Creative Rejection Negatively Biases Subsequent Evaluations of Others' Creative Ideas

ABSTRACT Peer evaluations of creativity are common practice in numerous contexts. Within such contexts, creators often receive and deliver assessments of creative ideas. One challenge of such arrangements is that people's experiences on the receiving end of creativity assessments may influence their future judgments of others' works. In particular, those who have recently faced creative idea rejection may be prone to negativity biases when evaluating the creativity of others' ideas. To understand whether and why receiving harsh critiques may lead one to propagate criticism, I present three possible explanations for such effects and test them experimentally in a sample of 205 university students. Specifically, I argue that creative idea rejection can fuel negativity biases in subsequent interpersonal creativity evaluations through (a) negative and positive affective reactions, (b) attempts to re‐establish justice, and (c) attempts to restore self‐competence. Results suggest that recent experiences with idea rejection can negatively bias one's assessment of peers' idea usefulness (but not novelty) indirectly through reductions in positive emotion (rather than increases in negative emotion); and further, those who perceived injustice (but not lowered self‐competence) rated others' ideas lower on both novelty and usefulness. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.