Does reflecting one's own ideas affect creativity? Metacognitive monitoring activation shows no effect on divergent thinking

To succeed in creative challenges, people need the ability to monitor their performance and adequately discern the creative quality of their ideas. These abilities are an essential component of creative metacognitive monitoring (CMC-M). Idea evaluation, referred to as CMC-M at the response level, enables people to make informed decisions regarding the dismissal, elaboration, or sharing of ideas. However, it is not clear how creative metacognitive monitoring influences people's creative performance during the ideation process. Therefore, we conducted a preregistered online study that examined how different approaches to activating CMC-M impact the quality (originality) and quantity (fluency) of creative performance. Participants ( N = 440) performed three divergent thinking tasks, and were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions (between-subject design), either constantly assessing the creativity of their ideas immediately after generating them, assessing their ideas after each task was completed, or simply generating ideas without being prompted to assess them. Analyses revealed no differences between groups in the quality or quantity of creative performance; neither approach to assessing one's own ideas systematically affected originality or fluency. In addition, experimentally activating metacognitive monitoring did not affect the self-assessment of creative ideas, measured by discernment and calibration. From a methodological perspective, this study provides preliminary empirical evidence suggesting that when conducting experimental studies on creative metacognition, different forms of short-term creative metacognitive monitoring activation can be effectively used for research purposes. Metacognitive monitoring is key to effectively managing our cognitive processes, forming the bedrock of any learning experience. Given the open-ended nature of creative tasks and the boundless possibilities in creative thinking, monitoring plays a crucial role in managing the creative process. Assessing own ideas, a part of metacognitive monitoring, is ingrained in the educational process. Both students and teachers need to constantly evaluate their ideas before putting them into action or presenting them to others. This study explores whether encouraging reflection on the quality of one's ideas at different times during the ideation process affects creativity. The results suggest that enforcing the reflection about idea quality—right after an idea, or between tasks—doesn't impact divergent thinking performance, nor the accuracy in self-assessment. This is an important outcome for crafting educational feedback, encouraging self-evaluation of creative work, and potentially guiding interventions aimed at supporting creativity. • The idea evaluation is a form of creative metacognitive monitoring (CMC-M) at the response level. • Two specific ways of activating metacognitive monitoring (constant assessment and assessment after task completion) result in comparable scores for ideas' originality and fluency. • Insights into potential avenues for future experimental studies in the realm of creative metacognition.