Comparison of social judgments of creativity and intelligence

Social judgment of creativity and intelligence was investigated by having subjects give trait ratings for stimulus profiles of actual art students based on abilities information alone, based on personality information alone, based on biographical information alone, and finally, based on the total set of all three types of cue information. Regression equations differed depending upon whether intelligence or creativity judgments were being predicted. For all types of information, there was a significant amount of variation unique to creativity judgments which could not be accounted for by intelligence judgments, and vice versa. However, the proposition of variation unique to each type of trait judgment was smallest when subjects had only abilities information available and was approximately four times larger when judgments were based on the total set of three types of cue information. Implications of this finding for the study of creativity are discussed.