Signaling Creative Genius: How Perceived Social Connectedness Influences Judgments of Creative Potential

In today’s knowledge economy, effectively signaling one’s creative potential can be advantageous. Five experiments demonstrate that cues signaling a person’s separateness from others (as opposed to social connectedness) boost evaluations of their creative potential. “Lone” targets—engaging in activities alone—were judged more likely to generate creative ideas compared with targets engaging in identical activities with others. This effect was explained by perceived social independence and was unique to creativity judgments—our manipulation did not influence perceptions of other positive attributes, including ability to generate practical ideas (Studies 1a and 1b). The effect of social independence on perceived creativity was not reducible to perceived nonnormativity and was attenuated when creativity was construed as requiring convergent thinking rather than divergent thinking (Studies 2–4). Findings advance our understanding of how individuals of varying degrees of social connectedness tend to be viewed by others, providing insight into observers’ lay beliefs about creative potential.