Understanding Creativity Judgments of Invented Alien Creatures: The Roles of Invariants and Other Predictors*

Abstract

Participants imagined, drew, and wrote about novel alien creatures (cf. Ward, 1994). Judges rated the creativity of the drawings alone, paragraphs alone, or drawings and paragraphs together. Much prior research has examined how participants rely on available exemplars and categorical knowledge in this task; here we focus on understanding why some creatures are judged as more creative than others. We hypothesized that judges would assess creativity reliably, that instructions to avoid common invariants (two eyes, four limbs, and bilateral symmetry) would increase creativity, and that some common attributes coded from the drawings and paragraphs would emerge as reliable predictors of creativity. Hypotheses were largely supported, though the effect of instructions was rather mild. Numerous drawing and paragraph attributes were significantly correlated with creativity; these varied depending on the dependent measure of creativity. Finally, participants' own evaluations of their creatures were reliably correlated with other raters' judgments.