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Goal Structures in Creative Motivation
Author(s) -
MEHR DAVID G.,
SHAVER PHILLIP R.
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
the journal of creative behavior
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.896
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 2162-6057
pISSN - 0022-0175
DOI - 10.1002/j.2162-6057.1996.tb00761.x
Subject(s) - creativity , psychology , product (mathematics) , new product development , cognitive psychology , social psychology , marketing , business , mathematics , geometry
Our culture, as reflected in the creativity literature, has focused on products and productivity. We know relatively little about motives related to other creativity goals or to multiple‐goal structures. We studied differences in goal structures between high and low creative individuals, across creative and routine situations, in four categories: person, process, situation, product. Creativity potential was assessed with a composite of four scales. Goal structures in creative and routine situations were assessed with a self‐report measure. Nearly all subjects used all four goal categories to describe their motivation in both situations. Only about 34% of subjects' motivation was product‐related. There were several differences between high and low creatives: (a) high creatives made more use of the full range of goal categories; (b) in creative situations, high creatives put more emphasis on person and less on product; (c) they also put less emphasis on product than low creatives did in either situation; (d) high creatives reported significantly higher motivation than low creatives in both situations.