Motivation and creativity: The relationship between achievement goals and creativity in writing
Archer, Jennifer
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Permalink
https://hdl.handle.net/2142/23308
Description
Title
Motivation and creativity: The relationship between achievement goals and creativity in writing
Author(s)
Archer, Jennifer
Issue Date
1989
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Maehr, Martin L.
Department of Study
Education
Discipline
Education
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Education, Language and Literature
Psychology, Social
Education, Educational Psychology
Psychology, Experimental
Language
eng
Abstract
Two studies were conducted to investigate the relationship between motivational goals and the creativity of short stories and poems. Creativity of the stories and poems was measured using a consensual technique based on independent assessments of a group of expert judges. The first study, with 121 undergraduates as subjects, considered individual differences in orientation toward mastery and performance goals and creativity in writing short stories. The second study was experimental in design, with situational cues manipulated to induce the adoption of the desired goal before students wrote two short poems. The subjects of the study were 52 students of junior high school age. The first study failed to demonstrate the hypothesized relationship between creativity and orientation toward a mastery goal. The results of the second study did demonstrate that students encouraged to adopt a mastery goal wrote poems judged more creative than the poems of students encouraged to adopt a performance goal. This result must be accepted with caution, however, because students' reactions to writing the poem did not match those which would be predicted by achievement goal theory. The relationship between achievement goals and creativity failed to emerge when students wrote a second poem, after they had received an evaluation of their first poem. It is argued that the receipt of evaluation triggered the adoption of a performance goal in students who were encouraged to adopt a mastery goal. Because of this, they might not have maintained a mastery orientation as they wrote their second poem.
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