Judgments of Creativity as a Function of Visual Stimulus Variability

Abstract

The production of variability in behavior has been linked to creativity (Campbell, 1960), so it seemed possible that manipulating stimulus variability would influence judgments of creativity. The present set of experiments examined people's judgments of the creativity of colored arrays of circles and squares and whether these judgments are a function of the variability of the arrays. Experiment 1 determined that people's judgment of the variability of 4 × 4 arrays of colored circles was a direct function of a new algorithm for generating array variability, and Experiment 2 revealed a strong relationship between this judged variability and the judged creativity of those same arrays. Experiment 3 extended this finding to a new type of array, and Experiment 4 replicated this finding using the explicit judgment of creativity on a Likert scale rather than the pairwise choice procedure of Experiments 1 through 3. The results are placed within the context of a preferred level of variability, the role of novelty, and the systematic study of the creative product.