Social, environmental, and developmental issues and creativity

Abstract

Parents and teachers alike have been led to believe that the motivation that stems from wanting to earn a good grade or receive a gold star or do better than the person sitting at the next desk is a positive force. However, in the case of open-ended, creative tasks—tasks for which there is more than one possible solution—extrinsic constraints have frequently proven harmful. A social-psychological approach to the study of creativity is especially useful for answering the question of how best to foster creative behavior in the classroom. Rather than focus on the (largely innate or at least immalleable) differences between creative and uncreative persons, social psychologists concentrate on “creative situations” (i.e., the particular social and environmental conditions that can positively or negatively impact the creativity of most individuals). The present article explored this research tradition and proposed a theoretical explanation for the impact of motivation on creativity that is based upon children's conceptions of work and play.