While the creativity and innovation literature has focused extensively on the generation and implementation of creative ideas, less is known about the factors that influence how creative potential is recognized in individuals and their work. This study examines how intergroup relations between evaluators and the targets of evaluation (i.e., creators and their ideas) serve as a social cue to influence creativity recognition. Social identity theory suggests that evaluators will perceive ingroup members as more creative than outgroup members. In contrast, construal level theory posits that the psychological distance associated with outgroups will lead evaluators to perceive greater creativity in the work of outgroup members than in that of ingroup members. Four studies provide converging evidence for this paradox. Specifically, Study 1 revealed that evaluators rated ingroup creators as having higher creative potential but judged their ideas as less creative compared to their outgroup counterparts. Study 2 found that this favoritism toward ingroup creators was mediated by intergroup bias. By contrast, Study 3 demonstrated that the preference for outgroup members' ideas was mediated by the higher-level construal adopted when evaluating these psychologically distant targets. Finally, Study 4 tested the full model, confirming that intergroup bias and construal level function as parallel mediators, explaining the contradictory effects of intergroup relations on evaluations of creators and creations, respectively. Overall, our findings suggest that social cues like intergroup relations have complex and paradoxical effects on how creativity is recognized.