How do intrinsic and extrinsic motivation affect creativity?

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2021-05-30 22:30:06

Creative problem solving is needed in many modern jobs nowadays. Being able to think out of the box and create novel solutions is very important when being a Software Engineer, Designer, Researcher, and so on.

These results are very much influenced by the type of motivation driving one's work. A lot of research has been conducted on how extrinsic and intrinsic motivation boost one's performance to come up with creative solutions. There have been different results showing both, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, can increase or decrease performance.

These results do not only come up because of the problem's complexity but also due to different psychological views of human nature influencing the experimental setup and ultimately the outcome of an experiment.

Arguing upon theoretical knowledge from a behavioristic view and looking at positive reinforcement learning, external stimuli have a positive influence on one's performance. The person receiving the reward will associate that stimulus with the desired action and do it more often which is ultimately in favor of extrinsic motivation. When talking about external stimuli we need to differentiate between material rewards such as money and social rewards such as appreciation and recognition or even a promotion.

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