Effects Of Promised Reward On Creativity Of6Years Old Children

In scientific circles of contemporary creativity psychology, a debate has ragedover the effects of motivational tactics of on the propensity to generate innovativesolutions. This contradiction is the opposition of behaviorism vs. romantic position.Behaviorist worldviews have argued that promised rewards should bolster creativityby establishing a contingency between novel behavior and reinforcement. However,romantic camp has made the very opposite prediction, arguing that promised rewardshould undermine creativity be reducing perceived autonomy and therebyundermining intrinsic motivation posited to drive innovation. It has also beenproposed within this camp that promised rewards diminish creativity by drawingattention toward the incentives themselves and away from the creative process. Thesetwo contentions have been supported by a number of studies respectively, but thesestudies themselves have shortcomings.In order to solve the conflict, the present study taking6years old children asparticipants, using experimental method and Consensual Assessment Technique(CAT)examined the role of promised reward framing (i.e. gain vs. non-gain) on creativity ofchildren. Experiment1examined the effects of promised reward framing (i.e. gain vs.non-gain) on creativity of children by setting two different promised rewards in theexperimental groups and giving all experimental and control groups the sameinformation regarding the creativity requirements of the task that facilitates creativity.Experiment2further confirmed the role of promised reward on creativity of children,as well as that on perceived performance pressure and self-determination bycontrolling the interference of the provision of information about ability ranking.In experiment1, promised non-gain framed rewards reliably enhanced morecreativity than control group, but not than promised gain framed rewards. Inexperiment2, promised non-gain framed reward group reliably higher than bothcontrol groups, but there is no differences on promised gain framed rewards andnon-gain framed rewards as well as two control groups on facilitative creativity. Thetwo promised gain and non-gain framed rewards groups are both perceived higherperformance pressures and have lower self-determination than the two control groups.Results indicated that promised reward can enhance creativity of children, andexpected non-gain rewards may make high creativity. This facilitative influence ofpromised reward on creativity is due to the offering of an extrinsic incentive per se and not the concomitant prospect of provision of information. Finally, under the roleof promised reward framing, perceived performance pressure may increase butself-determination may decrease. When this pressure lies in a moderate level,creativity of children will be higher; while the higher self-determination, the lowercreativity.