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Trial Title
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Creativity and Perspective: Effects of Incubation on Divergent Thinking
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Creativity and Perspective: Effects of Incubation and Perspective on Creative Idea Generation
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Abstract
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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.
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After
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 results of the initial task and the final task 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.
The first creativity task participants perform will replicate a previous study, while also adding an additional condition (the financial incentive). The final creativity task, after the incubation period, will also be measured to see if the initial manipulations in the first task affected the performance in the final task.
Our three measures for the creativity tasks are (1) total number of ideas, (2) average creativity rating by two independent judges, and (3) total number of creative ideas (ideas that achieve an average rating of 7 or higher from the independent judges)
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Last Published
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October 29, 2018 03:50 PM
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November 09, 2018 06:25 PM
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Primary Outcomes (End Points)
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Creativity as measured through Guilford's Alternative Uses Task (total number of uses generated)
Consensual assessment of creativity as measured by 2 raters (1-10 from low to high creativity)
Criterion for creativity based off the article: 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.
two raters will rate the ideas generated. The ratings for each idea will be averaged to create an average creativity score for each idea. Then the ideas that correspond to each individual will be averaged to get a participant creativity score.
We will also measure creativity by the standard measure of total number of ideas generated.
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Our first dependent measure is creativity as usually measured through Guilford's Alternative Uses Task. Namely, we will total the number of uses generated for each participant.
As a second measure, we will find the average creativity rating for an individual’s generated ideas. Ideas will be rated by 2 raters (1-10 from low to high creativity) and these rating swill be averaged to get an average rating for each idea. Then, all the average ratings of the ideas a participant generated will be averaged to get the participant’s average creativity score.
Criterion for creativity based off the article: 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.
Finally, a third criterion is the total number of ideas that achieve an average creativity rating of above seven from the raters. As of right now, this measurement has only been ascribed to hypothesis number 5.
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Primary Outcomes (Explanation)
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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.
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Randomization Method
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Randomization is done through the qualtrics platform, which allows for randomization within its coding. Participants will be randomly and evenly distributed into the different conditions.
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Randomization is done through the Qualtrics platform, which allows for randomization within its coding. Participants will be randomly and evenly distributed into the different conditions.
I believe that Mechanical Turk, which is the distribution system for the study, randomizes the sample we receive, within our inclusion restrictions.
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Planned Number of Clusters
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180 individuals
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At least180 individuals
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Planned Number of Observations
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180 individual
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At least 180 individual
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Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
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30 individuals within each treatment and control
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At least 30 individuals within each treatment and control
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Power calculation: Minimum Detectable Effect Size for Main Outcomes
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Criterion for significance is .05.
Power against alternative hypothesis is conventionally .80, but we would like .95
Ideally 33 individuals in each of the six condition groups, with an ideal total of 200 participants.
The test will be two-tailed.
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Criterion for significance is .05. Minor significance is .1
Power against alternative hypothesis is conventionally .80, but we would like .95
Ideally 30 individuals in each of the six condition groups, with an ideal total of 180 participants. We may accept more participants, just in case exclusions become dangerous to the validity of the study.
The test will be two-tailed.
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Intervention (Hidden)
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Our intervention manipulates perspective. We ask people to come up with alternative uses for an every-day item (ex. brick) under explicit instructions to think in terms of themselves, others, or in general. What are some alternative uses (you might have/others might have) for a (item).
Above this, we include financial incentive as an additional condition. Specifically, we incentivize participants to create as many creative ideas as they can within a time period. This leaves us with a 2X3 design: 2 (financial incentive / no financial incentive) by 3 (self perspective / others perspective / general perspective).
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Our first intervention manipulates perspective. We ask people to come up with alternative uses for an every-day item (ex. brick) under explicit instructions to think in terms of themselves, others, or in general. What are some alternative uses (you might have/others might have) for a (item).
Above this, we include a financial incentive as an additional condition. Specifically, we incentivize participants to create as many creative ideas as they can within a time-period. This leaves us with a 2X3 design: 2 (financial incentive / no financial incentive) by 3 (self perspective / others perspective / general perspective).
Hypotheses
In our initial creativity task, which will involve 3 perspectives (self/others/general) crossed with a financial incentive (financial incentive/no financial incentive), and is essentially a 3X2 design, we make the following hypotheses.
Creativity Hypotheses for Initial Creativity Task
H1: Participants in the others-perspective condition will generate a lower total number of ideas than participants in the self-perspective condition or general-perspective condition.
H2: There will be no difference in the number of ideas generated by participants in the self-perspective condition and general-perspective condition.
H3: Participants in the others-perspective condition will have a higher average creativity rating for ideas generated that participants in the self-perspective condition or general-perspective condition.
H4: There will be no difference in the average creativity rating of ideas generated by the self-perspective condition and general-perspective condition.
H5: A financial incentive for ideas that pass a threshold of creativity will result in a higher number of creative ideas being generated across all three perspective conditions.
H6: A financial incentive for ideas that pass a threshold of creativity will result in a higher average creativity rating for ideas generated across all three perspective conditions.
Secondary Measure Hypotheses for Initial Creativity Task
H7: Participants in the others-perspective condition will record a higher amount of perspective taking in the initial task compared to participants in the self-perspective condition and general-perspective condition.
H8: Participants in the general-perspective condition will record higher perspective taking than participants in the self-perspective condition, but this may not be very significant.
H9: Financial incentive will increase intrinsic motivation across all conditions.
H10: There will be no significant effect on prosocial motivation throughout any of the conditions.
H11: There will be no effect on intrinsic motivation throughout any of the perspective conditions.
H12: Within the others-perspective condition, participants who score high in extraversion will generate more ideas than participants who score low in extraversion.
H12.a The positive relationship between extraversion and number of ideas generated in the others-perspective condition will be even more pronounced for the sub trait of Extraversion called Enthusiasm, and will be less pronounced for the sub-trait of extraversion called assertiveness.
H13: Within the self-perspective condition, participants who score low in extraversion will generate more ideas than participants who score high in extraversion.
H13.a The negative relationship between extraversion and number of ideas generated will be even more pronounced for the sub trait of Extraversion called Enthusiasm, and will be less pronounced for the sub-trait of extraversion called assertiveness.
Creativity Hypotheses for Final Creativity Task
For the final creativity task, all participants will be given the same task with no manipulations. Therefore, what we are looking for is lagged effects from the initial manipulation.
H14: Participants who had the others-perspective condition in the initial task will have a lower average creativity rating for generated ideas in the final task compared to participants in the self-perspective condition or general-perspective condition.
H15: Participants who had the financial incentive in the initial task will have a higher average creativity rating in the final task across all perspective conditions.
H16: There will be no interaction effect between the perspective-conditions and incentive-condition.
H17: There will be no significant difference between the perspective conditions in the total number of generated ideas.
We expect our results to show generally that companies who want to encourage innovation in their employees should focus on the perspective their employees’ daily tasks enforce.
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Did you obtain IRB approval for this study?
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No
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Yes
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Secondary Outcomes (End Points)
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We are measuring perspective taking, prosocial motivation, and intrinsic motivation as well. We expect to see people in the 'others' perspective to have a higher amount of perspective taking than those in teh others or general group when they do the alternative uses task. We expect intrinsic motivation not to be affected by the perspective manipulations, however, we do expect the financial incentive to positively affect intrinsic motivation. We also don't expect the prosocial motivation to be affected by either of the manipulations (perspective or financial incentive)
Intrinsic, prosocial, and perspective taking scales were adapted from the paper: Grant, Adam M. and James W. Berry (2011), “The necessity of others is the mother of invention: Intrinsic and prosocial motivations, perspective taking, and creativity,” Academy of management journal, 54 (1), 73–96.
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We are also measuring perspective taking, prosocial motivation, intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. We expect to see people in the others-perspective condition have a higher amount of perspective taking in the initial creativity task than those in the self-perspective condition or general-perspective condition. We expect intrinsic motivation not to be affected by the perspective manipulations, however, we do expect the financial incentive to positively increase intrinsic motivation across perspective conditions. We also don't expect the prosocial motivation to be affected by any of the manipulations (perspective or financial incentive)
Intrinsic, prosocial, and perspective taking scales were adapted from the paper: Grant, Adam M. and James W. Berry (2011), “The necessity of others is the mother of invention: Intrinsic and prosocial motivations, perspective taking, and creativity,” Academy of management journal, 54 (1), 73–96.
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