The Effect Of Regulatory Focus And Modeling On Creativity

Sternberg and Lubart defined creativity as "the ability to produce novel (original) and appropriate (useful) products". Originality and appropriateness are identified as two important components in creativity. Currently, many researchers are interested in relationship of examples and creative performance. There are many inconsistent results. Our study is focus on presentation of different examples—creative examples and ordinary examples—have what effect on creativity, and in what kind of condition does this happen.Our research includes two studies. In the first study,120 college students were separated randomly into six groups, comparing effects of regulatory focus state (promotion focus state vs. prevention focus state) and modeling of example (highly creative example vs. ordinary example vs. no example) on the following creative task. In the second study,157 college students were adopted and separated randomly into eight groups. This study probed into the effects of modeling of example (highly creative example vs. ordinary example), self-efficacy (high self-efficacy vs low self-efficacy) and explanation of example (giving explanation vs. non-explanation) on creativity.Results showed that highly creative example could facilitate creativity. Comparing to non-example, when presented an ordinary example, participants have a poor performance on creative task. Only in non-example condition, promotion focus state could increase creativity. High level of creative self-efficacy contribute to creativity when presentation of creative example. Explanations for creative example are beneficial to people’s performance in following creative task.