Is Curiosity Killed by the CAT? A Divergent, Open-Ended, and Generative (DOG) Approach to Creativity Assessment

The consensual assessment technique (CAT) represents one of the most popular evaluation techniques used by researchers to assess creative artifacts. In this paper we discuss how the prototypical use of the CAT, while useful for identifying unambiguous examples of creative artifacts, can inadvertently kill the curiosity of researchers interested in interpreting and understanding more ambiguous, contested, and divergent examples of creative expression. More specifically, we open the article by briefly describing the CAT and how it can simultaneously help and hinder researchers in making judgments about the creativity of artifacts in and across domains. We then introduce a methodological elaboration on the CAT, called the Divergent, Open-Ended, and Generative (DOG) approach to interpreting creative artifacts. Next, we present a secondary analysis of CAT data to illustrate the DOG approach and how it can extend insights about creativity when used in conjunction with the CAT. We close with a discussion of implications for creativity theory and research.