Necessity is the mother of invention: Avoidance motivation stimulates creativity through cognitive effort.

Abstract

Compared with approach motivation, avoidance motivation has often been related to reduced creativity because it evokes a relatively inflexible processing style. This finding seems inconsistent with the dual pathway to creativity model, which poses that both flexible and persistent processing styles can result in creative output. Reconciling these inconsistencies, the authors hypothesized that avoidance-motivated individuals are not unable to be creative, but they have to compensate for their inflexible processing style by effortful and controlled processing. Results of 5 experiments revealed that when individuals are avoidance motivated, they can be as creative as when they are approach motivated, but only when creativity is functional for goal achievement, motivating them to exert the extra effort (Experiments 1-4). The authors found that approach motivation was associated with cognitive flexibility and avoidance motivation with cognitive persistence (Experiment 1), that creative tasks are perceived to be more difficult by avoidance- than by approach-motivated individuals, and that avoidance-motivated individuals felt more depleted after creative performance (Experiment 2a, 2b, and 3). Finally, creative performance of avoidance-motivated individuals suffered more from a load on working memory (Study 4). The present results suggest that for people focusing on avoiding negative outcomes, creative performance is difficult and depleting, and they only pay these high cognitive costs when creativity helps achieving their goals.

Improving your creative potential without awareness: Overinclusive thinking training

“…Retaining novel information in creative thinking and discriminating between task-relevant and task-irrelevant information are two crucial WM processes (Unsworth & Engle, 2007); therefore, WM capacity is essential to creative thinking. The empirical study conducted by De Dreu et al(2012) reported that when participants were asked to complete each RAT item, they were also asked to remember two (low load) or five (high load) digit strings. After completing the RAT items, the participants were required to recall all the strings.…”

The Multi-level Homologous Logic and Prospective Research Concept on the Effects of Creativity and Ambidextrous Leadership on Innovative Performance

“…That is the reason why emotional aspect is a constituent in the linear/nonlinear thinking construct. Moreover, goal orientation has been proposed as a moderator of the effects of mood on creativity (De Dreu, Baas & Nijstad, 2008;Roskes, De Dreu & Nijstad, 2012). Similarly, imagination on one hand constitutes a facilitator of linear thinking (reproductive imagination) and on the other hand, it is focused on mental processes within an inner world (creative imagination) (e.g.…”

The combined effects of relationship conflict and the relational self on creativity

“…We focus on cognitive persistence as the underlying mechanism, because the literature on creativity has documented how this variable accounts for creativity in the context of unfulfilled goals (De Dreu et al, 2008Dietrich, 2004;Evans, 2003;Finke, 1996;Sagiv, Arieli, Goldenberg, & Goldschmidt, 2010;Simonton, 1997). An unfulfilled goal activates a mental process that enables individuals to block distracting thoughts, thereby concentrating intensely on the task at hand and exploring a smaller number of categories in depth to fully understand the problematic situation (Dreisbach & Goschke, 2004;Koch, Holland, & Van Knippenberg, 2008;Roskes et al, 2012). By enabling this concerted focus on a situation, and a systematic exploration of associated problems, cognitive persistence fosters creativity.…”

“…Engaging in in-depth and detailed thinking (cognitive persistence) is not necessarily synonymous with deriving the most appropriate solution (convergent thinking) or generating diverse ideas (divergent thinking). However, cognitive persistence is a precursor of convergent and divergent thinking and, thus, of creativity: The more thoroughly and deeply people think, the more they are likely to generate appropriate solutions or diverse ideas, demonstrating greater creativity (Boden, 1998;De Dreu et al, 2008Dietrich, 2004;Finke, 1996;Roskes et al, 2012;Simonton, 1997).…”

“…Although relationship-focused goal pursuit is unique to the relational self (Andersen & Chen, 2002;Chen et al, 2006;Cross et al, 2000), the underlying logic that goal frustration facilitates cognitive persistence and creativity (De Dreu et al, 2008;Nijstad et al, 2010;Roskes et al, 2012) should apply to any goal and its associated conflict situation. Thus, we expect this logic to apply to process conflict relating to disagreements on how task accomplishment should proceed (Jehn, 1995(Jehn, , 1997.…”