The Relationship Among Autonomy Support, Causality Orientations And Creativity In Undergraduates

Creativity research has transferred its focus from persons who create to the social environments in which creativity occurs. Literature has shown that autonomy support is a key factor to promote creativity and meanwhile as an active promoter of self-development, individuals also play a dynamic role on the environment. Individuals with different personality or traits react differently to social environments, and causality orientations are just relatively enduring aspects of personality referring to unique interpretations of social events and stimulus. Accordingly we will examine the influence of autonomy support and causality orientations on college students' creativity.Firstly, 342 college students were measured orderly to revise Perceived Autonomy Support: The Learning Climate Questionnaire (LCQ) and General Causality Orientations Scale (GCOS). Then using the two revised questionnaires and TTCT (Word Version), we investigated 565 undergraduates to examine the characteristics and relationships among autonomy support, causality orientations and creativity. In this study, statistic methods such as ANOVA, MANOVA, correlation analysis, and Hierarchical regression analysis were used. Based on a variable-oriented approach and a person-oriented approach, the main conclusions are as follows:1. In terms of creativity, the three dimensions had significant differences, which from high to low were fluency, flexibility and originality. The influence of gender on creativity only showed on originality, with females scoring higher than males. There was no grade difference on the total creativity, not on the three dimensions either. There were interaction between gender and grade on the total creativity and the three dimensions of creativity. To be specific, there was a significant drop on creativity for sophomore girls, while the condition for sophomore boys was just reverse.2. Autonomy support perceived by college students were quite above the average. What's more, there were no significant difference of gender, grade, and their interaction on autonomy support.3. In terms of causality orientations, the three orientations had significant differences, which from high to low were autonomy, controlled and impersonal. Females scored significantly higher than males on autonomy orientation and impersonal orientation, and there was no gender difference on controlled orientation. Sophomores scored significantly higher on impersonal orientation than freshmen. And there were no interaction between gender and grade on three orientations.4. Autonomy support was positively correlated with creativity, and had significant positive effects on creativity. Autonomy orientation was correlated positively with fluency, flexibility and originality, while impersonal orientation had a negative correlation with all of them. With respect to controlled orientation, it had a positive correlation with flexibility.5. Analysis using a variable-oriented approach showed that gender moderated the relationship between impersonal orientation and creativity/flexibility/originality. To be specific, females who scored higher on impersonal orientation exhibited lower creativity, but being high on impersonal orientation did no harm to males. Analysis using a person-oriented approach showed that gender moderated the relationship between orientation types and fluency: impersonal females scored lowest on fluency, meanwhile there was no difference between autonomy females and controlled females; impersonal males scored lowest on fluency, and autonomy males did the best.6. Analysis using a variable-oriented approach showed that autonomy orientation moderated autonomy support-creativity/fluency/flexibility/originality. To be more specific, students who perceived more autonomy support exhibited higher creativity, and the positive relationship between autonomy and creativity was stronger when individuals scored higher on autonomy orientation. To put differently, autonomy orientation activated the functioning of autonomy support.Analysis using a person-oriented approach revealed that orientation types moderated autonomy support-creativity/fluency/flexibility/originality. Students who perceived more autonomy support exhibited higher creativity, and what's more the facilitation of autonomy support would be more evident when individuals are controlled/autonomy type.