Why do people experience something as creative? We proposea perspective-change based account of creativity evaluation.Drawing upon structure mapping theory (Gentner, 1983), weshow that people evaluate a simile to be creative when theyspontaneously (Study 1) or are induced (Study 2) to experiencea change in perspective. This account further predicts thatpeople are unlikely to find a simile creative if they are unableto form a working perspective, as is in the case of anomalies.In addition, a simile is unlikely to be evaluated as creative whenpeople’s initial perspectives are sufficient to interpret thesimile, as in the case of literal statements. We further show thatrepeated use of the same perspective suppresses the experienceof perspective change and thus reduces creativity perception(Study 3).

One important function of language is to name relations. Preschool children performed a simple mapping task with and without hearing spatial prepositions calling attention to key relations. Children at 44 months were successful only if they were in the language condition. By 49 months, children were competent on the task regardless of condition, although there were still benefits of language. These results suggests that relational language can therefore be an important tool for highlighting relational commonalities children may otherwise fail to use.