Upward income mobility has decreased across all income distributions in many societies around the world. Responding to these developments, scholars have called for investigations into the various mechanisms that explain the ‘class ceiling’ effect. Individuals’ social class can be easily detected, and may color how individuals are evaluated and judged by others at the workplace. By considering the aspect of creativity judgment, this dissertation explores the impact of employee social class from the perspective of evaluators (e.g., supervisor, hiring manager). By integrating the fundamental principles of the Categorization Theory (Rosch, 1978) with Implicit Creativity Theories (ICTs) and Stereotyping, I examine how the social class background of individuals relates to creativity judgments...[ Read more ]

Upward income mobility has decreased across all income distributions in many societies around the world. Responding to these developments, scholars have called for investigations into the various mechanisms that explain the ‘class ceiling’ effect. Individuals’ social class can be easily detected, and may color how individuals are evaluated and judged by others at the workplace. By considering the aspect of creativity judgment, this dissertation explores the impact of employee social class from the perspective of evaluators (e.g., supervisor, hiring manager). By integrating the fundamental principles of the Categorization Theory (Rosch, 1978) with Implicit Creativity Theories (ICTs) and Stereotyping, I examine how the social class background of individuals relates to creativity judgments of these individuals by others at work. I argue that the ICTs – qualities generally ascribed to a creative person, termed as ‘creativity prototypes’ – are stereotypically associated with individuals from an upper social class background, and therefore, individuals from an upper social class background are often perceived to be more creative than individuals from a lower social class background. I hypothesized that creativity prototype recognition mediates the effects of the social class background of an employee, and hence judgment of employee’s creativity at the workplace. To outline this mediation, I examined the perceivers’ belief in entity theory, and belief in just world, and the age of the perceiver as an individual level moderating factors that influence the tendency to rely on stereotypes in judging others, as evident in the mediated relationship between social class and creativity.

I cross-validated and further developed Sternberg’s (1985) scale of ICTs and assessed the generalizability of the ICTs scale. The main theoretical arguments of this thesis were empirically tested in an experimental study and a multi-wave survey study. Results provided support for the view that creativity judgments can be understood in terms of the greater correspondence of creativity prototypes to upper-class than to lower-class stereotypes. Implications for practice as well as future directions for continued research on social class and creativity judgments are discussed.