The effect of rewards on creativity: When and how do rewards increase
creativity?
Maria Rumyantseva
Master thesis, M.Sc. Human Resource Management University of Groningen, Faculty of Economics and Business
June 14, 2016 Studentnumber: 2645416 Celebesstraat 49a 9715 JC Groningen tel.: +31 (0)6-22284673 email: m.rumyantseva@student.rug.nl Supervisor: Prof. Dr. B.A. B. Nijstad
Abstract
Previous research found that rewards under certain circumstances stimulate creativity. This study investigates the mechanism how rewards lead to creativity and when this is more likely to happen. In a brainstorming experiment with students, we tested the effect of rewards on creative outcomes. Participants generated ideas on a broad vs. narrow topic and to one part of the group a bonus for creative performance was promised. Dual Pathway to Creativity Model (DPCM, Dreu, Baas, & Nijstad, 2008) argues that creative outcomes can be achieved through two possible cognitive processes – cognitive flexibility (divergent thinking in many categories) and cognitive persistence (focused exploration of few categories). Based on DPCM, we assumed that rewards increase persistence because rewards provide a compensation to stay engaged and put effort on the task. Furthermore, we predicted that an enhanced persistence will have a positive influence on creativity in a narrow topic because participants who are restricted to generate ideas in few categories will benefit from enhanced persistence, whereas we expected that persistence will not be beneficial in a broad topic condition which requires flexible processing. Results partly confirm our predictions – in a narrow topic, rewards increase persistence and in turn, persistence leads to more creative ideas. In a broad topic, rewards have an even stronger effect on creativity. However, this effect is not mediated by cognitive persistence or by cognitive flexibility. Consequences for creativity research are discussed.
Keywords: Rewards; Creativity; Cognitive flexibility; Cognitive persistence; Task
When and how do rewards increase creativity?
„There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the same patterns”
(de Bono, 1992, p. 196).
Creativity is a fundamental topic in businesses and an important source of economic success. Without creativity, defined as the production of ideas, solutions, or products that are novel and appropriate (Amabile, 1983), there is no innovation, which is essential for the survival of a company. Therefore, it is important to explore when people are creative and what can be done to enhance creativity.
important and thus, the individual sets his focus on creativity. Therefore, creative performance with a reward for creativity is higher (Eisenberger & Selbst, 1994).
Prior research mainly focused on the question whether rewards stimulate creativity but little research concentrated on the processes how and when rewards affect creativity. Understanding the processes behind creative performance and finding more about the conditions that increase creativity can help companies to use rewards more effectively and accurately. Therefore, the objective of this study is to investigate which cognitive processes are triggered by rewards and under which circumstances these cognitive processes are leading to a higher creativity. Based on the hypotheses of the Dual Pathway to Creativity Model (hereafter DPCM, De Dreu, Baas, & Nijstad, 2008), two cognitive pathways lead to creative outcomes - cognitive flexibility (divergent exploration in many categories) and cognitive persistence (focused and structured exploration of few categories). The model assumes that external factors (i.e. time pressure, activating moods) can influence both cognitive processes. However, the effect of reward as external factor on cognitive processes was not tested yet. The DPCM predicts that rewards increase persistence because rewards give an incentive to put effort into the task and narrow the focus of attention (Nijstad et al., 2010).
phase, the individual has to put more cognitive effort to remain a sustained focus to generate more ideas within this category (Ward, 1993). By going further and after the most obvious ideas have been generated, creative and more original ideas are developed (Nijstad et al., 2010). When a topic is very broadly defined, the individual has many different categories, and in all categories he will first generate the most available ideas. In a broadly defined topic, rewards will not be beneficial. They will not profit from the potential of flexible processing because rewards narrow the focus and therefore increase persistence but not flexible processing (De Dreu, Nijstad, & Baas, 2011).
The present research has the aim to make contributions to the Dual Pathway to Creativity Model. So far, DPCM found empirical support to explain the mechanism through which cognitive processes creative outcomes are developed and how personality traits and moods are linked to creativity, but the effect of rewards on cognitive processes was not tested yet. In a brainstorming experiment with students, we will test DPCMs’ predictions that rewards trigger persistence, which in turn, is leading to more creativity in a narrowly defined topic.
Literature Review & Hypotheses
decreases (Amabile, 1983). Intrinsic motivation plays a central role in performance and therefore a lower intrinsic motivation will lower performance, especially creative performance because it needs more cognitive effort and therefore, more intrinsic motivation than routine performance (Byron and Khazachini, 2012). To test this assumption, Amabile conducted an experiment in which subjects had to make paper collages under different conditions. The experimental-group subjects were told that their collages would be evaluated. Furthermore, the subjects were given instruction to concentrate either on the creativity or the technical qualities of their collages, or they were given no instructions. Control groups were told nothing about evaluation, but the other instructions were the same. The results showed that no matter what focus they were given, the experimental group that had evaluation as extrinsic motivator, had a significantly lower creativity than the control group (Amabile, 1979).
Later research found that rewards can actually have a positive influence on creativity (Eisenberg & Cameron, 1996; Eisenberg & Roades, 2001). Eisenberger and Roades (2001) conducted multiple experiments with preadolescent students who were rewarded for giving creative responses. The experimental group and the control group had to generate titles for presented short stories. The experimental group was promised a reward for creativity and after every exercise they were rewarded with 5 cent. The test group received no reward for creative performance. The result of this experiment was that giving rewards for creativity in one task increased creative performance in the subsequent task. Furthermore, promised reward for creativity increased the overall creative performance by increasing the extrinsic motivation to be creative (Eisenberg & Roades, 2001).
increase creativity, and performance-contingent rewards, where individuals get rewarded for completing a task, tend to have a negative effect on creativity (Byron & Khazachini, 2012). One explanation for this result is the informational function of rewards. A reward for the most creative idea provides the information that creativity is important and therefore the individual sets his focus on creativity (Byron & Khazachini, 2012).
In this situation, behavioral activation was impeding creative performance. The explanation for this negative effect was that behavioral activation could not enhance persistence, which was required in a narrow topic (De Dreu et al., 2011).
Futhermore, De Dreu and colleagues (2008) found in an earlier study that specific mood states are activating individuals to be creative and consider multiple alternatives. They discovered that activating moods like happiness or elatedness increase creativity by fostering working memory capacity, which is required for cognitive processing. Working memory capacity is a cognitive process, which is responsible for abstract thinking, strategic and planning (Baddeley, 2000; Damasio, 2001). Working memory capacity is beneficial for cognitive flexibility as well as for cognitive persistence (Nijstad et al., 2008). Because of activated working memory, participants generate ideas either through focused and structured exploration of few categories (persistence), or through divergent thinking within broad categories (flexibility), (De Dreu et al., 2011). In their experiment, Nijstad and colleagues (2008) found that activating moods with positive tone lead to higher level of originality through flexible processing, and negative tone activating moods had effects on creativity through a greater cognitive persistence. When the tone is positive, individual perceive the situation as safe and therefore, they feel unrestricted and are more willing to take risks and be more exploratory and therefore, more flexible in their thinking (Fiedler, 2000; George & Zhou, 2007). In contrast, a negative tone signals that there is a problem or a threat in the current situation and that an action must follow to solve the problem. In this way, negative tone enhances cognitive persistence by activating constrained, systematic and detail-oriented processing (Nijstad et al., 2008).
and engaged to achieve a high creative performance. According to Ward (1993), most people follow the “path of least resistance” – it means that when people try to be creative, they generate first the most obvious ideas, which are not very original. Rewards function as a compensation for effort to stay engaged in the persistent processing and therefore the individual is motivated to put more effort on the task (Baas et al., 2011). Through rewards, individuals get an incentive to continue to generate ideas and not to stop after the most available ideas were generated, which is leading to a more original result. Consequentially, rewards stimulate persistence. This result is leading to the first hypothesis:
H1: Rewards stimulate cognitive persistence (and not cognitive flexibility).
Rewards are not the only external factor that influences cognitive processes. Other external factors like topic characteristics can promote or sustain flexible or persistent thinking and therefore, will have an effect on creativity. It is important to test which conditions profit from cognitive persistence in order to find out when creativity increases. In this research, the focus will be on topic characteristics. A topic can be narrowly or broadly defined. A broadly defined topic contains many categories and a narrowly defined topic limits the focus on few categories. In a narrowly defined topic, the individual has to generate more ideas within few categories, which requires a high task focus and a high persistence. After generating the most obvious ideas, the individual has to stay concentrated and create more ideas within these few categories. In this condition, a promised reward is beneficial because it sustains persistence and therefore, in a narrow topic, rewards will lead to higher creativity (i.e. ideas that are both original and feasible).
processing or rather through cognitive flexibility (De Dreu et al., 2011). In this condition, the effect of rewards will not be beneficial because rewards enhance persistence, but not flexible thinking that is needed in a broad topic (De Dreu et al., 2011). Consequentially, the next hypothesis is:
H2: Rewards have a positive influence on creativity in a narrow topic condition but
no effect in a broad topic condition.
Combining Hypotheses 1 and 2, we can predict that rewards will have a positive influence on creativity because of cognitive persistence. In previous research, there is evidence which supports that persistence leads to creativity (number of both original and feasible ideas). Nijstad and colleagues (2010) found in a number of studies that an increase of cognitive persistence (= more generated ideas within a category) leads to more original ideas on average. Moreover, results of the experimental studies showed that when participants focused more on a certain category, their ideas were more original and also the correlation between number of ideas and original ideas was higher because of an enhanced persistence (Nijstad et al., 2010). To sum up hypothesis 1 and 2 - rewards increase cognitive persistence, and this process of effortful exploration of few categories should lead to higher, creative outcomes. Therefore, the third hypothesis is:
H3: Rewards increase creativity because of cognitive persistence.
H4: The indirect effect of rewards on creativity through persistence is stronger in a
narrow topic than in a broad topic.
All four hypotheses are graphically depicted in Figure 1 to visualize the relations between rewards persistence and creativity.
Figure 1 – Conceptual Model
Methodology
ParticipantsInitially, the sample consisted of 140 participants. However, two participants were excluded from the analyses. One participant was excluded because he/she failed the manipulation check and had unreasonable high score on mind wandering, the other participant was excluded because he/she only generated one idea, wrote in the “purpose field” that the task was confusing and showed also an unreasonable high score in mind wandering. Thus, following analyses are based on 138 undergraduate university students (86 women and 52 men, age M = 21.8). All participants signed up for this study voluntary. Participants received course credit or 4 Euros.
H2 H1
Rewards Persistence Creativity
Topic Characteristics
Procedure and Independent variables
Before the experiment, all participants read a general introduction (consent form) that they would participate in a brainstorming session in which they had to generate creative ideas about a topic that they are personally involved in. After reading and signing the consent form, participants were seated behind a personal computer. Participants were randomly assigned to the conditions of a 2 (reward: yes vs. no) × 2 (topic: narrow vs. broad) between subjects design.
Before beginning with the idea generation, they received instructions about the brainstorming task. In the reward condition, instructions stated that the five participants with the most creative ideas would win a bonus of 50 Euro. In the no reward condition, no bonus was mentioned. In both conditions, instructions explained that creative ideas are those ideas that are original and feasible. Furthermore, the instructions emphasized that it is important to generate as many ideas as possible and to keep ideas short and not elaborate on them.
After idea generation, all participants received a post-questionnaire, including questions about demographics (age, gender), intrinsic motivation, task interest, mind wandering and a manipulation check. Finally, participants were debriefed, thanked and continued with another (unrelated) study. After both studies, participants were paid for participation.
Measures and Dependent Variables
Idea fluency. Idea fluency was measured as the number of unique (non-redundant and reasonable) ideas generated by each participant.
Idea quality. The ideas were coded into two different criteria of creativity – originality and feasibility. To obtain measures of originality and feasibility, a coder rated each single idea on a 5-point scale (1 = not original at all to 5 = very original and 1 = not
feasible at all to 5 = very feasible). A second rater coded a random subset of 30 ideas on both
dimensions. Intraclass correlation (Two-Way-Mixed) coefficients were .69 for originality and .70 for feasibility, which was considered as a good reliability (Cicchetti & Sparrow, 1981). Scores of the first rater were used to compute the following measures: average originality - the sum of all originality scores divided by the number of ideas, average feasibility – sum of all feasibility scores divided by number of ideas and number of good ideas- ideas that are highly original (originality score ≥ 4) and highly feasible (feasibility score ≥ 4) at the same time.
selection of students; (4) class-related improvements like teaching of courses, better course material or an improvement of the examination; (5) teacher quality, including teacher training and selection; and (6) policy such as regulations, information distributions, access to courses and outside contacts. These main categories included in total 36 subcategories. The higher the number of categories used, the greater the participant’s cognitive flexibility (Nijstad et al., 2002, 2003). Moreover, in order to obtain a measure of cognitive persistence, we computed within-category fluency: the number of ideas divided by the number of subcategories from which these ideas were generated. A second coder categorized 30 randomly selected ideas, and interrater agreement was good (Cohen’s K= .69).
Results
Manipulation checkA manipulation check to test if participants read the instructions regarding the reward
yielded following results: a significant χ² test confirmed that the large majority (131 out of 140) answered the question correctly, χ² (1, N = 140)=106.32, p=.000. Out of 9 participants that answered the question wrong, one participant was excluded because of an unreasonable high score in mind wandering. Excluding other participants did not have influence on results. Thus, they were retained.
Correlation Analysis
A correlation analysis (Table 1) shows all statistics of dependent variables. In Hypothesis 3, we assumed that cognitive persistence has a positive effect on creativity. Statistics in Table 1 showed a strong positive relationship between persistence and average originality, and a weak positive relationship to average feasibility, number of original ideas, and number of good ideas. Other results that should be highlighted was that flexibility was strongly positive correlated to number of original ideas, number of feasible ideas, and number of good ideas. This implies that flexibility influences creative performance (originality, feasibility, good ideas) even more than persistence.
Variable M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 1. Fluency 8.28 4.45 1 .73*** .44*** .53*** -.00 .88*** -.02 .49*** .07 .11 -.14 2. Flexibility 4.94 2.27 1 -.198* .47*** .12 .53*** -.25** .40*** .08 .06 -.17* 3. Persistence 1.75 0.77 1 .22** -.06 .51*** .27** .26** .04 .12 .08 4. Original Ideas (#) 1.86 2.15 1 .60*** .36*** -.24** .83*** .09 .25** -.27** 5. Originality (average) 2.47 0.63 1 -.13 -.38*** .61*** .05 .22** -.28** 6. Feasible Ideas (#) 5.78 3.33 1 .36*** .46*** .12 .11 -.11 7. Feasibility (average) 3.79 0.31 1 -.04 .05 -.06 .09 8. Good Ideas (#) 1.20 1.47 1 .17* .22** -.24** 9. Intrinsic Motivation 4.20 0.57 1 .40*** -.22** 10. Task Interest 5.38 1.07 1 .41*** 11. Mind Wandering 2.59 0.78 1 Note. N = 138. *p<.05 **p <.01 ***p<.001 TABLE 1
2 (Rewards) × 2 (Topic) ANOVAs
TABLE 2
Descriptive Statistics for Dependent Variables by Conditions and F-values for the 2 × 2 ANOVAs
narrow topic broad topic main effect topic
main effect
reward interaction measure no reward reward no reward reward
fluency 7.54 (3.52) 8.94 (3.83) 7.65 (3.83) 8.97 (5.25) 0.007 3.23✝ 0.003 flexibility 4.26 (1.50) 4.25 (1.96) 5.44 (2.56) 5.88 (2.53) 14.42*** .36 .549 persistence 1.78 (.59) 2.24 (1.06) 1.43 (.58) 1.49 (.33) 21.19*** 5.04* 2.87✝ originality 2.14 (.48) 2.27 (.63) 2.66 (.53) 2.84 (.62) 31.89*** 2.54 0.067 feasibility 3.91 (.40) 3.85 (.30) 3.65 (.25) 3.74 (.18) 13.17*** 0.102 2.31 good ideas (#) .57 (.98) .97 (1.5) 1.06 (1.07) 2.27 (1.68) 15.38 *** 12.54** 3.18 ✝ ✝p < .10 *p < .05 **p < .01 ***p < .001
Fluency. First, we analyzed fluency to get general insight into the data. Participants generated on average 8.27 ideas (SD = 4.45). A 2 (rewards) × 2 (topic) ANOVA showed no significant main effect of topic F (1, 134) = .007, p =.932 but it yielded a trend towards significance for rewards F (1, 134) = 3.23, p = .074. Overall, rewards slightly increased the number of generated idea from M = 7.59 (SD = 3.83) in the no reward condition to M = 8.96 (SD = 4.93) in the reward condition. The interaction was not significant, showing that the effect of rewards was not dependent on topic F (1, 134) = 0.003, p = .959.
condition (M = 2.02; SD = .89) than in the broad topic condition (M = 1.46; SD = .47). Although the rewards × topic interaction just failed to reach conventional levels of significance, F (1,134) = 2.871, p = .092, the effect of reward was stronger in the narrow topic condition (Mno reward = 1.78; Mreward = 2.24) than in the broad topic condition (Mno reward = 1.43; Mreward = 1.49). Simple effect analyses indicated that the effect of reward was significant in the narrow topic condition, F (1,134) = 7.99, p < .01, but not in the broad topic condition, F (1,134) = .145, p = .702. To sum up, reward increased persistence only in a narrow topic. These results confirm Hypothesis 1 that reward increases persistence, but only in a narrow topic condition.
Cognitive Flexibility. In order to find if rewards only affect persistence (Hypothesis 1) and not cognitive flexibility, an additional ANOVA was run. Results showed that the number of subcategories that participants used (flexibility) was higher in the broad topic (M = 5.66, SD = 2.54) than in the narrow topic condition (M = 4.25, SD = .1.74), F (1,134) = 14.42, p < .001. Reward had no significant main effect on flexibility, and there was no significant interaction between reward and topic. This result provides additional support to confirm Hypothesis 1 that rewards increase cognitive persistence (and not cognitive flexibility).
rewards did not have an effect on the average originality of ideas that the participants generated. Because of this result, we could not find support for Hypothesis 2.
Similar results were obtained with number of original ideas.
Feasibility. Another measure of creative performance is the average feasibility. Analysis showed that feasibility was significant higher in a narrow topic (M = 3.88, SD = .35) than in a broad topic (M = 3.70, SD = .22). A significant main effect on topic could be found, F (1,134) = 13.17, but neither a main effect on reward nor an interaction effect were statistically significant.
Similar results were obtained with number of feasible ideas.
Number of good ideas (original and feasible). Number of good ideas, which are feasible and original were used to measure creative performance. Means and SD are shown in Table 1. Hypothesis 2 predicted that rewards would have a positive influence on creativity in a narrow task and no influence on creativity in a broad task. The 2 × 2 ANOVA showed that the main effect of topic, F (1,134) = 15.38, p < .001 and the main effect of reward, F (1,134) = 12.544, p = .001 were highly significant. The number of good ideas was higher with reward (M = 1.59; SD = 1.71) than without reward (M = .81;
SD = 1.05), and higher in the broad (M = 1.66; SD = 1.52) than in the narrow topic (M =
.78; SD = 1.28). Besides, the interaction of reward and topic showed a trend towards significance, F (1,134)= 3.18, p = .077. In the narrow topic condition, rewards lead to higher creativity (M = .97) than no rewards (M = .57); however, and contrary to Hypothesis 2, this effect was even stronger in the broad topic condition (M = 2.27 vs. M = 1.06, for the reward and no reward condition, respectively).
(1,134) = 1.59, p = .21. Thus, rewards increased creativity in broad topic and there was no significant effect of rewards on creativity in a narrow topic. Thus, Hypothesis 2 was rejected.
Mediation Effect of Persistence
Mediation test. To test if persistence mediates the effect of rewards on creative outcomes (Hypothesis 3), we run a mediation analysis through bootstrapping by using the Process macro in SPSS (Hayes, 2012). The mediation effect is significant if the bootstrap interval does not include ‘0’ (Shrout & Bolger, 2002). In the mediation analysis, reward was the independent variable, persistence the mediator, and the number of good ideas the dependent variable. As Figure 1 showed, the effect of rewards on persistence and also effect of persistence on creative ideas were both statistically significant. In a bootstrapping procedure, significance of the indirect effect was tested. The bootstrapped unstandardized indirect effect was .12 (SE = .10) and the 95% confidence interval varied from -.012 to .406, which means that there was no statistically significant mediation effect. Thus, even though rewards affected persistence and persistence had an effect on good ideas, there was no indirect effect of rewards on creativity and therefore, Hypothesis 3 was rejected.
Creative Ideas Reward Persistence β =.28* β =.42** β =.66** (.78)*
Moderated mediation effect of task characteristics on persistence
TABLE 3
Regression analysis of the mediation-moderation effect of task characteristics on persistence
Moderated mediation test. To test Hypothesis 4, we ran a moderated mediation analysis. Results of the regression are summarized in Table 2. As mentioned before, rewards had a statistically significant effect on persistence, ß=1.605, 95% CI =1.459 to 1.751, p = .031. Moreover, the regression analysis yielded evidence that persistence had a positive effect on creativity, ß=.857, 95% CI = .251 to 1.462, p = .0059. However, there was no significant interaction of persistence and topic, ß= .2.31, 95% CI = -2.16 to 1.041,
p=.490. This result implies that the indirect effect of persistence was not moderated by
was not significant and only indirect effect in narrow topic condition was significant, Hypothesis 4 was also rejected.
Additional analysis
TABLE 4
Additional regression analysis of the mediation-moderation effect of persistence on task characteristics
= 1.162, 95% CI =.571 to 1.752, but not in a narrow topic, β = .025, 95% CI = -.564 to .615.
In other words, participants generated more creative ideas in the broad topic although rewards did not stimulate their persistence. Participants in narrow topic condition were more persistent because of rewards and persistence had a positive effect on creative performance.
TABLE 5
Descriptive Statistics for Questionnaire-Variables by Conditions and F-values for the 2 × 2 ANOVAs
narrow topic broad topic main effect topic main effect reward interaction measure no reward reward no reward reward
Task Interest 5.21(.86) 5.55 (1.23) 5.28 (1.08) 5.50 (1.08) .004 2.36 .109 Intrinsic
Motivation 4.07 (.48) 4.30 (.60) 4.09 (.58) 4.33 (.58) .047 5.92* .005 Mind Wandering 2.86 (.85) 2.59 (.75) 2.61 (.63) 2.28 (.80) 4.57* 5.15* .041 *p < .05
Descriptive Statistics. In order to get more information about participants’ motivation and task interest, questions about task interest were asked after the brainstorming exercise. No effects on task interest could be found, which implies that rewards did not increase participants’ task interest.
When it comes to intrinsic motivation of participants, results showed that participants in rewarding condition had a significantly higher intrinsic motivation (M= 4.31; SD =.58) than participants in non-reward condition (M= 4.08; SD =.53), F (1, 134) = 5.92, p = .016. Neither a significant main effect on topic, nor an interaction effect could be found.
Hypothesis 2 that rewards decreased mind wandering, F (1,134) = 5.15, p = .025. Also a main effect on topic could be found F (1,134) = 4.573, p = .034. Participants with narrow topic had a higher score on mind wandering (M = 2.73, SD = .75) than participants in a broad topic condition (M = 2.44, SD = .79). However, the reward × topic interaction effect was not statistically significant, F (1,134) = .041, p = .839.
Conclusion and General Discussion
Previous research found that rewards mainly stimulate creativity when explicitly creative performance is rewarded (creative contingent rewards). We were interested in the mechanism why rewards lead to creativity and when this is more likely. In a brainstorming experiment with students, we tested the effect of rewards on creative outcomes. Participants were asked to generate ideas on a broad vs. narrow topic, and to half of the participants a bonus for creative performance was promised, whereas the other half was not promised a bonus. Based on the Dual Pathway to Creativity Model (DPCM), it was expected that promising a bonus for creative performance would enhance creativity through cognitive persistence (i.e., sustained and concentrated effort), and that persistence would be related to creativity especially when the topic was narrowly defined.
that rewards mainly stimulate persistence in a narrow topic condition. These findings can be explained when it is assumed that rewards increase effort. To generate many creative ideas when the topic is narrow, effort is a crucial factor and because rewards increase effort, this effort or rather cognitive persistence led to higher creativity. In contrast, in the broad topic condition, it was easier to generate and find highly accessible ideas in many different categories, and effort may have been less crucial. In a narrow topic participants had to keep generating ideas within one or few categories, which is likely more effortful, and this is exactly what rewards trigger.
induced participants to generate more ideas through a combination of slightly increased persistence, flexibility, and number of ideas. In turn, this combination has led to higher number of creative ideas.
conditions likely cause individuals to disengage from the task and experience cognitive changes (such as narrowed attention and cognitive inflexibility) that limit their ability to respond creatively.” (Byron & Khazanchi, 2012, p. 823). Exactly this finding seems to reflect our result – individuals in a narrow topic have a narrow attention (persistence) that limited them to be as original as participants in the broad topic. Another possible explanation why participants in a broad topic were apparently more creative is that in the subcategory “lectures”, which was used in the narrow topic condition, it is apparently more difficult to come up with original ideas than in other subcategories (i.e. university environment, facilities or educational policies).
Theoretical Implications
Moreover, we found evidence that rewards increase intrinsic motivation. Initially, rewards were expected to undermine creative performance by undermining intrinsic motivation (Amabile, 1983; Newell et al. 1959; Deci & Ryan, 1985). Amabile (1983). Our findings showed the opposite effect: Participants in the reward condition were more intrinsically motivated and they also had higher creative performance than participants without reward. Other research (Byron & Khazachini, 2012; Eisenberger & Selbst, 1994) has found that rewards in fact increase intrinsic motivation and that this depends on the type of reward (i.e. creativity contingent reward or not). We found support for this view and therefore, our implication is that the theoretical finding by Amabile (1983) that rewards undermine creativity cannot be generalized.
Eisenberger and Rhoades (2001) provided another explanation why rewards lead to higher creativity. They found that task interest mediates the effect of reward on creativity. This means that rewards increase task interest and in turn task interest increases creativity. We could not find support for this theory; because in our research rewards did not have any significant effect on task interest. However, we found evidence that rewards decrease mind wandering. Although task interest was not triggered by rewards, participants generated more creative ideas in the reward condition because of a higher concentration (less mind wandering). Therefore, we think that considering this variable in the theoretical model of Eisenberger and Rhoades (2001) would be an addition to that model.
Practical implications
rewards lead to cognitive persistence and employees are more focused to generate creative ideas and this persistence leads to a higher creativity. Our implication for employers and practitioners is that the use of creativity-contingent rewards is an effective way to enhance creative performance of employees. Especially, when the problem is broad, rewards will function as a useful incentive for employees to create more original ideas.
Study Limitations and suggestions for Future Research
One limitation could be that the time period in which participants had to generate ideas (10 minutes) was too short and therefore participants in the narrow topic condition could not fully benefit from enhanced cognitive persistence. Probably, they needed more time to go further with idea generation to be more creative. Nijstad et al. (2010) found that a focused way of thinking at first leads to highly accessible and less original ideas and originality only increases after some time. Research by Förster, Friedman, and Liberman (2004) found that time restrictions have a negative effect on creativity. Moreover, results are based on a laboratory experiment, which implies that findings do not consider external factors and therefore results have limited generalizability. Another limitation could be that only a small sample of ideas (30 ideas) could be coded and rated by a second coder due to time problems. Although the intraclass correlation was good, a bigger sample would have probably yielded to more unbiased ratings.
influence creativity was found in the research of Rietzschel, Nijstad, and Stroebe (2014). They discovered that originality instructions led to more original ideas than instructions to focus on feasibility / relevance. Future studies should extend this research to answer the question whether individuals need more freedom or fewer constraints to achieve creativity through rewards.
Moreover, this research focused on how creativity-contingent rewards influenced creative outcomes. Additional research should test what effect performance-contingent rewards will have on creative outcomes. In other words, do rewards that are promised for task completion (rather than for high levels of creativity) have similar effects on creativity and what cognitive processes are activated by performance-contingent rewards.
Conclusion
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