Effect of Expected Rewards on Children's Creativity

This study examined the effect of expected rewards on children's creativity. Sixty-one female gymnasts (ages 4-17) were randomly assigned to a no-reward or expected reward condition. All participants completed both a training task that required divergent thinking (generating themes for a gymnastics gala) and a transfer task (using circles to make pictures). The reward contingency was in effect only during the training task. Creativity was assessed by (a) consensual judgment of 5 raters and (b) determining the statistical rarity of a given response for this sample of participants. Results indicated that rewards lead younger children to generate less appropriate themes on the training task and children of all ages to draw somewhat less creative pictures on the transfer task. It was also found that the consensual judgment measure of creativity was more sensitive to the age of children than was the rarity measure.