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Research
Research Summary
The Social Psychology of Creativity
The empirical study of creativity has a long and distinguished history. As early as 1870, Galton published an investigation of the biographies and autobiographies of well-known creative figures and set out to identify the unique qualities of intellect and personality that differentiated this group from their less creative peers This emphasis on the individual difference variables that contribute to high levels of creativity was later fueled by J.P. Guilford who, in 1950, in his presidential address to the American Psychological Association, argued that 'the psychologist's problem is that of creative personality.' This proclamation prompted many investigators to carry out intensive laboratory studies of creative persons (see, for example, the IPAR studies conducted by MacKinnon and colleagues beginning in the 1960's), while a second group of researchers and theorists had begun to focus their attention on the creative process, attempting among other things to specify a universal sequence of steps involved in creative production or the cognitive skills necessary for creative performance (Newell et al., 1962). Implicit in much of this work has been a focus on the internal determinants of creativity, to the exclusion of external factors such as the environmental circumstances conducive to creativity. Creativity does not come about in a vacuum, yet curiously, researchers interested in the psychology of creativity have typically chosen to decontextualize the creative process. The empirical study of this phenomenon has generally failed to include a consideration of anyone or anything beyond the individual doing the creating.
In the mid 1970s, this gap in the creativity literature began to be recognized by a small group of social psychologists who came to focus their attention on the impact of situational factors on creative performance. Based on a number of investigations carried out over the past two and a half decades, we now understand that there is a direct link between the motivational orientation brought by an individual to a task and their likelihood of creativity of performance on that task, and it is the environment, or at least certain aspects of the environment, that in large part determine that motivational orientation.
Pioneers in this research effort were Lepper, Greene and Nisbett who, in 1973, investigated the effect of expected reward on young children's motivation and artistic performance. These researchers found that, for preschoolers who initially displayed a high level of intrinsic interest in drawing with magic markers, working for an expected 'Good Player Award' significantly decreased their interest in and enjoyment of the task. When compared with an unexpected reward group and a control (no reward) group, the children who had made drawings for the experimenters in order to receive a Good Player Award spent significantly less time using the markers during subsequent free play periods than did their non-rewarded peers. Moreover, this undermining of interest persisted for at least a week beyond the initial experimental session, and the globally assessed 'quality' of the drawings produced under expected reward conditions was found to be significantly lower than that of the unexpected reward or control groups. How was it that this simple, one-time offer of a Good Player certificate could serve to undermine the motivation and performance of preschoolers who were passionate about using magic markers?
It is precisely this research question that has captured the attention of my colleagues and myself. In our work, we distinguish between two types of motivation. Intrinsic motivation is defined as the motivation to do something for its own sake, for the sheer pleasure and enjoyment of the task itself. Extrinsic motivation, on the other hand, is the motivation to do something for some external goal. Over 25 years of research now tell us that a large number of features of task engagement contribute to an intrinsically motivated orientation. The individual may be curious about or in some other way stimulated by the presentation of the activity. With task participation come feelings of competence, mastery or self-efficacy. And, perhaps most significantly, while engaging in a task that they find intrinsically interesting, individuals feel that their involvement is free of strong external control: they get the sense that they are playing rather than working. Importantly, each of these hallmarks of intrinsic motivation focuses on the individual's inner phenomenological state. Whether prompted by just the right amount of novelty, feelings of competence or a sense of control, the intrinsically motivated state comes about as the result of an internal, very individualized process, the complexities of which we are only beginning to appreciate.
The Intrinsic Motivation Principle of Creativity
Intrinsic motivation is conducive to creativity and extrinsic motivation is almost always detrimental (Amabile, 1983, 1996). In its earlier incarnations, this proposed relation between motivational orientation and creativity of performance was advanced as a tentative research hypothesis. However, social psychologists seeking to better understand the psychosocial factors that promote creativity have now gathered so much unequivocal research evidence that this proposition has been elevated to the status of an undisputed principle.In the early years of my own research career, many of the investigations with which I was involved were specifically designed to explore the impact of extrinsic constraints on motivation and creativity of performance. In my collaboration with my graduate school mentor Dr. Teresa Amabile, I helped to identify a number of "killers of intrinsic motivation" and also worked to explore the mechanisms behind their dangerous effects. While we used to believe that the undermining of intrinsic motivation was pretty much the same for everyone (as extrinsic motivation increases, intrinsic motivation must decrease), we now realize that individual difference variables have a lot to do with how we interpret the promise of a reward or the expectation of an evaluation. For example, when rewards or evaluation are perceived as informational rather than controlling, they need not always undermine intrinsic interest or creativity of performance.
The Consensual Assessment Technique
The Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT), developed by Teresa Amabile and colleagues, allows for the assessment of the creativity of products. Judges who are deemed to be "experts" in the domain under study are instructed to use their own, subjective definition of creativity as they rate stories, collages, poems etc. relative to one another rather than against some ultimate norm. In my own work, I have asked preschool and elementary school teachers to assess the creativity of children's stories and collages; while professional artists and published poets have been recruited to assess the creativity of college students. These raters are not trained in any way and are not given the opportunity to confer with one another. Despite this fact, levels of inter-rater reliability (agreement) consistently emerge as quite high. It would seem that while creativity is especially difficult to define, it is something that we can recognize when we see it.But what is it exactly that judges are doing when they make these product ratings? In an effort to answer this question, I have conducted research comparing the assessments made by adult and child judges. In addition, I have explored the relation between ratings of finished products and the process that went into producing those products and I have compared the ratings made by Western and non-Western (e.g., Saudi) raters.
Intrinsic Motivation Training: The Immunization Procedure
As explained elsewhere on this site, the entire reason I left elementary school teaching was to pursue graduate study in psychology. My goal was to determine how teachers could set up their classroom routines so as to be more conducive to student motivation and creativity. Yet as a researcher, I found it much easier to demonstrate how to "kill" motivation and creativity. As the years progressed, my message to educators had evolved into a laundry list of what they should not do. Then one day, I decided that I simply had to turn this situation around. I asked myself, "If we can't persuade school systems to remove the creativity killers, might we instead inoculate children against their negative effects?" And the Immunization Studies were born!All told, with the help of a few Wellesley College students, I have conducted three separate studies, each demonstrating that elementary-age children can be taught to put rewards, evaluations and competition into perspective. They can be helped to avoid the usually deleterious effects of classroom extrinsic constraints; and in some instances in fact, the expectation of a reward can come to serve as an augmentation of intrinsic motivation rather than a "killer." If even these short, simple training sessions conducted by an experimenter, a virtual stranger, can have these powerful effects, it is exciting to think about how much more successful frequent, naturalistic conversations between students and their teachers might be.
Cross-Cultural Considerations
My training as a social psychologist has, over the years, caused me to frequently questions whether any individual human being can really be considered isolated or "alone." If the answer is "no," then we have to consider whether any creative process can occur without any form of interaction or social influence. Can there really be such a thing as the iconic "lone" genius? Even if someone works in physical isolation, isn't she still a social creature working within a particular social, historical and cultural context? A review of the research literature reveals that it is quite easy for most of us to recognize and praise high levels of cooperative behavior among the members of an industrial R&D team. But are we really ready to view creativity as the result of the social processes within that team rather than the product of specific persons?Western theorists and researchers argue that ultimately it is the individuals who are creative. And they go on to offer data showing that membership in a group is, more often than not, a hindrance to creativity. Some research even shows that groups engaged in brainstorming are less creative than nominal brainstorming groups. Dean Keith Simonton's examinations of historical factors and geographical/regional conditions, investigations of the role played by family background and studies of the influence of classroom or corporate climate on the development of creativity shift our focus beyond the individual to some extent. But as I've thought more and more about how to put the "social" back into the social psychology of creativity, I've become convinced that if we are to make any real progress, we must start at the most basic level of all and ask ourselves how the culture into which we are born impacts our creative development...and perhaps even more importantly, we must set out to examine how our cultural background serves to frame the very way we view creativity, ask our investigative questions and construct and conduct our experiments. Easier said than done!
How are we to define culture, much less quantify its effects? But if we can seek to study and understand something as nebulous as creativity, we can certainly do the same for culture. Slowly but surely, I am attempting to do just that. A preliminary investigation of children's creativity in Saudi Arabia coupled with a recent trip to China has fueled my excitement about this issue. Stay tuned!
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