Idea evaluation has, in recent years, received more attention as a critical component of creative thought. One key influence on how people evaluate new ideas may be found in the standards, or attributes, people look for in appraising ideas. The intent of the present study was to examine the influence of different attributes on people's willingness to support new ideas. Initially undergraduates were asked to generate ideas that might be funded by a foundation. Based on this material, ideas displaying different attributes were identified. Another smaller sample of undergraduates were asked to evaluate ideas for funding by the foundation. It was found that people preferred ideas that were easy to understand, provided short‐term benefits to many, and were consistent with prevailing social norms, while disregarding risky, time consuming, and original ideas. Original and risky ideas, however, were more likely to be preferred when evaluation criteria were not especially stringent and time pressure was high. The implications of these findings for understanding how people go about evaluating new ideas are discussed.

The generation of new ideas is a complex demanding activity involving multiple processing operations. As is the case in other forms of complex cognition, biases in process execution can induce errors that limit peoples' ability to generate viable new ideas. In the present effort, the nature of these biases, and their impact on creative thought, are examined. It is noted that these biases arise from multiple sources including knowledge, limitations in processing capacity, patterns of information use, and the strategies applied in process execution. The implications of these observations for enhancing creative performance are discussed along with potential strategies for error remediation.

No abstract

No abstract