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  • Yoojoong Kim* and
  • Denis Dumas

Reviewer 1: Anonymous Reviewer 2: Connie Phelps

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Divergent thinking, creativity and possibilities for measuring them are important topics addressed in the submitted paper. 

The theoretical parts of the paper draw on important references. However, from my point of view, the theoretical perspective does not yet sufficiently explain why and how self-rated originality should mediate the relationship between everyday creative activities and AI-rated originality. The statistical correlations found in the study are quite weak and could therefore appear to be coincidental findings.

In my opinion, the second research question is not correctly formulated.

The discussion of the results focuses intensively on creative metacognition and identifies it with self-rated originality. I find this incomprehensible and see it as further indication of the lack of theoretical plausibility or foundation for the statistical findings.

Author Response

Reviewer 1 Comments

  1. Divergent thinking, creativity and possibilities for measuring them are important topics addressed in the submitted paper. 

 

Response: Thanks very much for the thorough reading and review of this manuscript. It is nice to know that, in general, this paper addressed some important topics in the field of creativity research.

 

  1. The theoretical parts of the paper draw on important references. However, from my point of view, the theoretical perspective does not yet sufficiently explain why and how self-rated originality should mediate the relationship between everyday creative activities and AI-rated originality.

 

Response: We agree with you that why and how self-rated originality mediates the relationship between everyday creative activities and AI-rated originality could be elaborated in the paper, as uncovering the mediating role of self-rated originality is of key importance for this study. We believe in establishing the justification for the role of self-rated originality in mediating the impact of engagement in everyday creative activities on original idea generation and therefore revised the “1.3. Alignment between Self- and Others-rated Originality: The Role of Engaging in Everyday Creative Activities” section on pages 7-8. Moreover, in this study, we conceptualized the alignment between self-rated originality and AI-rated originality as a possible indicator of metacognitive evaluation that reflects creators’ calibration between their perceived originality and the more objectively assessed originality of their ideas. Therefore, higher engagement in creative activities facilitates more accurate self-ratings of originality, which in turn predict higher ratings of originality from others or AI. Please see the revised paragraph below.

 

       Engagement in diverse everyday creative activities (e.g., writing a short story, making up a melody), may possibly support the development of creators’ metacognitive evaluation ability, which in turn allows creators to accurately determine at which point their creative products could be acknowledged by peers, experts, or other judges in their domain (Dumas & Kaufman, 2024; Dumas et al., 2025). In this way, engagement with creative activities may allow self-referenced ‘mini-c’ creativity (i.e., ideas that are new and meaningful to oneself but may not be recognized by others) to develop into increasingly impactful forms of creativity within a domain (Kaufman & Beghetto, 2009). Th; Se more frequently and deeply creators engage in everyday creative activities, the more opportunities they have to express their ideas, communicate with others, receive feedback, engage in self-judgments, and reflect on that feedback in their creative process (Glăveanu, 2015), which may strengthen creators’ metacognitive skills (i.e., the cognitive skills of tracking and assessing one’s thinking processes; Nelson & Narrens, 1990, 1994; Schraw & Moshman, 1995).

       With ample practice and engagement in creative activities, creators may be more likely to accurately calibrate their judgments of their own originality. Calibration refers as the degree to which individuals’ self-judgments of their capability or confidence correspond to their actual performance (Alexandar, 2013; Lichtenstein et al., 1982). That is, as they become more calibrated, creators will likely develop a clearer sense of what might be seen as original by others and therefore continue adjusting their ideas to balance their own viewpoints with others’, in order to evoke a sense of surprise in those who judge their work (Ostermaier & Uhl, 2020; Sawyer, 2021; Simonton, 2018). Indeed, as creators build on their expertise and knowledge in the field, they tend to become more capable of aligning their self-ratings with others’ ratings by considering both self-referenced and socially-referenced originality (Urban & Urban, 2021), thereby becoming better at predicting what may be impactful within their field (Lebuda et al., 2025; Mutter & Hübner, 2024).

       In this way, engagement in creative activities may help creators to generally develop not only self-awareness of their creativity but also a goal or intention to be perceived as original by others (Urban & Urban, 2025). So, without the self-judgment or self-evaluation step, the direct link between engaging in everyday creative activities and creative performances as judged by others might be weaker. Of course, creators who are less goal-oriented, less willing to openly communicate with others, have low cognitive flexibility, are resistant to change, and have limited meta-cognitive skills may struggle to develop the ability to align their self-ratings with others’ ratings. These individual differences might lead to variability in the transition from self-referenced to socially-referenced originality.

 

  1. The statistical correlations found in the study are quite weak and could therefore appear to be coincidental findings.

 

Response: We appreciate your concerns about the relatively modest effect sizes. Indeed, the standardized coefficients for the mediation analysis are small, which has been common in psychological research on complex constructs such as creativity. However, even small effect sizes could be theoretically meaningful, particularly when they are supported by the extant literature. In our analysis, both the total effect (β = .151, 95% CI [0.020, 0.275]) and the indirect effect (β = .033, 95% CI [0.006, 0.080]) were statistically significant, implying that these results are not likely due to chance. In addition, these findings indicate the potential mediating role of self-rated originality, conceptualized as a metacognitive evaluation that links everyday creative activities with other-rated or AI-rated originality. We believe that strengthening the theoretical explanations for the mediating role of self-rated originality, as you suggested, provides a clearer rationale for interpreting these relatively weak effect sizes. Also, we’ve already acknowledged the limitation of modest effect sizes and therefore emphasized the need for future replication studies with larger samples and domain-specific contexts within the Discussion section.

 

 

  1. In my opinion, the second research question is not correctly formulated.

 

Response: Thanks so much for pointing this out. In this revision, we’ve corrected the second research question that reads:

 

Research Question 2: Does self-rated originality mediate the relationship between everyday creative activities and AI-rated originality?

 

  1. The discussion of the results focuses intensively on creative metacognition and identifies it with self-rated originality. I find this incomprehensible and see it as further indication of the lack of theoretical plausibility or foundation for the statistical findings.

 

Response: We understand your concerns about our emphasis on creative metacognition in the discussion section. We agree with you that creative metacognition should not be used as a synonym for self-rated originality, as it is a broader concept that involves multiple cognitive processes such as planning, monitoring, and evaluation. Our intention was to use the alignment between self-ratings of originality and actual creative performance as an indicator of these students’ metacognitive evaluations and calibration (see quoted text in your comment #2 above).

 

So, the magnitude of the self-ratings alone does not indicate a metacognitive ability, but its alignment with the AI-ratings does. This alignment is an inherent part of the mediation model we present in this paper, because the covariance that drives the pathway between the self-ratings and the AI-ratings is predicated on those ratings being aligned.

 

To clarify this, we’ve corrected two sentences within the “4.1.2. Self-rated Originality Was a Mediator that Connected Everyday Creative Activities and AI-rated Originality” on pages 16-17. The sentences read:

 

Overall, these empirical findings open the door to a better understanding of how teaching students to accurately evaluate their own ideas, within creative education, might help transform creative activities into domain-specific creative achievements. Therefore, the findings of this paper appear to be in-correspondence with recent arguments underscoring the importance of accurate self-judgment of originality or creativity as a core mechanism in higher actual creative performance (Urban & Urban, 2021) and that this capacity can be further developed through education and practice, including through engagement in creative activities (Beghetto & Kaufman, 2007).

 

In addition, we believe the theoretical parts of this paper, related to the mediating role of self-rated originality have been explained more clearly in the context of metacognitive evaluation in this revision, and we hope that your concern has been addressed.

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors pose provocative questions about the tension between orginality and effectiveness in a study with undergraduate students. The research questions seem forward-thinking by using AI as a "neutral" assessment of everyday creative tasks of the little c type. The authors demonstrate deep thinking by investigating the tension between taking the risk to create originality while considering the perspectives of others in a way that potentially reduces potential orginality. I found myself thinking about the implications of this study with the ultimate goal of domain-specific achievements. Consequently, the practical implications of the study seem viable and valuable. Please minor types and corrections in APA style references. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Reviewer 2 Comments

 

  1. The authors pose provocative questions about the tension between originality and effectiveness in a study with undergraduate students. The research questions seem forward-thinking by using AI as a "neutral" assessment of everyday creative tasks of the little c type. The authors demonstrate deep thinking by investigating the tension between taking the risk to create originality while considering the perspectives of others in a way that potentially reduces potential originality. I found myself thinking about the implications of this study with the ultimate goal of domain-specific achievements. Consequently, the practical implications of the study seem viable and valuable.

 

Response: Thanks very much for the thorough reading and review of this manuscript. It is great to know that this paper shows theoretical and practical implications for the development of domain-specific creativity.  

 

 

  1. Please minor types and corrections in APA style references. 

 

Response: In this revision, we have corrected the minor typos and revised the reference list in APA 7 style (e.g., title case, italics).

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf