Creativity and experience of a creative task: Person and ...

ARTICLE IN PRESSJournal of Research in Personality xxx (2007) xxx–xxxwww.elsevier.com/locate/jrpBrief reportCreativity and experience of a creative task:Person and environment effectsLauren King, Suzanne T. Gurland *Department of Psychology, Middlebury College, Bicentennial Way, Middlebury, VT 05753, USAAbstractWe examined the effects of a person factor (general causality orientation) and an environment factor(threat of evaluation) on creativity and personal experience of a creative collage-making task.Ninety college students completed questionnaires and made a collage under conditions of expectedevaluation or no-evaluation. Creativity was a function of participants’ characterizations of themselvesas artistic, and among men, of the interaction between environment and person factors. Taskexperience was affected by environment factors and, marginally, by the interaction of environmentand person factors, with participants feeling less competent at the task under threat of evaluation,and exerting the greatest effort when they were under evaluation threat and were higher on controlorientation. These findings may have implications for future motivation for creative tasks.Ó 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Keywords: Creativity; Causality orientation; Evaluation threat; Motivation1. IntroductionPast work has examined personal and situational antecedents of creativity. For example,creativity has been viewed in some studies as a personal characteristic, with traits suchas long attention span, high energy level, and ability to persist on difficult tasks related tocreativity (Tighe, Picariello, & Amabile, 2003). In other studies, creativity has been viewedas a characteristic of a product (Amabile, 1983), with situational factors such as pressureand threat of evaluation affecting the relative creativity of products created in those situations(Amabile, DeJong, & Lepper, 1976; Amabile, Goldfarb, & Brackfield, 1990).* Corresponding author. Fax +1 802 443 2072.E-mail address: sgurland@middlebury.edu (S.T. Gurland).0092-6566/$ - see front matter Ó 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2007.01.005Please cite this article in press as: King, L., & Gurland, S. T., Creativity and experience of a creativetask: ..., Journal of Research in Personality (2007), doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2007.01.005

ARTICLE IN PRESS2 L. King, S.T. Gurland / Journal of Research in Personality xxx (2007) xxx–xxxThe link between these situational variables and creativity is thought to be mediated bytype of motivation, with intrinsic motivation associated with greater creativity than extrinsicmotivation (Amabile, 1983). In other words, the greatest creativity is found in creativepursuits undertaken for the sake of the activity itself, and not for the sake of some otherend (Amabile et al., 1976, 1990; Amabile & Hennessey, 1992; Conti, Amabile, & Pollack,1995; Csikszentmihalyi, 1996; Koestner, Ryan, Bernieri, & Holt, 1984; Lepper & Greene,1978). Thus, environments that undermine intrinsic motivation by imposing deadlines,surveillance, or the expectation of evaluation, result in less creative products than environmentsthat enhance intrinsic motivation (though, cf., Eisenberger & Cameron, 1996).In practical settings, such as work and school, however, creative tasks are often necessarilyundertaken as extrinsically motivated activities. A writing assignment must be completedby the deadline for the sake of meeting course requirements and will be evaluated bya teacher. Similarly, a creative new advertisement must be developed for the sake of pleasinga client. Under such circumstances, we might wish to know not only about the creativityof the product, but also about the experience of creating the product.Why would quality of experience be important? First, how people feel during a task isindicative of their type of motivation. According to self-determination theory (Deci &Ryan, 1985a), when people feel pressured, when they feel like they have to do something,it is a sign that they are ‘externally’ motivated—that is, that they are engaging in the activityfor the sake of some reward or inducement. When they feel relaxed, on the other hand,this is a sign that their motivation is more ‘identified’—that is, that they are engaging inthe activity for reasons that are consistent with their own goals and values. Thus, examiningpeople’s experience of creative tasks can give us specific information about individualparticipants’ motivation, beyond the motivational consequences that are, on average,found to be associated with particular situational factors. Second, people’s experiencemight affect their future motivation for engaging in similar tasks. Feelings of incompetenceand pressure or anxiety, for example, can undermine one’s intrinsic motivation (Deci &Ryan, 1985a). It is important to know, then, not only individuals’ creativity on a task rightnow, but also how their experience of that task might affect future engagement.The effect of situational circumstances on quality of experience and on creativity mightbe moderated, however, by individual differences. Specifically, as predicted by self-determinationtheory, people’s general causality orientation is associated with the way theyinterpret situational factors (Deci, Koestner, & Ryan, 1999; Deci & Ryan, 1985b). Thosewho are high in autonomous orientation tend to interpret situational events as opportunitiesfor choice, challenge, and personal enjoyment. They then organize their behavioraround these opportunities. By contrast, those high in control orientation tend to orienttoward, and interpret the environment as offering, rules, contingencies and external constraints.They organize their behavior around these external structures. Thus, a situationalfactor such as the presence or absence of evaluation might have different effects on individualswith different causality orientations.In the current study, we extend earlier work by examining quality of experience of acreative task as well as the creativity of the work produced. In addition, while earlier workhas examined person and situation effects on creativity separately, little is know about howthese factors might interact to affect experiences and creativity. We therefore measuredcausality orientation and experimentally manipulated threat of evaluation. We examineboth of these variables and their interaction with respect to two outcomes—experienceof a collage-making task and the creativity of the resulting collages.Please cite this article in press as: King, L., & Gurland, S. T., Creativity and experience of a creativetask: ..., Journal of Research in Personality (2007), doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2007.01.005

ARTICLE IN PRESSL. King, S.T. Gurland / Journal of Research in Personality xxx (2007) xxx–xxx 32. Method2.1. ParticipantsNinety college students (33 male, 57 female) participated, either in partial fulfillment ofcourse requirements, or in exchange for a free cookie at a campus restaurant. Most wereWhite (74.4%), and the remainder were Hispanic (6.7%), Asian (11.1%), or of mixed origin(7.8%).2.2. ProcedureIn individual, 30-min sessions, participants completed a questionnaire measure of causalityorientation, and were randomly assigned to either an evaluation condition, in whichthey were led to believe that a team of judges would later produce a detailed critique oftheir collage, or a no-evaluation condition, in which they were given the cover story thatthe experimenter was only interested in how the collage activity would affect their mood.All participants were provided with a standard set of materials, including scissors, glue,and sheets of construction paper of various sizes and colors, and were told, followingAmabile (1977):Before you are the materials you will use for the collage activity. You will have about15 minutes to work. You will be using the colored pieces of paper to make a collagedesign on the white piece of paper. You can use whatever pieces you would like inwhatever way you would like. There are two things to keep in mind: First, pleasedo not use any materials other than the ones laid out before you. If you have a pencil,pen, or paper in your jacket, book bag, or purse, please do not use them in thisactivity. Second, I would like you to make a collage that expresses a sense of ‘‘joy.’’Try as much as possible to make your collage convey a feeling of joy (p. 78).The theme of ‘‘joy’’ was prescribed to prevent participants from selecting their ownthemes, some of which might have systematically led to greater or lesser creativity. Participantsthen completed additional questionnaires tapping their task experience, and selfratedhow artistic they are.2.3. Measures2.3.1. Causality orientationsThe General Causality Orientations Scale (GCOS; Deci & Ryan, 1985b) measures theextent to which respondents orient toward opportunities for autonomy in the environment(autonomous orientation) versus environmental controls and pressures (control orientation).It also measures the extent to which respondents take a helpless approach, viewingtheir actions as having little effect on outcomes (impersonal orientation). For this study,only the autonomy and control subscales were of interest. Participants indicate on a 7-point scale the likelihood that they would respond to each of twelve vignettes with variousautonomous, control, and impersonal responses. Separate subscale scores for the three orientationsare computed, with higher scores indicating more of that orientation. An earlierstudy (Deci & Ryan, 1985b) reported a reliability of .74 for the autonomy subscale and .69for the control subscale. The respective reliabilities in this sample were .64 and .64.Please cite this article in press as: King, L., & Gurland, S. T., Creativity and experience of a creativetask: ..., Journal of Research in Personality (2007), doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2007.01.005

ARTICLE IN PRESS4 L. King, S.T. Gurland / Journal of Research in Personality xxx (2007) xxx–xxx2.3.2. Manipulation check questionnaireAs a test of whether participants noted the manipulation, they indicated which of ninestatements, relevant to their experimental condition, had appeared in the instructions theywere given at the beginning of the collage activity.2.3.3. Task experience questionnaireParticipants rated twelve items, on a 5-point scale, addressing their levels of interest/enjoyment, effort, feelings of competence, and pressure/tension while completing the collagetask. Subscale scores were calculated as means of the items comprising each subscale.Subscale reliabilities ranged from .68 to .89 in a previous study (Gurland, 2004), and from.64 to .86 in the current study.2.3.4. CreativityCreativity was rated using a ‘‘consensual assessment technique,’’ whereby experts ratecreativity according their own subjective definitions (Amabile, 1983). The collages wereidentified by number and displayed in a room for easy viewing. Three volunteer judges,who were senior studio art majors and were blind to experimental conditions and hypotheses,independently rated the collages in a different random order. Judges used a 5-pointscale (1 = low, 5 = high) to rate the collages on five creative dimensions: (1) novelty ofthe idea, (2) novelty in use of materials, (3) degree of asymmetry of the design, (4) amountof detail/complexity, and (5) overall creativity. One judge’s ratings were not reliable withthe others’, and were therefore discarded. Inter-rater reliabilities of the remaining judges,as measured by intra-class correlation, ranged from .67 to .84.3. Results3.1. Preliminary analysesThe experimental groups did not differ on self-ratings of artistic-ness, t = 0.67, ns, butwe nonetheless controlled for it in all subsequent analyses because of its clear relevance toour outcomes. Inspection of correlations (Table 1), for example, indicates that artistic-nesswas positively associated with interest/enjoyment, competence, creativity, use of materials,and detail/complexity. Notably, autonomy orientation was associated with detail/complexity,regardless of whether artistic self-rating was controlled. Men’s collages were morecreative than women’s, specifically on overall creativity, F (1,87) = 7.30, p < .01, and noveltyof idea, F (1,87) = 5.76, p < .05. We therefore analyzed these dimensions separately by gender.On the manipulation check, all participants in the no-evaluation condition and 98%percent of those in the evaluation condition correctly indicated whether their collageswould be evaluated by experts.3.2. Effects on experienceEach of the experience outcomes was regressed onto experimental condition, each causalityorientation, their interaction, and the covariate. Across both causality orientations,there was a main effect of condition on competence, bs = .30 and .29, p < .01, such thatparticipants subject to threat of evaluation felt less competent at the task, M = 3.16, thanthose in the no-evaluation condition, M = 3.62. Although it was not statistically signifi-Please cite this article in press as: King, L., & Gurland, S. T., Creativity and experience of a creativetask: ..., Journal of Research in Personality (2007), doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2007.01.005

Table 1Intercorrelations (below diagonal), and partial correlations controlling for self-characterization as artistic (above diagonal)1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 121. Artistic-ness2. Autonomy 0.05 0.04 0.03 0.13 0.02

ARTICLE IN PRESS6 L. King, S.T. Gurland / Journal of Research in Personality xxx (2007) xxx–xxxcant, condition marginally interacted with control orientation to affect effort, b = .25,p < .10, such that higher control orientation was associated with greater effort in the evaluationcondition. No main effects or interactions were significant for pressure/tension orfor interest/enjoyment.3.3. Effects on creativityEach of the creativity outcomes was regressed onto experimental condition, each causalityorientation, their interaction, and the covariate, with two outcomes—creativity andnovelty of idea—analyzed separately by gender. Across conditions, artistic-ness self-ratingshad a significant effect on multiple dimensions of creativity, including general creativity,b = .23, p < .05, novelty in use of materials, b = .29, p < .01, and detail/complexity,b = .28, p < .01, in the direction of greater self-characterization as artistic predictinggreater creativity. Above and beyond these effects, among men only, condition interactedwith autonomy orientation to affect both creativity, b = .48, p < .05, and novelty of idea,b = .61, p < .05, such that lesser autonomy orientation had no effect in the no-evaluationcondition, but was associated with lesser creativity and novelty of idea in the evaluationcondition.4. DiscussionIn this study, we examined the effects of a person factor (general causality orientation)and an environment factor (threat of evaluation) on creativity and personal experience ofa creative task. Across conditions, autonomous orientation was related to detail/complexity,one aspect of creativity. Regarding task experience, participants felt less competent atthe task under threat of evaluation, and exerted the greatest effort if they were both threatenedwith evaluation and were high on control orientation. Creativity was largely a functionof self-characterization as artistic, and among men, of the interaction betweenevaluation threat and autonomy orientation.Autonomy orientation was associated with the detail/complexity dimension of creativity,perhaps consistent with Sheldon’s (1995) analysis of autonomy as integrally related totrait creativity. Curiously, however, autonomy orientation was not associated with characterizationof oneself as artistic, and maintained its association with detail/complexitywhen this self-characterization was statistically controlled. Artistic-ness may simply beconceptually distinct from trait creativity, in the sense that art is only one domain in whichcreativity can be expressed. Alternatively, autonomously oriented individuals might experiencetheir relative ‘‘inoculation’’ (Sheldon, 1995, p. 32) against social controls as such anintegral part of the self that they are not inclined to identify it as artistic-ness, despite itsapparent association with the creativity of their artistic products. Finally, it might be thecase that autonomy independently affects aspects of creative output through some othermediating variable not measured in this study.The competency finding was consistent with our initial hypotheses, suggesting that people’sfeelings of competency at a creative task are thwarted by the presence of evaluation.Interesting, however, was that no main effect of condition emerged for the creativity of collages.Rather, the difference between groups was in their reported experience of the collagetask. Because feelings of incompetence undermine intrinsic interest (for a review, see Deci,2005), this finding has important implications for future motivation on creative tasks. ItPlease cite this article in press as: King, L., & Gurland, S. T., Creativity and experience of a creativetask: ..., Journal of Research in Personality (2007), doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2007.01.005

ARTICLE IN PRESSmay suggest that one cost of evaluation pressure is individuals’ future interest in engagingin similar tasks. As intrinsic interest decreases, so might creativity, given that less intrinsicforms of motivation have been associated with lesser creativity (e.g., Conti et al., 1995).Thus, evaluation pressure may set in motion a cycle of decreasing interest and decreasingcreativity.Under threat of evaluation, higher control orientation was marginally associated withgreater effort exerted on the task. Although this non-significant finding must be interpretedcautiously and should be replicated before any firm conclusions are drawn, it is consistentwith the notion that control-oriented individuals are more susceptible to environmentalcontrols (Bober & Grolnick, 1995; Koestner, Bernieri, & Zuckerman, 1992). Control orientationwas unrelated, however, to any of the creativity outcomes. Thus, the extra effortput forth by evaluation-threatened, relatively control-oriented individuals does not appearto benefit them with respect to the quality of their creative products. Indeed, effort waspositively associated with pressure/tension, suggesting that relatively control-oriented participantsexperience a kind of ‘‘forced effort,’’ as opposed to the enjoyable effort associatedwith engaging in interesting, but challenging tasks.Among men, being less autonomy-oriented predicted lesser creativity, but only in theevaluation condition. This might be understood as autonomy buffering male participantsagainst the negative effects of evaluative threat. In future work, it would be worthwhile toexamine whether autonomous individuals might ‘‘react against’’ environmental controlsby asserting their autonomy. While not directly parallel, one finding that might supportthis idea is that parents who were characteristically supportive of their children’s autonomybecame even more so when placed in a controlling condition (Grolnick, Gurland,DeCourcey, & Jacob, 2002).Despite the limitation that this study included only college students, the present studyextends previous work by demonstrating the value in examining both the creativity of finishedproducts as well as the experience of the individuals who create them, and the importanceof considering both person (causality orientation) and environment (evaluationthreat) influences on both of these outcomes.ReferencesL. King, S.T. Gurland / Journal of Research in Personality xxx (2007) xxx–xxx 7Amabile, T. M. (1977). Effects of extrinsic constraint on creativity. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, StanfordUniversity.Amabile, T. M. (1983). The social psychology of creativity: A componential conceptualization. Journal ofPersonality and Social Psychology, 45, 357–376.Amabile, T. M., DeJong, W., & Lepper, M. R. (1976). Effects of externally imposed deadlines on subsequentintrinsic motivation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 34, 92–98.Amabile, T. M., Goldfarb, P., & Brackfield, S. C. (1990). Social influences on creativity: Evaluation, coaction,and surveillance. Creativity Research Journal, 3, 6–21.Amabile, T. M., & Hennessey, B. A. (1992). The motivation for creativity in children. In Achievement andmotivation: A social-developmental perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press.Bober, S., & Grolnick, W. S. (1995). Motivational factors related to differences in self-esteem. Motivation andEmotion, 19, 307–327.Conti, R., Amabile, T. A., & Pollack, S. (1995). The positive impact of creative activity: Effects of creative taskengagement and motivational focus on college students’ learning. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,21, 1107–1116.Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996). Creativity: Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention. New York:HarperCollins.Please cite this article in press as: King, L., & Gurland, S. T., Creativity and experience of a creativetask: ..., Journal of Research in Personality (2007), doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2007.01.005

ARTICLE IN PRESS8 L. King, S.T. Gurland / Journal of Research in Personality xxx (2007) xxx–xxxDeci, E. L. (2005). The concept of competence: A starting place for understanding intrinsic motivation and selfdeterminedextrinsic motivation. In A. J. Elliot & C. S. Dweck (Eds.), The handbook of competence andmotivation (pp. 579–597). New York: Guilford.Deci, E. L., Koestner, R., & Ryan, R. M. (1999). The undermining effect is a reality after all—extrinsic rewards,task interest, and self-determination: Reply to Eisenberger, Pierce, and Cameron (1999) and Lepper,Henderlong, and Gingras (1999). Psychological Bulletin, 125, 692–700.Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985a). Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behavior. New York:Plenum.Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985b). The general causality orientations scale: Self-determination in personality.Journal of Research in Personality, 19, 109–134.Eisenberger, R., & Cameron, J. (1996). Detrimental effects of reward: Reality or myth? American Psychologist, 51,1153–1166.Grolnick, W. S., Gurland, S. G., DeCourcey, W., & Jacob, K. (2002). Antecedents and consequences of mothers’autonomy support: An experimental investigation. Developmental Psychology, 38, 143–155.Gurland, S. T. (2004). Adult styles of interaction and children’s expectancies: Implications for clinical rapport.Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Clark University.Koestner, R., Bernieri, F., & Zuckerman, M. (1992). Self-regulation and consistency between attitudes, traits, andbehaviors. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 18, 52–59.Koestner, R., Ryan, R. M., Bernieri, F., & Holt, K. (1984). Setting limits on children’s behavior: The differentialeffects of controlling vs informational styles on intrinsic motivation and creativity. Journal of Personality, 52,233–248.Lepper, M. R., & Greene, D. (1978). The hidden costs of reward. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Sheldon, K. M. (1995). Creativity and self-determination in personality. Creativity Research Journal, 8, 61–72.Tighe, E., Picariello, M. L., & Amabile, T. M. (2003). Environmental influences on motivation and creativity inthe classroom. In J. Houtz (Ed.), The educational psychology of creativity (pp. 199–222). Cresskill, NJ:Hampton Press.Please cite this article in press as: King, L., & Gurland, S. T., Creativity and experience of a creativetask: ..., Journal of Research in Personality (2007), doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2007.01.005