Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1994. Vol.66, No. 6, 1116-1127 Copyright 1994 by the American Psychological Association, Inc 0022-3514/94/53-00 Does Reward Increase or Decrease Creativity? Robert Eisenberger and Michael Selbst Two studies involving 504 school children investigated why behaviorists and cognitively oriented investigators have come to opposite conclusions about reward's effects on creativity. A monetary reward for a high degree of divergent thought in 1 task (word construction) increased children's subsequent originality in a different task (picture drawing). The same reward, made contingent on a low degree of divergent thought, reduced this generalized originality. These effects were eliminated by using a large reward and were restored by keeping the large reward out of the children's sight. The results suggest that reward training increases generalized creativity when (a) a high degree of diver- gent thought is required and (b) the reward is presented in not too salient a fashion. The findings are consistent with a 2-factor interpretation of rewarded creativity effects that incorporates learned industriousness and selective attention. Creative performance, involving novel behavior that meets a standard of quality or utility (e.g., Guilford, 1968; Maltzman, 1960; Shalley, 1991; Wallach & Kogan, 1965; Winston & Baker, 1985), is conducive to success in various endeavors. For exam- ple, developing the habit of approaching academic tasks inno- vatively helps students to become self-directed, active learners (Torrance, 1965). The continual application of creative thought to new problems contributes to notable scientists' multiple dis- coveries, as illustrated by the careers of Einstein, Feynman, von Neumann, and Szilard (Clark, 1972; Gleick, 1992; Lanouette, 1992; Macrae, 1992). And an innovative approach to the daily mix of unforeseen business problems and opportunities enables employees to contribute more substantially to the success of or- ganizations (George & Brief, 1992). Divergent thinking, an important component of creative per- formance, involves the production of varied responses to a problem or a question that has multiple alternative solutions (Guilford, 1968; Runco, 1991; Winston & Baker, 1985). Ac- cording to general behavior theory, divergent thinking, as any discriminable response class, should be enhanced by systematic reward (cf. Maltzman, 1960; Pryor, Haag, & O'Reilly, 1969; Skinner, 1953; Torrance, 1970; Winston & Baker, 1985). Con- sistent with this view, a review of 20 behaviorally oriented stud- ies concluded there was compelling evidence that reward effectively enhances divergent thought (Winston & Baker, 1985). For example, when Goetz and Baer (1973) gave pre- school children verbal approval for each new pattern they cre- ated with a set of blocks, novel patterns were continually pro- duced. When approval was next made contingent on repetition Robert Eisenberger, Department of Psychology, University of Dela- ware; Michael Selbst, School Psychology Program, Temple University. We thank the reviewers for many insightful suggestions to strengthen this article. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Rob- ert Eisenberger, Department of Psychology, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware 19716. Electronic mail may be sent to bbd32591 @u- delvm.udel.edu. of previously constructed patterns, novelty decreased, only to be restored when new patterns were again rewarded. When Glover and Gary (1976) asked fourth- andfifth-gradestudents to suggest a variety of uses for common items, and used a token economy to reward the children for doing so, the novelty of stated uses increased. The development of a generalized orientation toward diver- gent thinking has been regarded by behaviorists as an important possible consequence of rewarding such behavior. In a series of studies, Maltzman (1960) gave college students repeated pre- sentations of a list of words and instructed the students to give a free association to each stimulus word. The students received verbal approval for generating a new word every time they re- ceived a repeated presentation of a stimulus word. This proce- dure increased the subsequent originality of uses that the stu- dents gave for common physical objects. Funderbunk (1977) re- ported that giving children verbal approval for constructing novel drawings similarly increased the originality of uses the children later gave for common objects. Glover (1980) found that the originality of written essays produced by college stu- dents was increased by preliminary training in which the stu- dents received points toward their course grade for generating multiple solutions to everyday life problems and for supplying unusual uses for common objects. As with other response classes, the generalized effects of reward for divergent thought have been found to increase with the similarity between the training task and the transfer task (Goetz, 1982, 1989). On the basis of behavior-analytic approaches and expectancy theories, and empirical evidence such as that reported above, the use of rewards to promote creativity has been advocated for business (e.g., Edwards, 1989; Farr & Ford, 1990) and educa- tion (e.g., Funderbunk, 1977; Goetz, 1989). The strongly held view by many researchers and practitioners that reward is a use- ful tool for increasing creativity in applied settings is illustrated by Torrance's comment that he had seen "excitingly original thinking when the conditions had rewarded such achievement" (Torrance, 1965, p. 131) and by Davis' recommendation that "a creative atmosphere rewards creativity and helps it become habitual" (Davis, 1986, p. 208). 1116 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.