Investigation of the effect of creative examples on performance.

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of creative examples, ordinary examples, and no examples on creative performance. Participants were 102 9th, 10th, and 11 th grade students from a Midwestern high school. Participants were divided into three groups and presented with a creative drawing task. Each group was shown either creative, ordinary, or no examples of solutions to the stated task prior to beginning their own drawing. Three judges scored each product independently using a novelty rating scale. Results indicated that participants who were exposed to creative examples before the task produced drawings judged to be more creative than participants exposed to ordinary and no examples. Specifically, drawings produced in the creative examples group were significantly more creative than drawings from the ordinary example group. This suggests showing examples before a task has both facilitating and constraining effects on creative performance. No gender differences were found for creative performance.