Who should evaluate the originality and task-appropriateness of a given idea has been a perennial debate among psychologists of creativity. Here, we argue that the most relevant evaluator of a given idea depends crucially on the level of expertise of the person who generated it. To build this argument, we draw on two complimentary theoretical perspectives. The model of domain learning (MDL) suggests that, for novices in a domain, creativity is by-necessity self-referenced, but as expertise develops, more socially referenced creativity is possible. Relatedly, the four-C model posits four forms of creativity that fall along a continuum of social impact: mini-c, little-c, Pro-c, and Big-C. We show that the MDL implies a learning trajectory that connects the four Cs because, as socially referenced creativity develops, greater societal impact becomes available to a creator. Then, we describe four sources of evaluations that become relevant as an individual learns: judgments from the creators themselves, their local community, consumers of the idea, and finally, critics in the domain. We suggest that creators’ judgments are of essential importance for mini-c, community judgments are paramount for little-c, Pro-c requires either positive evaluations from consumers or critics, and Big-C requires both consumers and critics to evaluate an idea positively for an extended time. We identify key insights and imperatives for the field: aligning our measures (both human and AI scored) with the most relevant evaluations of ideas to support the reliability and validity of our measurements, using evaluations as feedback for learners to support the development of creative metacognition, and the importance of considering domain differences when evaluating ideas.

谁应该评估给定想法的原创性和任务适当性一直是创造力心理学家之间的长期争论。在这里，我们认为，某个想法的最相关评估者在很大程度上取决于产生该想法的人的专业水平。为了建立这个论点，我们利用了两个互补的理论观点。领域学习（MDL）模型表明，对于某个领域的新手来说，创造力必然是自我参考的，但随着专业知识的发展，更多社会参考的创造力是可能的。与此相关的是，4-C 模型假定了四种形式的创造力，它们属于社会影响的连续体：mini-c、little-c、Pro-c 和 Big-C。我们表明，MDL 意味着连接 4 个 C 的学习轨迹，因为随着社会参考创造力的发展，创作者可以获得更大的社会影响。然后，我们描述了随着个人学习而变得相关的四种评估来源：来自创作者本身、当地社区、想法的消费者的判断，最后是该领域的批评者。我们认为创作者的判断对于mini-c至关重要，社区判断对于little-c至关重要，Pro-c需要消费者或评论家的积极评价，Big-C要求消费者和评论家都积极评价一个想法很长一段时间。我们确定了该领域的关键见解和必要条件：将我们的测量（人类和人工智能评分）与最相关的想法评估相结合，以支持我们测量的可靠性和有效性，使用评估作为学习者的反馈来支持创造性元认知的发展，以及在评估想法时考虑领域差异的重要性。