Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts 2013, Vol. 7, No. 2, 112–118

© 2012 American Psychological Association 1931-3896/13/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0030464

The Motivational Influence of Self-Guides on Creative Pursuits

Darya L. Zabelina

Daniel Felps

Northwestern University

Texas A&M University

Hart Blanton This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

University of Connecticut There is robust evidence for a relationship between regulatory focus and creative cognition, with prevention states undermining creative insight and promotion states facilitating it. We tested whether similar effects occur as a result of priming goal standards related to prevention focus (ought standards) versus promotion focus (ideal standards). A pilot study established that the importance placed on ought versus ideal self-standards predicted the desire to be creative, with the strongest creativity orientation observed among participants who placed a high value on achieving goals related to ideal standards and a low value on achieving goals related to ought standards. Two experiments then demonstrated that goal priming influenced the novelty of responses to a word association task, with activation of ought standards decreasing and activation of ideal evaluative standards increasing novelty. Study 2 revealed that the influence of goal priming was eliminated when participants were put under time pressure, suggesting that this manipulation exerted influence on response novelty through a controlled (as opposed to spontaneous) process. Keywords: creativity, regulatory focus, self-discrepancy theory, deviance regulation theory

People are most creative when they are intrinsically motivated, valuing creativity for its own sake (Azzam, 2009; Csíkszentmihályi, 1999; Paris et al., 2006). This seems to suggest that one way to promote creativity is to teach people to value it, but the literature on goal pursuits suggests that there is reason to question such a straightforward prediction. Goals can take different forms, leading to different results. In the current studies, we considered two distinct ways of approaching creative pursuits that are derived from Higgins’ self-discrepancy theory (1987) and his later (1998) regulatory focus model. We propose that an intrinsic interest in creativity is beneficial when people are motivated to be creative as an expression of their hopes and ideals, whereas intrinsic interest is harmful when it is associated with a sense of duty or obligation.

ment, much of socialization is focused toward bringing order and self-control to a child’s life. Children are potty trained, learn to say “please” and “thank you,” to tell the truth, not to steal, and so on. As children enter adolescence and move beyond, they learn progressively more complex and abstract codes of conduct. Higgins (1987) termed the internalized evaluative standards that guide such civilized actions ought self-guides. These are representations of the attributes that young actors learn they should possess out of a sense of duty, obligation, and social responsibility. But not all actions are dictated by duty. Through normal socialization, children also develop the values that guide their aspirational pursuits. In Higgins’ model, the internalized standards that guide these actions are termed ideal self-guides. These are representations of attributes that are not dictated so much by obligation or responsibility as by the actor’s own hopes, wishes, and personal ambition. Higgins (1998) proposed that these two internalized standards are tied to two distinct motivational orientations. Because duty and responsibility are typically taught through the delivery and threat of punishment, ought self-guides lead individuals to adopt a prevention focus. Prevention focus is characterized by the pursuit of safety and avoidance of unwanted outcomes. A much different dynamic is associated with ideal self-guides. Because hopes and aspirations are typically cultivated through the delivery and promise of praise and admiration, ideal self-guides lead individuals to adopt a promotion focus. Promotion focus is characterized by a desire to seek and attain positive outcomes. Importantly, people differ in their overall concern for achieving their ideals versus living up to their obligations, and so they differ in their general tendencies toward promotion and prevention (see Higgins, 1998).

Self-Guides and Regulatory Focus Interest in creativity is just one of many actions that can be shaped through normal socialization. Early in normal develop-

This article was published Online First December 3, 2012. Darya L. Zabelina, Department of Psychology, Northwestern University; Daniel Felps, Department of Computer Science, Texas A&M University; Hart Blanton, Department of Psychology, University of Connecticut. Darya L. Zabelina acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Darya L. Zabelina, Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, 2029 Sheridan Road—102 Swift Hall, Evanston, IL 60208. E-mail: darya [email protected] 112

This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

MOTIVATIONAL INFLUENCE ON CREATIVITY

113

However, all individuals should be motivated to some extent by a mix of both ought and ideal self-guides. As a result, situations that momentarily activate interest in ought fulfillment can orient a person toward prevention focus, whereas situations that momentarily activate interest in ideal attainment can orient a person toward promotion focus.

first tested for the presence of a correlational link between the chronic concerns for ideal versus ought self-guides and the desire to be creative. The two experimental studies then adapted a new priming procedure to activate ought versus ideal self-guides to determine whether this resulted in corresponding shifts in creative output.

Regulatory Focus and Creativity

Pilot Study

To our knowledge, research has not directly linked self-guide activation to creative pursuits. Such work is important, however, as it might more fully inform educators on the best way to cultivate intrinsic creativity motivation. Should one teach creativity as an ideal that individuals should strive to achieve or as a duty that one has a responsibility to exhibit? Although there is a paucity of work addressing this specific question, considerable attention has been given to the effect of promotion versus prevention focus on creativity. In general, individuals high in promotion focus have been shown to engage in more flexible and creative thinking, whereas those high in prevention focus have been shown to be lower on these dimensions (e.g., Förster & Dannenberg, 2010; Friedman & Förster, 2001, 2002). Studies also suggest that situations that activate promotion-focused states result in greater creativity than situations that activate prevention-focused states (typically induced by procedures that focus attention on achieving positive outcomes; Baas, De Dreu, & Nijstad (2008); Förster & Dannenberg, 2010; Friedman & Förster, 2001, 2002). Researchers have also manipulated regulatory focus by directly framing the incentives for a creativity task or by indirectly priming approach versus avoidance mindsets. An example of direct goal priming can be found in Lam and Chiu (2002). They instructed participants taking a creative task to imagine that their own good performance would increase chances of achieving a positive outcome (being admitted to a professional school) or avoiding a negative outcome (being rejected by a professional school). An example of indirect goal priming can be found in a series of studies by Friedman and Förster (2001, 2005). They manipulated a regulatory focus state through use of a maze task. Participants were instructed to find a solution to a maze that would help a mouse either find cheese (promotion focus) or avoid a predator (prevention focus). Combined, the literature relying on such methods suggests that promotion focus bolsters creative thought, creative idea generation, and improves memory search for novel responses, whereas prevention focuses works against these effects.

Creativity Self-Guides? Research on regulatory focus provides a strong basis for hypothesizing links between motivational systems and creative output, but it does not speak directly to an issue that might be of concern to many educators. Specifically, how should creativity be linked to one’s self-concept, and what broad goal orientations will promote creative pursuits? We suggest that creativity is best internalized as an ideal, as this should trigger a promotion regulatory focus that is compatible with this goal. In contrast, if creativity is internalized as an ought, then this should trigger a prevention regulatory focus that is incompatible with this goal. We tested this logic in an initial pilot study and two experiments. The pilot study

Method Participants were 48 college students (n ⫽ 33 women) who completed three measures as part of pretesting for a separate study. The first two measures assessed the importance of ought and ideal pursuits and the third measured the importance of creativity. Goal orientation was measured for both ought and ideal pursuits by having participants rate the importance of attributes associated with each pursuit. With respect to ought standards, participants listed three traits that they should possess in the future if they live up to their personal feelings of obligation and duty. With respect to ideal standards, participants listed three traits that they will possess in the future if they live up to their personal ideals. Participants then rated the set of ought and ideal pursuits in overall importance on a scale from 0 (not at all important) to 6 (extremely important), and these two ratings became the estimate of each standard’s importance. After completing a series of unrelated distractor questionnaires (tapping self-esteem and campus attitudes), participants then made a set of ratings related to creativity. They rated the importance of being creative in their own lives and their past history of being creative, using the same 7-point scale as in the other questions. These two ratings were highly correlated, r ⫽ .57, p ⬍ .001, and so we collapsed them into a single index.1

Results and Discussion The importance of ought and ideal pursuits was modestly correlated, r(44) ⫽ .24, p ⬍ .06, suggesting that some individuals were more strongly motivated in general than others. They were far from redundant, however, making it realistic to examine their independent relationship with creativity. This was tested by regressing creativity orientation on the importance given to ought and ideal pursuits. The main effects were obtained in the first block of the equation. This block yielded a significant negative regression weight for ought standards, B ⫽ ⫺0.75, t(45) ⫽ 7.29, p ⬍ .01, and a significant positive regression weight for ideal standards, B ⫽ 0.66, t(45) ⫽ 5.99, p ⬍ .01. These findings indicate that the importance participants placed on being creative decreased the more they valued ought pursuits, but increased the more they valued ideal pursuits.2 In the second regression block, we entered the interaction term (multiplicative cross-product) for ought and ideal pursuits, so that 1

Conclusions are the same for both items in the aggregate. Strict application of some coding schemes might suggest that we also should have coded for the appropriateness of any given word (Sternberg & Lubart, 1999). For instance, associating the word monkey with bird could be viewed as either creative or inappropriate. Our analysis of the word choices in the study indicated that few words drew on associations too obscure to see relevance and so we did not discard words on the basis of appropriateness criteria. 2

ZABELINA, FELPS, AND BLANTON

This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

114

we could determine whether there was a statistical interaction between the importance of ought and ideal pursuits in the prediction of creativity importance (Blanton & Jaccard, 2006). This analysis revealed a significant statistical interaction between the two self-guides, B ⫽ ⫺0.15, t(44) ⫽ 2.21, p ⬍ .03. The pattern of this interaction is charted in Figure 1. This shows that individuals who placed the highest value on being creative also showed a combination of high concern for ideals and low concern for oughts. These results thus offer preliminary support to our model. The obvious shortcomings of this brief pilot are its reliance on selfreport and the correlational nature of the results. Two experiments were thus designed to address these limitations by experimentally manipulating the salience of ought or ideal concerns and then measuring their effect on creative responding in an experimental task.

Study 1 Overview This study investigated the influence of semantic goal primes on creativity. Creativity was assessed using a word association test (Eysenck, 1995). Although word associations tap only some specific aspects of creative cognition, they show significant correlations with various measures of creativity (Benedek, Könen, & Neubauer, 2012; Gough, 1976) and personality traits such as psychosis proneness (Merten, 1993; Ward, McConaghy, & Catts, 1991), and were ideal for our purposes because they permit precise quantification of the novelty of a given response. By comparing the associations produced with population norms (Palermo & Jenkins, 1964), we were able to test theories regarding the importance placed on novel (creative) responding.3

Method A sample of 113 students (n ⫽ 88 women) participated in a study presented as a project measuring word associations. Partic-

Figure 1. Self-rated desire for being creative (from 0 to 6) as a function of ought self-guide strength and ideal self-guide strength. High and low values for ought and ideal self-guides represent 1 standard deviation above or below the mean, respectively.

ipants completed a computer task that asked them to type the first word that came to mind after a target word was presented. The computer program presented each participant with an empty box, followed by a numeric sequence that counted down from 3 to 1. Following this, a target word appeared. Participants were instructed to enter a word in the box. To discourage participants from moving so quickly through the task that dominant word associations might take over, the instructions stated that participants need not type the first word that came to mind. The task that followed was designed to accomplish two things. It primed participants with “goal words” typically associated with ought evaluative standards or ideal evaluative standards; for those in the control condition, it presented them with a set of control words. These words were chosen based on synonym searches related to ought, obligation, and moral and were correctly categorized by at least 80% of participants in a sample of 24 college participants (see the Appendix). Novelty was then assessed by measuring responses to nonprime “assessment” words. The goal words and the assessment words were presented in a nonrandom order— one that was designed to activate and then maintain the salience of relevant constructs while at the same time measuring resulting influences on creativity. For those participants who had ought or ideal goal word primes, the first three target words were designed to activate concerns related to ethics and duty (morality, required, ought) or achievement and accomplishment (achieve, victory, ideal). After each of these words, participants listed the word association that came to mind. This activity— of observing a goal word and then generating a relevant association—was developed as a means of activating mindsets related to the pursuit of ideal or ought goals. Immediately after these three primes, participants were presented with two trials that presented assessment words (e.g., eagle, sell). Their task was again to list associations to these words. Participants entered the words that came to mind for these words, as they did for the goal words. For the remaining trials of the task, the program alternated between presenting an additional goal word, followed by two assessment words. It repeated this sequence until the program exhausted a list of 13 goal-related primes and 22 assessment words. The sequence for stimuli presentation in the control condition was identical to the two experimental conditions, except that the goal-priming words were chosen to have no relevance to either ought or ideal pursuits (e.g., whistle, cabbage). The complete list of prime and target words in the task is presented in the Appendix in the order they appeared in the priming task. We assessed novelty with a binary rating that coded whether participants listed the most common association for a given prime, as determined by word norms documented in studies by Palermo and Jenkins (1964) on word association norms. For instance, this text identified the most common word association for eagle to be bird and for sell to be buy. Participants who chose these words were not given credit for providing a creative answer. Those who chose words such as falcon or purchase did receive a score for 3 Of the 22 target words, half were for target words immediately preceding an experimental prime and half immediately followed this set. We found no difference in the trends based on order and so we collapsed across them. The results of the omnibus F tests were the same, although the individual comparisons were not as strong because of the reduced number of observations.

MOTIVATIONAL INFLUENCE ON CREATIVITY

creativity. With 22 target words, creativity scores thus ranged from 0 to 22. Because our priming procedure might influence mood, which can exert general influences self-regulation independent of regulatory focus (Higgins, 2000) as well as creative cognition (Baas et al., 2008), participants finished the study by completing the 20item Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS; Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988) so that any potential confounding influences of primes on mood could be measured and controlled.

This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

Results The influence of priming on creative responding was determined by conducting three-cell, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) on novelty of associations to test for differences among participants in ought (n ⫽ 39), ideal (n ⫽ 37), or control (n ⫽ 37) conditions. This revealed a significant effect of condition on novel responding, F(2, 110) ⫽ 8.07, p ⬍ .01. The nature of this effect was that participants exposed to ideal primes related to achievement and accomplishment produced more creative word associations (M ⫽ 11.41, SD ⫽ 2.49) than did those in the control condition (M ⫽ 10.05, SD ⫽ 2.67), t(110) ⫽ 4.11, p ⬍ .01, whereas those in the ought condition exposed to primes related to duty and obligation produced fewer creative words (M ⫽ 9.02, SD ⫽ 2.59), t(110) ⫽ 2.45, p ⬍ .05, than those in the control condition. To gain some insight into the underlying processes leading to these shifts, we examined response latencies recording the time between target onset and completion of the word association entry and found no significant differences between conditions, Fs ⬍ 1. This suggests that participants in the experimental conditions were not speeding up or slowing down to choose more creative words. However, this finding should be viewed with caution as individual differences in typing speed and chosen word length were quite large, and so the response latency data in this study were too noisy for drawing strong inference. Finally, we observed no effects of primes on positive or negative affect, Fs ⬍ 1, and controlling for momentary affect did not influence statistical significance of analyses examining the influence of regulatory priming on creativity.

Study 2 Method The purpose of Study 2 was to gain some insight into the mechanisms underlying these shifts. The first study was structured to minimize competition with dominant word associations. Participants were given explicit instructions not to focus only on the first word that came to mind. It is possible that the first word that came to mind was similar across conditions, but participants in ideal condition resisted the pull of the obvious to make more novel associations. In contrast, those in the ought condition might have held back on responding until they thought of a word that seemed common enough to feel appropriate. If such an account is true, then one might predict that there would be observable differences in the time of responding between the two experimental conditions and the control. No such difference was observed, but the noisiness of reaction time data for this type of task prevents strong interpretation of this null finding.

115

To critically examine the stage at which the primes influenced novelty and whether the responses in Study 1 suggest a relatively controlled influence of evaluative standards, we designed Experiment 2 to introduce a new condition, speeded responding. This study employed the same procedure as Study 1, only this time incorporating a 2 (instruction set: high or low time pressure) ⫻ 2 (prime: ought vs. ideal evaluative standards) factorial design, with 25 participants per experimental condition. Those in the low-timepressure condition were given the same instructions as in Study 1. In contrast, those in the high-time-pressure condition were instructed to “type the first word that comes to mind in the box provided.” From comparisons between the high- and low-timepressure conditions in Study 2, analyses could investigate whether the changes observed in Study 2 likely occurred spontaneously or whether they instead required a degree of cognitive control. As in Study 1, the PANAS was administered after the priming procedure to test for mood influences.

Results A 2 (instruction set) ⫻ 2 (prime) factorial ANOVA revealed a significant interaction only between priming condition and speed, F(1, 96) ⫽ 4.43, p ⬍ .04. The nature of this effect was that in the low-time-pressure condition, participants in the ought condition produced significantly fewer creative word associations (M ⫽ 9.60, SD ⫽ 1.91) than those in the creative prime condition (M ⫽ 11.28, SD ⫽ 2.28), t(96) ⫽ 2.55, p ⬍ .01. This pattern replicated the results of Study 1. In contrast, participants in the speeded condition showed no difference between those in the ought condition (M ⫽ 10.28, SD ⫽ 1.51) and those in the ideal condition (M ⫽ 10.00, SD ⫽ 2.55), t ⬍ 1. Examination of the response latencies associated with responding indicated that individuals in the low-time-pressure condition took an additional 2.3 s to respond (p ⬍ .001), but there were no differences or interactions due to the nature of the prime. These results suggest that the differences in novelty observed in Study 1 reflected some degree of cognitive control over responding, with participants moving either in a more conventional (less creative direction) when ought concerns were activated or in a less conventional (more creative) direction when ideal concerns were activated. Under speeded conditions, the dominant word associations drove responding and there was no influence of primes. Finally, no effects of priming or instruction set on positive or negative mood were observed (ps ⬎ .20), and entering these scores as a covariate did not influence the statistical significance of analyses investigating the influence of regulatory primes on creativity.

General Discussion It is generally accepted that creativity flows best from an intrinsic motivation to be creative. The current study introduced a potential caveat to that by studying indirect links between trait interest (pilot study) and state activation (Studies 1 and 2) of self-guides as predictors of creative output. The pilot study established that the desire to be creative was lowest among people who place a high value on living up to duty and obligation (in the form of ought self-guides) and little value on personal achievement (in the form of ideal self-guides). Two experimental studies then

This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

116

ZABELINA, FELPS, AND BLANTON

manipulated the salience of these two goal orientations and showed that activation of ought self-guides inhibited creative output, whereas activation of ideal self-guides facilitated it. The experimental studies offered additional evidence into the manner by which these two internalized goal sets influence creative output. Study 1 demonstrated that, relative to controls, priming of motivational states related to achievement and accomplishment led to more novel word associations, and priming of motivational states related to duty and obligation led to less novel word associations. These findings complement the considerable research linking regulatory focus to creative cognition (Baas et al., 2008; Förster & Dannenberg, 2010; Friedman & Förster, 2001, 2002) by tying creativity to the goal standards that are an important determinant of regulatory focus (Moretti & Higgins, 1999). Study 2 replicated these effects but showed that the original result was eliminated on speeded trials. This pattern suggests that goal activation influenced creative expression, not creative cognition. Put another way, we do not assume or believe that priming influenced accessibility of different words. Rather, we believe that ideal priming motivated participants to take the time they needed to think of more novel word choices, perhaps skipping the more accessible, less creative choices that came to mind first. In contrast, ought priming did not motivate participants to take the time for creative pursuits, perhaps leading them to choose the first word that was sufficient to the instructions to produce a word. This interpretation is compatible with research on the serial order effect. Christensen, Guilford, and Wilson (1957) argued that mundane ideas come to mind before novel ones, and that individual differences in creativity are marked by the tendency to suppress mundane responses until creative ideas manifest.

Creative Conformity? Our analysis might offer a deceptively straightforward approach to promoting creativity. It suggests that educators should encourage students to view creativity as an ideal they should strive to achieve rather than as a duty they are obliged to perform. This is a reasonable interpretation, but there is a complication. Blanton and Christie (2003) reviewed evidence suggesting that it is difficult to use ideals to promote actions of a group because ideals motivate individuals to distinguish themselves from the group. Whereas all individuals who adhere to the same (ought) moral and social codes are obligated to follow certain prescribed courses of action (e.g., to be truthful, to avoid harming others, not to yell “fire” in a movie theater), the same cannot be said of their ideals. One individual might aspire to be a musician, another an actor, and another a social psychologist. Each of these individuals is free to pursue his or her distinct ideals, even if each is also bound to a shared sense of obligation. This analysis points to a challenge of motivating creative output as an ideal. Ideals promote unique choices, and so efforts to promote creativity as an ideal to pursue work against that very function. If an educator promotes creativity as an ideal in a large group, no single member can express his or her uniqueness by internalizing a shared goal. And there is another problem. If an educator were successful in getting a group of students to pursue less mundane solutions, the teacher would effectively alter the definition of mundane. Consider that the novelty of any given individual’s expression is intimately tied to most definitions of the creativity of that act (Sternberg &

Lubart, 1999; Torrance, 1974). In our laboratory task, for instance, participants were designated as creative to the extent that they broke from the population norm for word associations. Imagine, however, if the ideal condition were run hundreds more times. Over time, if this intervention continued to exert influence on groups of students, a new norm would be established for this population of individuals in the ideal condition and so, by definition, the majority would no longer be designated as creative. Our creativity manipulation might thus have the ironic effect of creating a new norm and thus a new way for the majority to be mundane. We think the lesson here is not to abandon the emphasis on treating creativity as an ideal. Educators have a role to play, and we think it is better served by promoting creativity as an ideal rather than an obligation. However, the lesson from this analysis is that ideals are probably less useful when used to promote specific ways of acting creatively. This point is obscured by our choice of methods. In our study, participants had no choice but to make word associations and, when ideals were triggered, they responded by thinking outside a particular normative box. In real life, however, individuals who are taught to value creativity as an ideal have the freedom to define the tasks that interest them and to define their own metrics of success. Perhaps one idealistic student will become an actor and another a musician. If a third student decides she also wants to act or create music, she can do so in ways that let her maintain a distinct identity. In contrast, if she felt that she had to perform such actions out of a sense of duty, she might treat the first two individuals as specific models for how she could satisfy her obligation. We thus view the promotion of creative ideals in education as a general means of releasing interest in being creative—in some form or another—not as a strategy for promoting any specific creative pursuit or any specific creative expression of that pursuit.

Limitations and Future Directions These studies were designed to build on prior work demonstrating regulatory links to creative cognition by providing a direct test of an association between self standards and creative cognition. We established that such links are viable, but our findings are limited by the narrow range of phenomena studied. First, we only examined self-reported interest in creativity and novelty of word associations in our pilot study. This work would benefit from consideration of other markers of creativity and other forms of creative insight and expression (see Cropley, 2000). Of more critical concern is the need to examine more fully the complex interplay between goal pursuit and goal attainment. Evaluative standards can have different influences on individuals, depending on whether individuals feel that they have lived up to those goals or not (Higgins, 1987). We did not examine whether selfdiscrepancy influences creative production, but such an effect might have been observed if we had compared individuals who felt they were making progress on their goals with those who did not feel that way. Recent research suggests that self-discrepancy may be important, at least for understanding the influence of ought standards on creative expression. Baas, De Dreu, and Nijstad (2011) found that although promotion-focused states generally increase creativity, prevention states could increase or diminish creativity, depending

This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

MOTIVATIONAL INFLUENCE ON CREATIVITY

on progress made. Specifically, it was only when participants felt that their prevention goals were mostly achieved, that a prevention focus resulted in reduced creative expression. In contrast, when participants felt their prevention goals were not yet achieved, those states were linked to more creative cognition. Internal analysis suggested that this occurred because, when prevention goals are frustrated, individuals become more engaged and thus more creative. These findings suggest that, had we prescreened for individuals with large discrepancies between their current states and ought self-guides (see Higgins, 1987), ought activation might have promoted more creative cognition. Future research will benefit from greater attention to these and other differences in how people construe evaluative standards as they relate to creative cognition.

Conclusion With these caveats in mind, our findings suggest that the way people approach their goals can influence creative output. Creativity seems most likely when the individual is striving to express an ideal, not when the individual is responding out of a sense of obligation.

References Azzam, A. M. (2009). Why creativity now? A conversation with Sir Ken Robinson. Educational Leadership, 67, 22–26. Baas, M., De Dreu, C. K. W., & Nijstad, B. A. (2008). A meta-analysis of 25 years of mood– creativity research: Hedonic tone, activation or regulatory focus? Psychological Bulletin, 134, 779 – 806. doi:10.1037/ a0012815 Baas, M., De Dreu, C. K. W., & Nijstad, B. A. (2011). Creative production by angry people peaks early on, decreases over time, and is relatively unstable. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47, 1107–1115. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2011.05.009 Benedek, M., Könen, T., & Neubauer, A. C. (2012). Associative abilities underlying creativity. Psychology of Aesthetic, Creativity, and the Arts, 6, 273–281. Blanton, H., & Christie, C. (2003). Deviance regulation: A theory of action and identity. Review of General Psychology, 7, 115–149. doi:10.1037/ 1089-2680.7.2.115 Blanton, H., & Jaccard, J. (2006). Tests of multiplicative models in psychology: A case study using the unified theory of implicit attitudes, stereotypes, self-esteem, and self-concept. Psychological Review, 113, 155–166. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.113.1.155 Christensen, P. R., Guilford, J. P., & Wilson, R. C. (1957). Relations of creative responses to working time and instructions. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 53, 82– 88. doi:10.1037/h0045461 Cropley, A. J. (2000). Defining and measuring creativity: Are creativity tests worth using? Roeper Review, 23, 72–79. doi:10.1080/ 02783190009554069 Csíkszentmi´halyi, M. (1999). Implications of a systems perspective for the study of creativity. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), Handbook of creativity (pp. 313–335). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Eysenck, H. J. (1995). Genius: The natural history of creativity. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511752247

117

Förster, J., & Dannenberg, L. (2010). GLOMOsys: A systems account of global versus local processing. Psychological Inquiry, 21, 175–197. doi:10.1080/1047840X.2010.487849 Friedman, R. S., & Förster, J. (2001). The effects of promotion and prevention cues on creativity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 1001–1013. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.81.6.1001 Friedman, R. S., & Förster, J. (2005). Effects of motivational cues on perceptual asymmetry: Implications for creativity and analytical problem solving. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 263– 275. Friedman, R. S., & Förster, J. (2002). The influence of approach and avoidance motor actions on creative cognition. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 41–55. doi:10.1006/jesp.2001.1488 Gough, H. G. (1976). Studying creativity by means of word association tests. Journal of Applied Psychology, 61, 348 –353. doi:10.1037/00219010.61.3.348 Higgins, E. T. (1987). Self-discrepancy: A theory relating self and affect. Psychological Review, 94, 319 –340. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.94.3.319 Higgins, E. T. (1998). Promotion and prevention: Regulatory focus as a motivational principle. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol. 30, pp. 1– 46). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. doi:10.1016/S0065-2601(08)60381-0 Higgins, E. T. (2000). Beyond pleasure and pain. In E. T. Higgins & A. W. Kruglanski (Eds.), Motivational science: Social and personality perspectives (pp. 231–255). Philadelphia, PA: Taylor & Francis. Lam, T. W.-H., & Chiu, C.-Y. (2002). The motivational function of regulatory focus in creativity. Journal of Creative Behavior, 36, 138 – 150. doi:10.1002/j.2162-6057.2002.tb01061.x Merten, T. (1993). Word association responses and psychoticism. Personality and Individual Differences, 14, 837– 839. doi:10.1016/01918869(93)90097-M Moretti, M. M., & Higgins, E. (1999). Internal representations of others in self-regulation: A new look at a classic issue. Social Cognition, 17, 186 –208. doi:10.1521/soco.1999.17.2.186 Palermo, D. S., & Jenkins, J. J. (1964). Word association norms: Grade school through college. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Paris, C., Edwards, N., Sheffield, E., Mutinsky, M., Olexa, T., Reilly, S., & Baer, J. (2006). How early school experiences impact creativity. In J. C. Kaufman & J. Baer (Eds.), Creativity and reason in cognitive development (pp. 333–350). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511606915.020 Sternberg, R. J., & Lubart, T. I. (1999). The concept of creativity: Prospects and paradigms. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), Handbook of creativity (pp. 3–15). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Torrance, E. P. (1974). The Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking—Norms: Technical manual research edition—Figural tests, Forms A and B. Princeton, NJ: Personnel Press. Ward, P. B., McConaghy, N., & Catts, S. V. (1991). Word association and measures of psychosis proneness in university students. Personality and Individual Differences, 12, 473– 480. doi:10.1016/01918869(91)90065-J Watson, D., Clark, L. A., & Tellegen, A. (1988). Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: The PANAS scales. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 1063–1070. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.54.6.1063

(Appendix follows)

ZABELINA, FELPS, AND BLANTON

118

Appendix Word Association Test Experimental Primes

This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

Ought 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

Morality Required Ought Obligated Commandment Correct Necessary Code Ethics Should Principles Integrity Virtue

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

Eagle Sell Live Ocean Slowly Blossom Eating Sickness Bed Dark Fingers Hammer Always Long Stand Bread Dream Sweet Needle Easier Spider Heavy

Ideal Achieve Victory Ideal Attain Greatness Fame Win Accomplish Fantastic Prevail Excel Shine Merit

Control Whistle Cabbage Word Kittens Run Although Stomach Square Sell Then Memory Cars Doctor

Assessment Words and Modal Associations Bird Buy Die Water Fast Flowers Food Health Sleep Light Hand Nail Never Short Sit Butter Sleep Sour Thread Harder Web Light

Received May 13, 2011 Revision received August 7, 2012 Accepted August 20, 2012 䡲