Social Influences on Creativity: Interactive Effects of Reward and Choice.

In a test of intrinsic motivation hypothesis of creativity, 60 undergraduate women did an artistic creativity task with either the expectation of receiving a reward or no expectation of reward. Reward was crossed with choice in task engagement, such that half of the reward Ss contracted to do the task in order to receive reward, and half simply received the reward as a bonus. As expected, reward and choice interacted significantly; the lowest creativity was exhibited by subjects who had contracted with the experimenter to do the task in order to receive the reward. Results suggest that creativity can be undermined by reward that is presented as contingent upon task engagement. (Author/CL)