What factors make people more creative? One school of thought is that people are most creative when they are comfortable. For example, people and companies are often more likely to take risks when times are good and there is a cushion to fall back on if a creative venture fails. On the other hand, we also believe that "Necessity is the mother of invention," and so the need to avoid a real problem may spur people to be more innovative in their thinking.
They can't both be right, can they?
Perhaps they can. Recent research that I have done in collaboration with Todd Maddox suggests that the degree of creativity you exhibit depends both on your own motivational stance toward the world and the rewards and punishments the world is giving you. Like the findings in the previous post on creativity, this is complex, so hang on.
At any given moment, you might generally be focused on approaching positive states of the world or avoiding negative states. In creative situations, you might be trying to develop an innovation to bring about some new positive state for people. For example, the iPod is a device that is designed to enhance the pleasure people get from the world. So, this is a general orientation toward approaching positive states. Of course, you might be trying to develop an innovation that avoids a current negative state. Developing a drug to cure a fatal disease is an example of an innovation that is focused on avoiding negative states.
At any given moment, the world itself also has potential rewards and punishments in it. As one example, in good economic times, employees working for a company developing innovative products might look forward to healthy bonuses for good performance. They are being rewarded. In bad economic times, employees may be more concerned about losing their jobs, and so they are navigating through an environment that has lots of punishments in it.
We find that people are most likely to be creative when the overall focus on approach or avoidance matches (or fits with) the specific rewards or punishments in the world. That is:
Approach orientation/Rewards in the world: More creative
Approach orientation/Punishments in the world: Less creative
Avoidance orientation/Rewards in the world: Less creative
Avoidance orientation/Punishments in the world: More creative
We find this willingness to be creative in a variety of situations ranging from the ability to learn new rules in the world and the willingness to explore new options when making decisions to people's ability to solve difficult creative tasks like the Remote Associates Test. (In the Remote Associates Test, people are given three words like ENVY GOLF BEANS, and they are asked to find a word that goes with each of these three words to form a phrase.) A fit between a person's overall orientation and the specific rewards or punishments of the task made people better able to solve the hardest of these problems that we gave.
So, what does this mean for creativity? You can be creative both in situations where you are trying to focus on bringing about a better state of the world (approach) and also in situations where you are trying to avoid a negative state (avoidance). To do this, you need to match the available rewards and punishments in the environment to the overall orientation. If you are trying to approach positive states in general, you will be more creative when you can pick up rewards along the way than when you have to avoid punishments. If you are trying to avoid negative states in general, you will be more creative when you have to avoid punishments along the way than when you are trying to pick up rewards.
Oh, and by the way, the answer to the Remote Associates Test example that I gave earlier is GREEN.
