Question

Enhancing creativity Do external rewards—things like money, praise, fame, and grades —promote creativity? Researcher Teresa Amabile recruited 47 experienced creative writers who were college students and divided them at random into two groups. The students in one group were given a list of statements about external reasons (E) for writing, such as public recognition, making money, or pleasing their parents. Students in the other group were given a list of statements about internal reasons (I) for writing, such as expressing yourself and enjoying wordplay. Both groups were then instructed to write a poem about laughter. Each student’s poem was rated separately by 12 different poets using a creativity scale. 26 These ratings were averaged to obtain an overall creativity score for each poem. Parallel dotplots of the two groups’ creativity scores are shown here.

Part (a). Is the variability in creativity scores similar or different for the two groups? Justify your answer.

Part (b). Do the data suggest that external rewards promote creativity? Justify your answer.

Short answer

Part (a) Similar

Part (b) No

Step-by-step solution

Part (a) Step 1. Given information. 

The students in one group were given a list of statements about external reasons (E) for writing, such as public recognition, making money, or pleasing their parents. Students in the other group were given a list of statements about internal reasons (I) for writing, such as expressing yourself and enjoying wordplay

Part (a) Step 2.Is the variability in creativity scores for the two groups similar.

The dotplot shows that the average rating for internal rewards ranges from 12 to 30.

The average rating for external rewards appears to range from 5 to 24 in the dotplot.

We then notice that there are roughly 20 integers in the range of the average ratings, implying that the two groups have roughly the same variability.

As a results:

It is similar

Part (b) Step 1. Given information. 

The students in one group were given a list of statements about external reasons (E) for writing, such as public recognition, making money, or pleasing their parents.

Part (b) Step 2. According to the data, external rewards do not promote creativity.

In the given dotplot, we notice that the distribution of average ratings for internal rewards is more to the right than the distribution of average ratings for external rewards.

As a result, the average rating for internal rewards is higher than the average rating for external rewards.

This, however, implied that external rewards do not appear to promote creativity (as internal rewards appear to promote creativity as they tend to have higher average ratings).