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In scientific research on creativity, there has been considerable debate concerning the criteria by which a production can be judged more or less creative, that is, about the definition of "creativity." The most frequent definition -- the "standard" definition -- incorporates the criteria of "novelty" and "value." However, other definitions, based on a single criterion or on more than two criteria, have also been proposed. Much of the discussion of this issue has been based on semantic analysis, a logical analysis of the concepts involved and the usefulness of the various proposed criteria. In this article, question of the necessary and sufficient criteria for defining creativity is approached from an empirical (i.e., psychometric) perspective. The studies that are examined here converge on the idea that the standard definition is not internally consistent, because its two proposed criteria (i.e., novelty and value) are largely independent. Moreover, judgments of the creativity of an object seem to be explained mainly by its novelty, which suggests the possible sufficiency of that criterion. These results are consistent with the intentional novelty definition proposed recently by Robert W. Weisberg.

Many studies mention the social valorization of creative individuals. However, previous works show contrasting results concerning both this valorization and the links between creativity and the two dimensions of social judgment (individuals' warmth and competence). Consequently, we implemented two paradigms classically used when examining the normative features of individuals' traits such as creativity. Study 1 (N = 206), using a self-presentation paradigm, showed that individuals tend to present themselves as creative in order to gain others' approval. Thus, creativity seems to be subject to social valorization. Studies 2 (N = 149) and 3 (N = 457), using social judgment tasks, corroborated these findings, and allowed to gain a finer-grained vision of what dimensions of social value are associated with creativity. These ones showed that highly creative individuals were considered warmer and more competent than weakly creative individuals. Results from Study 3 also suggest that these judgments may be domain-dependent. Implications for research on creativity, as well as on social judgment, are discussed.

The different definitions of creativity that have been proposed by researchers have developed out of what are called explicit theories of creativity, on the basis of logical and semantic arguments, independently of empirical data. The present paper focuses on two such definitions, the standard definition (M.A. Runco & G.J. Jaeger, 2012), which defines a creative product as one that is novel and valuable, and R.W. Weisberg's (2015, 2018) intentional novelty (IN) definition, which defines a creative product as one that is novel and produced intentionally. Those two definitions make different predictions concerning the criteria that lay-people will when making judgments of creativity: both emphasize novelty, but the standard definition also includes value, while the IN definition includes the intention of the individual. Three studies (N = 983) tested those differential predictions using a scenario method. Overall, the results supported the importance of novelty and intentionality in lay-people's judgments of creativity, as well as raising questions about the role of value in such judgments. That pattern of results supported the IN definition. However, the results did not support the specific predictions made on the basis of the IN definition. The theoretical implications are discussed.

One of the challenges in today's society is to satisfy the growing need for creativity and innovation, especially in design contexts, where designers have to come up with products that are both new and adapted to their users. Although designers' professional experience is crucial, we consider that their creative skills can be nurtured in design schools. We therefore explored the effects of two types of design project-oriented methods, which were operationalized as specific courses offered to design students. As our objective was to determine the impact of this training on creativity, we looked at both the students' evocation processes and their creative output. In the "first" of two studies, 32 design students had to perform the same creative design task, but half of them received training based on brainstorming principles and the other half training based on constraint management. Here, we focused our analysis on the students' evocation processes. In the "second" study, we asked 16 teachers specializing in creative activities to assess the students' output according to different criteria. These two studies showed that the two types of training had a differential impact and allowed us to explore relationships between constraints and ideas in creative design.