Social Environments That Kill Creativity
Toward the end of the last century, a boy was born to a Jewish engineer and his wife in a small German town on the Danube River. Slow and shy, this boy did so poorly in school that, when his father asked the headmaster what profession his son should adopt, the answer was simply, “It doesn’t matter. He’ll never make a success of anything.” He did make a success of something, though, but he almost seems to have done it in spite of his schooling.
As a youth, he attended a militaristic school in Munich that stressed discipline and memorization. Although he would never become famous for his views on education, his autobiography eloquently recalls the disdain he felt for such strictly controlled learning environments:
It is nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wreck and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.
But coercion and a sense of duty were commonplace in those early school years. He later recalled the devastating effect that this external control had on his motivation. In particular, he hated having to cram for his science exams: “This coercion had such a deterring effect upon me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year.”
The young man’s name was Albert Einstein. If Einstein, who loved science even as a child, could be so adversely affected by a restrictive social environment, what impact does social constraint have on the creativity of less talented people?
For the last several years, I have tried to answer that question by studying the impact of various social and environmental factors on the creativity of both outstanding and ordinary individuals (see Amabile, 1983). This approach can be viewed as a necessary counterpart to the personality research that most creativity researchers have been conducting. While they focus on the personality traits that distinguish highly creative people from everyone else, I focus on the social conditions that can positively or negatively influence anyone’s creativity.
The Meaning of Creativity
Most definitions of creativity stress the importance of both novelty and appropriateness: A product or idea must be novel (different from what has come before), but it must also be appropriate to the problem (correct or useful or valuable in some sense). Obviously, the precise meaning of “appropriateness” changes from one work domain to another. If we are talking about mathematical creativity, an idea or an answer must be verifiably correct. If we are talking about artistic creativity, it makes more sense to think in terms of the appropriateness of the medium to the theme or in terms of aesthetic appeal. But whatever the domain, an idea cannot be merely novel to be considered creative; we have to distinguish between the creative and the purely bizarre.
I think it is important to include a third element in the definition of creativity: the nature of the task. Some tasks or problems are completely straightforward; the path to the solution is clear and can be performed almost by rote. These tasks are called algorithmic. For example, there is only one correct solution for an arithmetic problem such as this: 52 + 17 − 21. And there is only one way to bake a box cake according to the recipe—follow the steps outlined on the box. There is no room for creativity in the performance of these algorithmic tasks.
Other tasks are open-ended, such that the path to the solution is not completely clear and straightforward. These tasks are heuristic; some search is required. Heuristic statements of the above problems would be, “Find 3 numbers that can be added and subtracted to produce the sum 48” and, “Make a cake, choosing your own combination of ingredients.” This open-endedness is what characterizes creativity tasks, such as the discovery of a new mathematical system or the invention of a new kind of cake recipe.
The definition of creativity that I have used includes all three of these elements: A product or response is creative if it is a novel and appropriate solution to the task, and if the task was presented heuristically.
Social Influences on Performance
Kenneth McGraw has suggested that algorithmic tasks and heuristic tasks are affected differently by social factors. In particular, he discusses the effects of expected reward. McGraw (1978) has shown that the expectation of reward can enhance performance on algorithmic tasks but can undermine performance on heuristic tasks. For example, people usually do better on simple multiplication problems if they are working for reward. They usually perform more poorly, however, if they are expecting a reward for solving problems that require insight.
Here is an example: Sam Glucksberg (1962) presented subjects with a deceptively simple problem. They were given a candle, a box of thumbtacks, and a book of matches and were told to use only these materials in mounting the candle on a vertical screen. The problem could only be solved by emptying the tacks out of the box and using it as a platform which could be tacked to the screen. Clearly, this problem is a heuristic one; the path to the solution is not at all obvious at the start. Subjects who were told that they could earn money for finding the solution quickly took much longer to solve the problem than subjects who worked without any mention of reward.
Social constraints are any factors that control, or could be seen as controlling, a person’s performance. Things people normally view negatively, such as deadlines, surveillance and constrained choice, are considered social constraints. However, things that are viewed quite positively, such as working for a promised reward or expecting a favorable evaluation, may affect performance similarly. I believe that all social constraints can have the same effects as rewards, the same facilitative effects on algorithmic tasks and the same inhibitory effects on heuristic tasks.
Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation
These ideas on constraint and performance come out of social psychological theories of intrinsic motivation. Mark Lepper, Edward Deci, and others have proposed that social constraints (or extrinsic constraints) can undermine intrinsic motivation, the motivation to do something for its own sake. They suggest that if people start out with a great deal of intrinsic interest in their work, and then someone places them under an extrinsic constraint while they are working, their intrinsic interest will be undermined (see Deci, 1975).
Lepper and his colleagues (1973) demonstrated this effect in a simple study with children. They chose children who had initially shown a high level of interest in playing with magic markers that had been placed in their nursery-school classroom. Individually, each of these children was asked to draw some pictures with the markers. The experimenter promised some of them an attractive reward if they consented to draw the pictures; he did not mention reward to the other children. Later, when they were back in their classroom, those children who had contracted for reward spent much less time playing with the magic markers than the other children did. It’s as if, during the experiment, the rewarded children had asked themselves, “Why am I doing this?” Since the reward was so obvious an explanation, the reward became, to them, their reason for drawing the pictures. As a result, they no longer saw themselves as interested in the activity for its own sake. And, back in their classroom, with no reward possible, they actually showed little interest. This undermining of intrinsic interest with extrinsic constraint has been shown in a number of other studies with both children and adults.
The implications of these findings are rather startling. Parents, teachers, and business managers generally assume that a little reward is a good thing and that a lot of reward is more of a good thing. How can it hurt to present children and adults with incentives for their work? This evidence suggests that it can hurt. Although rewards (and other constraints) can certainly motivate our performance in the short run, in the long run they may destroy our interest in our work.
After reading Einstein’s (1949) autobiography, I began to wonder if, perhaps, extrinsic constraints could have negative effects on performance in the short run, too. It seemed that, in addition to decreasing subsequent interest in a task, such constraints might make it more difficult for people to approach the task creatively.
A heuristic task—a task requiring creativity—is like a maze that you must wander through. There may be more than one way of getting out, and some exits are more satisfactory than others. There are no clear markers showing you the path, so a great deal of searching is required. If you are intrinsically motivated, you are in the maze because you want to be there. You will enjoy nosing around, trying out different pathways, thinking things through before blindly plunging ahead. You’re not really concentrating on anything else but how much you enjoy the challenge and the intrigue. And that approach will most likely lead you to creative solutions.
If you are extrinsically motivated, however, you see yourself as having been put in the maze by somebody else. You have to attain the external goal; you have to earn the reward, or win the competition, or get the promotion, or please those who are watching you. You are so single-minded about the goal that you don’t take the time to think much about the maze itself. Since you’re only interested in getting out as quickly as possible (reaching the goal as easily as possible), you may rush into a lot of dead ends without much thought. Or you may take only the most obvious, well-traveled route. Either way, you are unlikely to be creative.
If the task is algorithmic, of course, extrinsic motivation is no problem. An algorithmic task is like a straight hallway, rather than a maze. There’s no question about the right way to go—straight ahead. You can forge ahead quickly and blindly, and extrinsic motivators might just make you run faster.
This, then, is my intrinsic motivation hypothesis of creativity: Intrinsic motivation will be conducive to creativity, but extrinsic motivation will be detrimental. On noncreative (algorithmic) tasks, performance should not suffer under extrinsic motivation. But performance on creative (heuristic) tasks should be undermined.
A Model of Creativity
I do not mean to suggest that intrinsic motivation is all we need to be creative. Certainly, we cannot just leave children alone, in their natural state, and watch their creativity blossom. And we cannot expect to just leave adults to their own devices and watch them produce creative work on any task they undertake. In my theory of creativity, I outline three components that are necessary for creative work in any domain: domain-relevant skills, creativity-relevant skills, and task motivation.
Domain-relevant skills include knowledge about the domain in question (for example, knowledge about chemistry), technical skills required for work within the domain (such as laboratory skills), and special domain-relevant talent (such as a talent for visualizing molecules and their interaction). Domain-relevant skills depend on cognitive abilities, perceptual and motor skills, and formal and informal education. As another example, domain-relevant skills for musical creativity in our culture might include a familiarity with Western music forms and instruments, the ability to play an instrument and to transfer ideas into musical notation, and a special talent for hearing in imagination several instruments playing together. Domain-relevant skills can influence creativity on any task within the domain of endeavor—any research in chemistry, for example, or any musical composition.
Creativity-relevant skills include a cognitive style marked by an ability to break mental habits and an appreciation of complexity. Also included is a work style characterized by an ability to concentrate effort for long periods of time, a sense about when to leave a stubborn problem for a while, a generally high energy level, and an implicit or explicit knowledge of creativity heuristics. The last simply involves rules of thumb for generating ideas—for example, “Try something counter-intuitive.” Creativity-relevant skills can be influenced by training, by experience in generating ideas, and by personality characteristics. Creativity-relevant skills operate at the most general level; they can influence performance in any domain.
Task motivation can be very specific to particular tasks within domains, and may even vary over time for a particular task. As I have suggested, an intrinsic task motivation (doing the task for its own sake) should be more conducive to creativity than an extrinsic task motivation (doing the task as a means to some extrinsic goal). Overall task motivation will depend on both the individual’s initial attitude toward the task (we all have our somewhat idiosyncratic preferences for activities) and the presence or absence of salient constraints in the social environment. If such constraints are present, motivation should become extrinsic. There is a third factor that can influence overall task motivation: the individual’s own ability to diminish the importance of extrinsic constraints. This last point can be an important one, and I will return to it later.
Each of the three components must be present for creativity to emerge. The higher the level of the three components, the higher the overall creativity. Clearly, then, much more is required than an intrinsic task motivation. But, in trying to maximize a person’s creativity in the workplace or the classroom, it might be best to focus on the task motivation component. Unlike creativity-relevant skills and domain-relevant skills, task motivation can be influenced quickly, easily, and inexpensively by relatively small changes in the social environment. At the same time, though, these changes can be very powerful. According to my theory, task motivation makes the difference between what a person can do (based on domain-relevant and creativity-relevant skills) and what that person will do.
Research on the Motivation Question
Is intrinsic task motivation, in fact, more conducive to creativity than extrinsic motivation? Will people working under salient extrinsic constraints produce work that is less creative than the work done by people not under constraint? What is the research evidence?
The method we have used to answer these questions is quite straightforward. The basic procedure is borrowed from previous social-psychological research on motivation: All subjects work on some activity that is, initially, intrinsically interesting. The situation is set up so that some of them feel there are no constraints on their task engagement. Other subjects, though, are placed under some external constraint that is made as salient as possible.
In these studies, the activity is always some simple heuristic task—making a paper collage or writing a Haiku poem, for example. After the experimental sessions have been completed, all of the products made by subjects are shown to experts in the field. (An expert, for our purposes, is someone with at least three years of experience working intensively in the field.) These judges are asked to rate each product on creativity, using their own subjective definition of creativity. Working independently, the judges generally show a good level of agreement in their creativity ratings. Moreover, the ratings of creativity are generally separable from judges’ ratings of other product dimensions (such as technical quality or aesthetic appeal). After the creativity ratings have been obtained, they are analyzed to determine whether extrinsic-constraint subjects did, indeed, produce less creative work.
Of all the external constraints under which well-known creative people have labored, perhaps none has been so widely despised as the outside evaluation of one’s work. Einstein loathed the necessity to digest course material for the sole purpose of spewing it back on an examination. And the poet Sylvia Plath, struggling with a monstrous writer’s block, said, “I want … to feel my work is good and well-taken. Which ironically freezes me at my work, corrupts my nunnish labor of work-for-itself-as-its-own-reward,” and “Yes, I want the world’s praise, money, and love, and am furious with anyone … getting ahead of me” (Hughes & McCullough, 1982).
Shereen Brackfield and I examined the effects of evaluation expectation on creativity, as well as the effects of a closely related variable: surveillance of work (see Amabile, Goldfarb, & Brackfield, 1990). The design of this study was a simple one, where half of the women subjects believed that their artworks (paper collages) would be evaluated by experts, and the other half did not. Within each of these conditions, half of the women believed they were being watched through a one-way mirror while working. We found that both evaluation and surveillance had a negative impact on creativity, although the effect of evaluation was considerably stronger. Overall, the least creative subjects were those who believed they were being watched and who expected evaluation of their collages. The most creative subjects were those concerned with neither evaluation nor surveillance. This negative effect of evaluation expectation has shown up consistently in a series of studies using different creativity measures.
Competition with peers is another common theme in the introspective writings of outstandingly creative people. When James Watson and Francis Crick were locked in their struggle to beat Linus Pauling at discovering the DNA structure, they learned from Pauling’s son that he appeared to have the answer:
In addition to routine family gossip [in a letter from Pauling] was the long-feared news that Linus now had a structure for DNA. No details were given of what he was up to, and so each time the letter passed between Francis and me the greater was our frustration. Francis then began pacing up and down the room thinking aloud, hoping that in a great intellectual fervor he could reconstruct what Linus might have done. As long as Linus had not told us the answer, we should get equal credit if we announced it at the same time. (Watson, 1969, p. 99)
And Sylvia Plath wrote in her journal,
All I need now is to hear that G. S. [George Starbuck] or M. K. [Maxine Kumin] has won the Yale [prize] and get a rejection of my children’s book. A. S. [Anne Sexton] has her book accepted at Houghton Mifflin and this afternoon will be drinking champagne. Also an essay accepted by PJHH, the copycat. But who’s to criticize a more successful copycat. Not to mention a poetry reading at McLean.… And now my essay, on Withens, will come back from PJHH, and my green-eyed fury prevents me from working. (Hughes & McCullough, 1982)
In a study with two groups of children, I found some evidence that competition can directly undermine creativity (Amabile, 1982). Children who believed they were competing for prizes in making their collages produced somewhat lower levels of creativity than children who weren’t competing. Interestingly, the groups were most different in the variability of their use of the materials. In the noncompetition group, the children seemed to experiment a great deal with the materials, sometimes using just a few colors, sometimes using nearly every color available. In the competition group, however, the children took a much more conservative approach. There, most of the children used some moderate number of colors and some moderate number of pieces in making the collage.
Dostoevsky (1948) wrote about a terribly frustrating experience he went through in trying to write a commissioned novel. In particular, he felt constrained by the commitment he made through the contracted reward:
And as for me, this is my story: I worked and I was tortured. You know what it means to compose? No, thank God, you do not! I believe you have never written to order, by the yard, and have never experienced that hellish torture. Having received in advance from the Russy Viestnik so much money.… I fully hoped in the beginning of the year that poesy (literary creativity) would not desert me, that the poetical idea would flash out and develop artistically towards the end of the year, and that I should succeed in satisfying everyone … but on the 4th of December … I threw it all to the devil. I assure you that the novel might have been tolerable; but I got incredibly sick of it just because it was tolerable, and not positively good—I did not want that.
McGraw and his colleague John McCullers (1979) demonstrated that the promise of reward can interfere with creative behavior. They gave subjects Luchins’ classic water-jar problems. Each problem presents the subject with drawings of three jars in different sizes. The task is to write an equation for using those jars to measure out some exact quantity of water. The first several problems are all solvable only by following the same algorithm, the same algebraic formula. The last problem requires subjects to “break set,” to find a new solution, since the familiar algorithm will no longer work. McGraw and McCullers found that subjects working for reward took longer to solve the last problem and made more errors than subjects not promised a reward.
Judy Gitomer and I found that a restriction of choice in how to do a task can also undermine creativity (Amabile & Gitomer, 1984). Nursery-school children who were given a choice of collage materials produced more creative collages than children who were given the same materials but with the choice having been made by the experimenter.
These, then, are the methods that we know about for killing creativity: expected evaluation, surveillance during work, competition, expected reward, and restriction of choice. Each of these social variables appears to undermine creativity. According to the theory, this undermining occurs through a decrease in intrinsic motivation. But these studies do not directly prove that point.
A Direct Test with Creative Writers
We need direct evidence that intrinsic motivation is more conducive to creativity than extrinsic motivation. To this end, I did a study designed to directly create an extrinsic motivational state in some subjects, without going through the intermediate step of imposing an extrinsic constraint (Amabile, 1985). And the same method was used to directly create an intrinsically motivated state in other subjects. For this purpose I borrowed a technique from Gerald Salancik (1975). Subjects are asked to complete a questionnaire about their attitudes toward something (in this case, attitudes toward the creativity task). Some are given an “intrinsic questionnaire”; all of the items deal with the intrinsically interesting aspects of the activity. Other subjects complete an “extrinsic questionnaire,” which deals with only extrinsic reasons for doing the activity. The purpose of the questionnaires is simply to lead subjects to think about the activity in intrinsic terms or extrinsic terms. Then the immediate effects of this intrinsic or extrinsic orientation can be directly observed.
It was important in this study to find subjects who were already involved in some creative activity on a regular basis so that we might temporarily influence their orientation toward that activity. To this end, we recruited creative writers, using advertisements such as this: “Writers: If you are involved in writing, especially poetry, fiction, or drama, you can make three dollars for about an hour of your time. We are studying people’s reasons for writing.” Most of those who responded to the ad were undergraduate or graduate students in English or creative writing at Brandeis University or Boston University, although a few were not affiliated with any university. The most important characteristic of these participants, for our purposes, is that they identified themselves as writers—they came to us with a high level of involvement in writing.
We had some additional criteria for choosing participants from those answering our ad; subjects had to answer “yes” to one or more of the following:
1. Completion of one or more advanced creative writing courses.
2. Publication of one or more works of poetry.
3. Publication of one or more works of fiction or drama.
4. Spending an average of four or more hours of their own time per week in writing poetry or fiction.
The average response to the last question was 6.3 hours, with a range of 3 to 18. Obviously, this group did consist of people who were committed to creative writing.
The basic idea of this study was to have each writer come to the laboratory individually and, once there, to complete a questionnaire on “Reasons for Writing”—reasons for being involved in writing. (Some subjects, in a control condition, did not complete any questionnaire.) The questionnaire would either present only intrinsic reasons for writing or only extrinsic reasons, leading the writer to concentrate on either intrinsic or extrinsic motives for writing. Then all of the writers would be asked to write a brief poem, which could later be judged by our expert-assessment technique. In this way, we could look at the effects of temporary motivational orientation on creativity.
We wanted to present our subjects with items about writing that were as purely intrinsic or as purely extrinsic as possible. To get such items, we generated an initial list of 30 reasons for writing and asked a group of undergraduates at Brandeis to identify each reason as intrinsic, extrinsic, or neither/both, according to these definitions:
An intrinsic reason is one that focuses on the person’s interest in and enjoyment of writing for its own sake, for the pleasure of the actual writing. An extrinsic reason is one that focuses on the external things a person can get by writing, the tangible and intangible rewards from other people. An intrinsically motivated person is self-motivated and would write even in the absence of external goals or pressures. An extrinsically motivated person is motivated by other sources, by external goals and pressures.
Seven of the reasons were consistently identified as intrinsic:
1. You get a lot of pleasure out of reading something good that you have written.
2. You enjoy the opportunity for self-expression.
3. You achieve new insights through your writing.
4. You derive satisfaction from expressing yourself clearly and eloquently.
5. You feel relaxed when writing.
6. You like to play with words.
7. You enjoy becoming involved with ideas, characters, events, and images in your writing.
Seven other reasons were consistently rated as extrinsic:
1. You realize that, with the introduction of dozens of magazines every year, the market for freelance writing is constantly expanding.
2. You want your writing teachers to be favorably impressed with your writing talent.
3. You have heard of cases where one best-selling novel or collection of poems has made the author financially secure.
4. You enjoy public recognition of your work.
5. You know that many of the best jobs available require good writing skills.
6. You know that writing ability is one of the major criteria for acceptance into graduate school.
7. Your teachers and parents have encouraged you to go into writing.
The introductory paragraphs on the two questionnaires were identical. This introduction informed the writers that, in order to study their reasons for being involved in writing, we wanted them to rank-order the seven reasons in order of importance to them. After rank-ordering either the intrinsic reasons or the extrinsic reasons (depending on their condition), the writers were asked to write a short Haiku-style poem where the first and last lines consisted of the single word “Laughter.” (Those in the control group were simply asked to write the poem, without completing any questionnaire at all.)
After the study was complete, we asked several poets to judge these poems on creativity. The results were dramatic. As you might expect, the writers in the control group wrote poems that were judged fairly high on creativity; these were, after all, creative writers. Here is an example of a poem from this group, judged high in creativity:
Laughter
Immortal, true
Blooms, inspires, sings
The song of all smiles
Laughter
The writers in the intrinsic group wrote poems that were judged as somewhat higher in creativity than those in the control group, but the difference was not large. Here is an example of a poem from this group, also judged high in creativity:
Laughter
Edgy, breathless
Fracturing, punctuating, breaks
Bullet-like gasps uncontrolled
Laughter
The most important result comes from the extrinsic group. Those writers produced poems that were judged as much lower in creativity than the poems produced by either of the other groups. An example:
Laughter
Cheerful, excited
Sharing, Opening, Expressing
A clear moment of peace
Laughter
Consider the implications of this study. These writers entered our laboratory with an intrinsic motivational orientation toward writing. Apparently, we were not able to increase that intrinsic orientation much; the creativity of the intrinsic group isn’t notably higher than the creativity of the control group. But with a terribly brief and simple manipulation, we significantly reduced the creativity of writers in the extrinsic group. People who had been writing creatively for years, who had long-standing interests in creative writing, suddenly found their creativity blocked after spending barely five minutes thinking about the extrinsic reasons for doing what they do.
(Lest you think that we took creative writers, stripped them of their creativity, and then turned them loose, let me say that we fully debriefed all of our participants before they left the lab, and we had all of the extrinsic subjects fill out the intrinsic questionnaire at the end of their experimental sessions.)
Intrinsic motivation, then, does seem to be more conducive to creativity than extrinsic motivation. Creativity can be undermined by evaluation expectation, surveillance, reward expectation, competition, or restriction of choice, and it can also be undermined by simply thinking about all the external constraints that might be placed on one’s work.
Keeping Creativity Alive
If this is so, what can be done about it? Are we always at the mercy of our social environment? Is it impossible to be creative in the face of extrinsic constraints? How can managers and teachers and parents possibly avoid the potentially disastrous consequences of evaluation, reward, and competition?
The first solution is to focus on the social environment. As much as possible, those who oversee (or have an impact on) the performance of other people should try to take the emphasis off extrinsic constraints. Obviously, it would be impossible to eliminate the evaluation of performance or the use of reward systems or any of the other factors I’ve mentioned. But it is possible to reduce their salience, to place the focus more on the work itself and less on the external controls. For example, rather than constantly reminding workers about performance reviews, it might be more effective to encourage them to do self-evaluations of their own work. This could well result in work that is quite acceptable, because people can be very stringent self-evaluators. Simultaneously, creativity would be maintained, because people could concentrate on the work for its own sake, rather than focusing on external pressures.
The point is that anything reducing the salience of extrinsic constraints should enhance creativity. It might even be possible for workers themselves to do “mind tricks” that will make extrinsic constraints seem distant and unimportant. Earlier, I mentioned the fierce competition that James Watson and Francis Crick felt with Linus Pauling during their search for the structure of DNA. In Watson’s account, barely a page goes by without mention of Watson and Crick’s obsession with trying to assess Pauling’s progress and their chances of beating him to the Nobel Prize. Obviously, their creativity was not completely undermined by this extrinsic constraint; they did reach their goal. But a close examination of Watson’s story suggests something very interesting. While they were actually in their laboratory, doing their best work, or pondering the problem during a quiet moment, they became so totally absorbed in the scientific puzzle that everything else receded in importance—including the competition with Pauling.
The second method for keeping creativity alive focuses not on the social environment but on the individual. If knowledge, technical skills, creativity techniques, and talents can be developed to high levels, it might still be possible under extrinsic motivation to produce work that is recognized as creative. Recall the three factors that contribute to creativity: domain-relevant skills, creativity-relevant skills, and task motivation. Even if task motivation is largely extrinsic, some levels of creativity might be achieved as long as domain-relevant and creativity-relevant skills remain at a high level.
There is some evidence that this happened with Picasso in the last years of his life. Some critics suggest that, during those last years, Picasso became so obsessed with the outrageously high prices his paintings commanded that he lost his “creative spark.” We might say that he lost his intrinsic motivation. Yet, during those years, Picasso still succeeded in producing work that many people regarded as creative. It might be that he had actually developed an algorithm for producing a “creative” painting. Picasso might have had such an extraordinarily high level of talent and skill and knowledge that, almost by rote—without any particular spark of intrinsic motivation—he could produce work others would see as creative.
The third method for keeping creativity alive also focuses on the individual. If a person can start out with a very high level of intrinsic motivation, it might be virtually impossible to wipe it out with the imposition of extrinsic constraints. For ourselves, we can try as much as possible to concentrate on and appreciate the intrinsically rewarding aspects of our work. For those under our influence, we can try to emphasize those aspects of work and increase the intrinsic satisfactions of the work process itself. It might be a good idea, for example, to simply ask people what they most enjoy about their work and then allow them more time, freedom, and resources to build on those areas.
Woody Allen seems to present an ideal example of unshakeable intrinsic motivation (see Lax, 1975). Few professions are as loaded with salient extrinsic constraints as moviemaking. Not only do millions of dollars rest on the success of each individual project but the product is evaluated by millions of people. Not only that, but expert evaluation of the movie by critics is available for hundreds of millions of people to see. Yet, in the face of all this constraint, Allen seems to continue along, quietly taking one risk after another with new forms and styles. In his interviews, he sounds highly intrinsically motivated. Certainly, he wants his projects to succeed financially. But he’s not working primarily for the money; he’s working to please and challenge himself. And he hardly seems concerned about evaluation of his work. He avoids reading reviews of his movies. And on the night that his Annie Hall received the most positive evaluation given to movies, the Oscar, Allen preferred to do something he really enjoyed—playing clarinet with his jazz band in Manhattan.
A person’s creativity can be killed in an atmosphere fraught with evaluation pressures, reward systems, competition, restriction of choice, and anything else that takes the focus off the intrinsic properties of the work itself. But a person’s creativity may be kept alive in an atmosphere with minimal extrinsic constraint and maximal support of skill training, talent development, and intrinsic enjoyment of the work. And, then, as much as possible, it helps to simply be left alone.
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Teresa Amabile prefaced her reading of this paper at Creativity Week VI by saying that she had spent the first ten years of her professional life studying how creativity in children can be ruined, and that now she is investigating how creativity in adults can be fostered.
The three necessary ingredients for effective creativity which are recorded here remain in her current model of creativity. She is now confronting the challenge of transporting her laboratory findings on enhancing task motivation to the workplace. (See her paper below with Sharon Sensabaugh.)
When I read this paper, it occurs to me that intrinsic motivation is like love. You know when you’re feeling it but it’s hard to describe with great precision. Managers who can help their people sustain intrinsic motivation can improve creative problem-solving activity in their organizations. But the task is not simple. As Teresa points out, it is easier to stifle creativity in the organizational context than to stimulate it—in part, because the forces which engender intrinsic motivation are subtle. You cannot command compliance when working with social-influence variables any more than you can order someone to be in love.
Teresa received her Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1977 and is currently a professor in psychology at Brandeis University. SSG.