Journal of Creative Behavior 197 ABSTRACT INTRODUCTION CASSIE S. BLAIR MICHAEL D. MUMFORD Errors in Idea Evaluation: Preference for the Unoriginal? Idea evaluation has, in recent years, received more attention as a critical component of creative thought. One key influence on how people evaluate new ideas may be found in the stan- dards, or attributes, people look for in appraising ideas. The intent of the present study was to examine the influence of different attributes on people’s willingness to support new ideas. Initially undergraduates were asked to generate ideas that might be funded by a foundation. Based on this material, ideas dis- playing different attributes were identified. Another smaller sample of undergraduates were asked to evaluate ideas for funding by the foundation. It was found that people preferred ideas that were easy to understand, provided short-term ben- efits to many, and were consistent with prevailing social norms, while disregarding risky, time consuming, and original ideas. Original and risky ideas, however, were more likely to be pre- ferred when evaluation criteria were not especially stringent and time pressure was high. The implications of these find- ings for understanding how people go about evaluating new ideas are discussed. What exactly is creativity? Many researchers have tried to ex- plain this phenomenon, and still there is a lack of consensus as to a perfect definition. Nicholls (1972) has suggested that the discrepancy may be due to researchers focusing on differ- ent aspects of the creative process rather than on creativity itself. Creativity has been looked at as an aspect of intelligence, as an unconscious process, as an aspect of problem solving, and as an associative process (Glover, Ronning, & Reynolds, 1989). The most common definition of creativity, however, Volume 41 Number 3 Third Quarter 2007