Determinants of Creative Metacognitive Monitoring: Creativity, Personality, and Task-Related Predictors of Self-Assessed Creativity at Performance- and Response-Level

The assessment of one's own cognitive processes during creative endeavors, known as creative metacognitive monitoring (CMC-M), can manifest in various ways. These include appraising task-related operations and performance (i.e., the performance level), as well as evaluating the ideas generated (i.e., the response level). The outcomes of this evaluation serve a crucial regulatory function, as they determine how the creative process is managed, specifically influencing the decision to persist or discontinue cognitive efforts. So far, investigations into CMC-M have predominantly concentrated on predicting the accuracy of one's performance or ideas, but less is known about what determines the level of self-assessments (including over- and underestimation) beyond the underlying performance. In fact, it was suggested that self-assessments of skills may be more closely intertwined with other factors, such as personality. To address these issues, we conducted an online study (N = 425) that explores the determinants of self-assessments in creative task performance and ideas in terms of creative ability (divergent thinking), real-life creativity (creative activities and achievements), core personality traits (intellect, openness, narcissism), surface personality characteristics (creative self-efficacy, creative personal identity, creative self-concept), and task-related factors (motivation and prior task experience). We discuss these findings in the context of a recently proposed systematic framework of creative metacognition (Lebuda & Benedek, 2023).