Implicit impressions of creative people: Creativity evaluation in a stigmatized domain

Abstract

Research on impressions of creative people has focused on explicit assessments of others with little emphasis on implicit person perception. We integrate growing research on creativity evaluation with the literature on implicit cognition to show, across four studies, that a short narrative about the creativity of a person can produce implicit impressions of that person as creative (Study 1). We demonstrate that such impressions of creative people are distinct from implicit positivity (Study 2). We then show that implicit impressions of creative people can uniquely predict behavioral intentions toward the person described, beyond the effects of explicit judgments (Study 3), and can provide a unique impression of a creative person in embarrassing or stigmatized domains, such as the evaluation of an inventor who created a new sex toy (Study 4). We discuss the implications of our results for research on judgments of creative people, especially those that might occur in embarrassing, stigmatized, or controversial domains.