Social-psychology of creativity

Amabile on Creativity Research

Psychological study of creativity: the focus is on the person and their behavior, not upon what they do or make. It is the study of the creative personality, or the study of a person with a unique pattern of creative traits. (J.P. Guilford, 1950)

It’s current status:
-social psychology is the least developed area in creativity research
-there is correlational evidence that social environments do have an impact on creativity
-no particular social factors have been isolated in carefully controlled settings

Correlational patterns:
-birth order contributes to adult creativity in fairly predictable ways
-exposure to cultural diversity has a reliable positive influence
-educational environments that encourage autonomy and self-directed learning are equally important in adult work environments
**exposure to a creative model in a particular domain can increase the likelihood that a young person will do outstanding creative work in that domain.

Theoretical model (See Amabile, pp 107-127, Model, Revised Model)
-because of the nature of the factors examined, the methods employed, and the data obtained there is no common theoretical framework to motivate inquiries
-the hypothesis most thoroughly tested experimentally is the intrinsic motivation hypothesis of creativity, stating that the intrinsically (self) motivated state will be conducive to creativity, but the extrinsically motivated state (reward) will be detrimental. This hypothesis applies only to heuristic tasks, where the problem does not have a clear and straightforward path to solution. (Wallach & Kogan, 1965)

More about intrinsically motivated creativity:
-people who have worked under the imposition of salient extrinsic constraints generally produce work that is lower in creativity than that produced by people who have worked in the absence of such constraints
-These constraints include external evaluation of work or the expectation of such evaluation, offer of reward contingent upon task performance, surveillance of work, and restricted choice in task engagement
-people placed in conditions designed to enhance intrinsic motivation, such as free choice in aspects of task engagement, generally produce work that is higher in creativity than produced by people not working under such conditions.
-there are significant correlations between subjects’ expressed intrinsic interest in their work and the related creativity of that work
**THEREFORE social factors that enhance an individual’s motivation to engage in an activity for its own sake will also enhance creative performance on the activity; factors that undermine that motivation, or factors that make more salient the motivation to engage in the activity for some external goal, will undermine creativity.

Independent Variables: Cognitive mechanisms, social-environmental factors
Dependent Variables: Creative outcome of the nonlinear task

Future research:
-longer temporal span
-greater control of factors
-more experimental research
-more study of global social environments, such as families, classrooms, workplaces, societies and cultures

LINKS: