How do out-group and in-group competitions influence idea generation in creative problem solving?

Previous investigations of the effect of competition on creativity have not taken into account whether competitors belong to the same group as participants (in-group competition) or whether they are members of an outside group (out-group competition). However, these two types of competition affect participants' intrinsic motivation in different ways. Therefore, the present study aimed to identify the extent to which performing against in-group or out-group competitors might be beneficial or detrimental with regard to creativity and how these social contexts modulate motivation. Accordingly, participants completed a creative task as well as a series of questionnaires after being assigned to an in-group competition condition (which featured a competition with other participants from the same university who were present in the experimental room), an out-group competition condition (which featured a competition with other participants from another university) or a control condition. The major findings that emerged from this investigation were the following: 1) out-group competition is beneficial for creativity, leading to higher expansivity scores than were observed among the control and in-group competition groups; 2) in-group competition has no significant effect on creativity; and 3) the influence of competition on motivation is insufficient to explain these results.