Creativity and Perspective: Effects of Incubation and Perspective on Creative Idea Generation

Last registered on October 03, 2018

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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

Creativity, perspective, and incubation in alternative uses tasks

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0003374

Initial registration date

October 02, 2018

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published

October 03, 2018, 2:24 PM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Country

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Region

Cambridgeshire

Primary Investigator

Name

Charlie Ebert

Affiliation

University of Cambridge

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Jaideep Prabhu

PI Affiliation

University of Cambridge

Contact Investigator

PI Name

Raghabendra KC

PI Affiliation

Rollins University

Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status

In development

Start date

2018-10-23

End date

2018-10-24

Keywords

Firms & Productivity, Other

Additional Keywords

innovation, creativity, habit, purpose, incubation, alternative uses

JEL code(s)

Secondary IDs

Abstract

This study explores how well individuals perform in creative tasks when being asked to think in terms of themselves/others/in general. Further, this study explores how creative performance is affected by financial incentives.

This study focuses on the aspect of the creative process called 'incubation,' which means that participants will be introduced to the creative task, then interrupted and given a period of time (an incubation period) to wait before doing the task again. The final task results are the focus of the study.

In a randomized controlled trial, participants will be asked to perform a creativity task under different perspectives (others/self/in general) and under different incentive schemes (financial incentive, control). after performing the task, participants will be given a period of time to fill in questions and perform a menial task. After this period of time, participants will perform the creativity task again. This second performance is what we will consider for our dependent variable.

We expect our results to show that companies who want to encourage innovation in their employees should focus on the perspective their employees’ daily tasks induce in them.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Ebert, Charlie, Raghabendra KC and Jaideep Prabhu. 2018. "Creativity, perspective, and incubation in alternative uses tasks." AEA RCT Registry. October 03. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.3374-1.0

Former Citation

Ebert, Charlie, Raghabendra KC and Jaideep Prabhu. 2018. "Creativity, perspective, and incubation in alternative uses tasks." AEA RCT Registry. October 03. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/3374/history/35156

Sponsors & Partners

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

Intervention Start Date

2018-10-23

Intervention End Date

2018-10-24

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

Creativity as measured through Guilford's Alternative Uses Task (total number of uses generated)
Consensual assessment of creativity as measured by raters (1-10 from low to high creativity)

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Our first measure is simply the total number of uses generated by each participant.
Our second measure is the consensual assessment between at least two raters on the creativity of the ideas generated. raters will be asked to rate each generated use for an item on a scale of one to ten, and will be told that creativity is made up of three components (uncommonness, remoteness, and cleverness) as used in the below reference.

Silvia, Paul J., Beate P. Winterstein, John T. Willse, Christopher M. Barona, Joshua T. Cram, Karl I. Hess, Jenna L. Martinez, and Crystal A. Richard (2008), “Assessing creativity with divergent thinking tasks: Exploring the reliability and validity of new subjective scoring methods.,” Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 2 (2), 68.

the two raters' ratings will be averaged to get a creativity score for each generated idea.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

This study uses a 3X2 between-subjects factorial design. There are two interventions:
(1) The manipulation of perspective during habit formation (others/self/general)
(2) The type of incentive given during creativity tasks (financial incentive/no incentive)

Experimental Design Details

Participants will respond to an MTurk survey, which will give them three minutes to come up with as many alternative uses for an object as possible. They will be asked to generate alternative uses under three different perspectives :

Perspective Treatment 1
Please give alternative uses for this item: golf club
Give as many as possible in the time limit
Respond using this Proper Response Format: A(n) [item] can be used [use]. Example: A golf club can be used as a walking stick

Perspective Treatment 2
Please give alternative uses for this item: golf club
Give as many as possible in the time limit
Respond using third person, describing how others (not yourself) could use the item
Proper Response Format Example: A hiker could use a golf club as a walking stick

Perspective Treatment 3
Please give alternative uses for this item: golf club
Give as many as possible in the time limit.
Respond using first person, describing how you personally could use the item
Proper Response Format Example: I could use a golf club as a walking stick

During the 3 minute excursive, half of the participants will also receive a financial incentive. The financial incentive will be an extra £25 if the participant places within the top 25% amongst participants for generating creative responses (measured as the participant’s total number of responses marked as creative by post-survey judges). The other half of participants will receive no incentive.

Randomization Method

Randomization done in office by a computer

Randomization Unit

individual

Was the treatment clustered?

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

180 individuals

Sample size: planned number of observations

180 individual

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

30 individuals within each treatment and control

Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)

Supporting Documents and Materials

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IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name

IRB Approval Date

IRB Approval Number

Analysis Plan

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal