Creativity Ratings of Fashion Outfits Presented on Instagram: Does Gender Matter?

Abstract

Abstract Rationale: Creativity assessment can be influenced by rater characteristics, including social group membership, such as gender. As raters are often male, the gender composition of rater panels in the Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT) could introduce unintended implicit biases into this measurement methodology. The present study analyzed such biases by examining gender differences in creativity assessment. Method: We applied the CAT and asked male (n = 26) and female (n = 39) judges to rate the creativity of fashion outfits presented on Instagram. We then examined gender differences in mean creativity ratings and rater consistency (inter-rater reliability). In an additional qualitative analysis, we analyzed implicit theories of creativity of female and male raters by comparing the criteria that these raters applied when assessing creativity. Results: We found no systematic support for gender differences in the level of creativity ratings, but observed that rating consistency was significantly higher for female than for male judges. Additional content analysis suggested that female and male raters attached different relative importance to various assessment criteria, indicating gender differences in rating criteria. Discussion: Our study suggests that rater panel composition can indeed affect aspects of creativity assessment, although we do not obtain strong support for a gender-related bias in the CAT methodology.