Last updated: March 6, 1999
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Evaluation, Rewards, Competition and Contraints --
Their Effects on Creativity
Research results from Teresa Amabile

Teresa Amabile is a well-known creativity researcher, who has focussed on the effects on creativity produced by evaluation, rewards, competition and constraints. I find it very interesting that Dr. Amabile is a professor of business administration (and at Harvard University). Some material from her book, Creativity in Context (1996, Westview Press) is summarized below.

According to Amabiles experimental results, evaluation (as, say, good or bad) and rewards have very similar results on creativity. The results depend upon the nature of the task -- is it

• Heuristic, where many possibilities must be explored
  OR
• Algorithmic, where the task is primarily a linear series of steps, where the order is clear.

[David Bowen here. An interesting question for me is whether or not it makes a difference if the problem to be solved by the task -- whether this problem is self-discovered ro presented by someone else. In Amabile's book, these two cases are lumped together.]

Also, the nature of the evaluation or reward is important. Is the evaluative opinion a summary judgement (closed), or is it more informational (open)? For rewards, is the reward an end in itself (closed), or does it offer a chance to take an additional step or explore a new area (open)? With those divisions, here is a summary of Amabiles experimental results:

The example in the upper-left corner of the table gives an example of how to read the table.

Competition between individuals, especially of the winner-take-all variety, inhibits creativity. But if groups are teams are the creative units, the competition enhances creativity.

And finally, constraints, such as deadlines, required methods and elements that must be included in the creative work, all generally inhibit creativity, although there are some people who have consistently high rates of creativity under such conditions.

Professor Amabile also presents a general theory of creativity. First, she states the "preliminary assumptions and observations" excerpted below.

1. There is a continuum form the low levels of creativity observed in everyday life to historically significant advances in science, literature and the arts.
2. There can be degrees of creativity within a particular individual's work.
3. There often seems to be a "match" between individuals and domains.
4. The ages at which peaks creativity is achieved in different domains varies widely.
5. It does appear to be possible to slightly increase a given individual's level of creativity, for example through training. Also, formal education seems essential in most outstanding creative achievements.
6. Talents, education and cognitive (thinking) skills do not by themselves appear to be sufficient for high levels of creativity.
7. Particular clusters of personality traits are found fairly consistently among individuals exhibiting high levels of creativity but, again, they are not sufficient in and of themselves.
8. A great many outstanding creative individuals have described the phenomenon of "incubation": After ceasing to consciously work on a difficult problem, they sometimes experience an apparent flash of illumination, during which the solution appears to them unexptectedly.
9. An eagerness to work diligently appears to be an essential component of high levels of creativity, [we must] also stress the importance of playfulness and freedom from external constraints.
10. Although it appears that extrinisc constraints can be detrimental to creativity, there are individual who appear to produce consistently creative work under clear and salient extrinsic constraints.

In Amabile's theory of creativity, three components are important:

• Domain-relevant skills
• Creativity-relevant mental processes
• Task motivation

Domain-relevant skills
The more skills the better, it appears, perhaps because it gives more choices. The ability to imagine situations and play them out mentally is important in many cases.

Creativity-relevant processes
Here is are examples of such processes:

• Breaking perceptual set. That is, being able to change the way you look at or perceive a situation.
• Breaking cognitive set. That is, being able to change the way you analyze a situation.
• Undertanding complexities. For example, something may be not all good or all bad, but mixed.
• Keeping response options open as long as possible.
• Suspending judgement. Amabile quotes the nineteenth-century German poet Schiller, "In the case of the creative mind, it seems to me, the intellect has withdrawn its watchers from the gates, and the ideas rush in pell-mell, and only then does it review and inspect the multitude.
• Using "wide" categories. For example, being able to include a lot of different experiences under the heading of "education."
• Remebering accurately.
• Breaking out of performance "scripts."
• Perceiving creatively, or at least perceiving things differently from the way most people see them
• Knowledge of heuristics (trial-and-error techniques) such as (collected from various researchers)
  • When all else fails, try something counterintuitive.
  • Make the familiar strange
  • Generate hypotheses by analyzing case studies
  • Use analogies
  • Account for exceptions (i.e. don't ignore them)
  • Investigate paradoxical incidents
  • Play with ideas
  • Use "mental gymnastics"
• Adopting a work style conducive to creativity (collected from various researchers)
  • Ability to concentrate efforts for long periods
  • Use "productive forgetting" when warranted
  • Persistence in the face of difficulty
  • High energy level, willingness to work hard, overall high level of productivity
  • High degree of self-discipline in matters regarding work
  • An ability to delay gratification
  • Perseverence in the face of frustration
  • Independence of judgement
  • A tolerance for ambiguity
  • A high degree of autonomy
  • An absence of sex-role stereotyping
  • An internal locus of control
  • A willingness to take risks [although according to Drucker, not financial risks -- these are not stupid people!]
  • A high level of self-initiated, task-oriented striving for excellence

Task motivation
Task motivation is centerpiece, the most important component, in Amabile's three-component theory. Intrinsic or internal motivation, as opposed to extrinsic motivation that comes from outside sources, is necessary to reach the highest level of creativity. Amabile says that there are some initial results on how intrinsic motivation does its work, and why extrinsic motivation does not work.