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Self-Evaluation and Creativity

Adelphi University

Stephen G. Harkins

Northeastern University

Lack of evaluation potential leads to the social loafing effect, the finding that participants working together expend less effort than participants working alone. In 1988 Bartis, Szymanski and Harkins replicated this effect, showing that the lack of potential for evaluation by the experimenter led participants to generate fewer uses for a common object when they were asked to generate as many uses as possible. However, their research also demonstrated that this lack of evaluation potential facilitated creativity. Szymanski and Harkins have previously shown that the potential for self-evaluation has the same effect on loafing as experimenter evaluation. When participants can self-evaluate, the loafing effect is eliminated. In the present study, the effect of the potential for self-evaluation on creativity was tested. In a replication of the Bartis et al. study, subjects were asked either to generate as many uses as possible for a common object or to generate uses that were as creative as possible. The results demonstrated that the potential for self-evaluation undermined creativity and facilitated productivity of performance.

Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 18, No. 3, 259-265 (1992)
DOI: 10.1177/0146167292183001


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