followed the objective levels, but an inverse relation betw een originality and appropriateness was apparent, with the lowest orig inality ratings occurring for the ideational pools with the highest nu mber of appropriate ideas and vice versa. Furthermore, only subjective originality ratings were associated with creativity ratings. When all ideas were unoriginal, creativity ratings decreased (though not signi ficantly) with increasing numbers of appropriate ideas within the pool s. However, when objective levels of both originality and appropriaten ess increased, creativity ratings increased significantly. These resul ts suggest that although it is not necessary for an original idea to b e appropriate to be viewed as creative, original ideas are not valued less by being appropriate. However, with unoriginal ideas, appropriate ness may inhibit judgments of creativity.