Implicit Theories of Creative Ideas: How Culture Guides Creativity Assessments

The current studies provide evidence of two distinct implicit theories of creative ideas and so help to resolve the debate over differences in creativity assessments between Chinese and American samples. In three studies using three methodologies (qualitative inductive, cultural consensus modeling, and experimental), we used data from 2,140 participants to reveal 26 domain general cues that can indicate whether a product or process is creative. About 95 percent of the Chinese used a broad range of cues, whereas about 75 percent of the Americans used a narrow range of cues. Members of both cultures found cues such as breakthrough, surprise, and potential to indicate creativity. In contrast, cues such as easy to use, feasible, and for a mass market were indicators of creativity for most Chinese and noncreativity for most Americans. Thus, in addition to domain knowledge, knowledge about creativity itself contributes to creativity assessments. Cross-cultural differences in knowledge about creativity can help explain differences in how members of different cultures assess creativity. These findings have implications for the scholarly conceptual definition of creativity and suggest an array of possibilities for research on creativity and innovation.