Abstract
The present study investigated 264 primary and secondary school teachers in Hong Kong about their perception of the most creative people in Chinese history and in modern times. The results indicate that Hong Kong school teachers mostly nominated politicians and scientists as being most representative of creativity but rarely nominated literalists, artists, musicians as being so. This finding may be attributed to the effect of “meritorious evaluation bias” in Chinese people’s perception of creativity that is embedded in the Confucian ideals of learning for the sake of serving the society. This has further led to a tradition of “intellectual utilitarianism” in Chinese people’s pursuit of knowledge. As reflected in evaluating creative people in Chinese history, it leads people to judge creative individuals more in terms of their social merits or influence in society than in terms of their innovativeness in thinking.
| Keywords: | most creative people; meritorious evaluation bias; primary and secondary school teachers; utilitarianism |
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