Promoting Children's Creativity: Effects of Competition, Self-Esteem, and Immunization.

The effects of reward and intrinsic motivation training on the creativity and self-esteem of elementary school students were assessed. Third-grade children (N = 103) participated in an intrinsic motivation or control training session, completed the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory before and after training, and participated in a collage-making task. The children were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 groups: intrinsic motivation training/reward, intrinsic motivation training/no reward, control training/reward, and control training/no reward. Two sets of judges—3 artists and 21 schoolteachers—rated the creativity of the collages using a consensual assessment technique. Creativity ratings of artist judges revealed a main effect of reward, and ratings by the teachers revealed a marginally significant effect of training. No significant changes in self-esteem scores were found. These results were compared to earlier findings that intrinsic motivation training reverses the negative effect of reward on creativity. Qu...

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