Furious Activity vs. Understanding: How Much Expertise Is Needed to Evaluate Creative Work?

What is the role of expertise in evaluating creative products? Novices and experts do not assess creativity similarly, indicating domain-specific knowledge’s role in judging creativity. We describe two studies that examined how “quasi-experts” (people who have more experience in a domain than novices but also lack recognized standing as experts) compared with novices and experts in rating creative work. In Study 1, we compared different types of quasi-experts with novices and experts in rating short stories. In Study 2, we compared experts, quasi-experts, and novices in evaluating an engineering product (a mousetrap design). Quasi-experts (regardless of type) seemed to be appropriate raters for short stories, yet results were mixed for the engineer quasi-experts. Some domains may require more expertise than others to properly evaluate creative work.