Self-Rated Originality as a Mediator That Connects Creative Activities and AI-Rated Originality in Divergent Thinking

Engagement in everyday creative activities is widely considered to be a good way to develop creative thinking ability. Perhaps, by engaging in such activities, creators can learn at which point their work could be acknowledged as novel and useful by peers or experts in the field. However, little is known about the underlying mechanisms of this development process. So, our study aimed to examine the mediating effect of self-rated originality on the relationship between everyday creative activities and AI-rated originality in divergent thinking. In our dataset, the indirect effect of everyday creative activities on AI-rated originality was significant, whereas the direct effect was not significant, indicating full mediation. These results revealed that engaging in everyday creative activities did not directly enhance AI-rated originality but instead indirectly contributed to AI-judged originality through students’ generation of self-perceived original ideas. Our empirical findings will open the door to a better understanding of how incorporating students’ self-evaluations into creative education might facilitate the transition from creative activities to creative thinking, and eventually to domain-specific creative achievements.