Social Psychology
A Montuori, California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, CA, USA
ã 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Glossary
Extrinsic motivation Being moved to perform a task
from the outside, because of external rewards such as
money or fame.
Intrinsic motivation Being moved to perform a task from
the inside, because it is a source of passion and gives
pleasure and satisfaction.
Labeling theory The view that a phenomenon is not
intrinsic to an act or person, but a label given to that act or
person by a majority or a significant group of ‘gatekeepers’
(e.g., art critics, gallery owners).
Methodological holism An approach to research that takes
the social system as the unit of analysis.
Methodological individualism An approach to research
that takes the individual as the unit of analysis.
Expanding PPP: Person, Process, Product
The research on creativity that emerged in the 1950s and 1960s
was initially organized around 3Ps: Person, Process, and
Product. In the images of creativity popularized by Hollywood,
the lone tormented genius is the exemplar of the creative
person, the comic book image of the creative process is the
light-bulb going on over a person’s head accompanied by a
cry of Eureka!, and the Product is inevitably the earthshattering
discovery in the sciences or the sublime creation in the arts that
will stand the test of time. In all three popular images and in
the initial research that started in the 1950s the unit of analysis
in thinking about creativity was the individual. Academically,
the focus was predominantly on psychodynamic, personality,
humanistic, and cognitive processes. Fueled in part by the
context of the Cold War, considerable emphasis was placed
on finding the best and brightest, and the selection of gifted
individuals.
The PPP model meant that by definition creativity was a
function of an individual. Making the individual – the Person –
the unit of analysis lead to an intensive study of the creative
person, but it also meant that the study of creative collaborations,
groups, and environments was almost entirely excluded.
Creativity was conceived to be something that occurred only in
individual persons. The creative process was considered to be
fundamentally intra-psychic.
Social psychologists stress that having an idea is not enough,
and that the role of the environment has to be included in order
to provide a fuller understanding of the dynamics of creativity.
Motivation, a key dimension of creativity, can be inhibited by
certain kinds of social environment. The study of the environment
therefore became a new and important dimension which
found particular resonance in management and organization
studies where, in the 1990s, innovation was becoming an
increasingly important topic. If the environment in a group,
organization, or even a country was not conducive to new
ideas, then no new ideas might ever become a reality even
with a high number of creative individuals present.
Social psychologists also address the question of the creative
product. They point out that calling something a ‘creative’
product involves a judgment. This judgment has to be made by
a person or group of persons, and involves a community of
‘gatekeepers,‘ such as art critics or the editors of scientific
journals. It is therefore important to understand who makes
those judgments, how, and why.
The 3Ps, Person, Process, and Product represented the Who,
How, and What of creativity. Who is or can be creative? How
does creativity manifest? What is considered creative? Social
Psychology was the first to begin to challenge this tripartite
definition systematically from within the dominant discipline
studying creativity, psychology. As a more ‘social’ approach has
been introduced into the research, the ‘Who’ has begun to
include groups, collaborations, and social systems. The creative
process, the ‘How,’ is no longer confined to an individual intrapsychic
process but may be seen to be emerging in the interactions
between two or more individuals, and stretch from the
conditions receding the emergence of an idea to the actual
performance or creation of the product. Not just writing a
song, or play, but performing it, with all the complex factors
that involves.
The ‘What’ of creativity, is, according to Social Psychologists,
a decision and judgment made about a product. There is
nothing intrinsically creative about any product, process, or
person. In order to be creative, something has to be deemed
to be so by human beings. This perspective, which in sociology
dates back at least to labeling theory, had not been explicitly
articulated in the context of creativity research. It has been the
source some considerable controversy.
Today there are at least 4Ps in the study of creativity, with
the 4th P representing ‘Press’ or the social environment of
creativity. Other Ps have been proposed, including Persuasion,
which also highlights the importance of the relationship
between the creative person, the creative idea, and the environment.
As our understanding of the complexity of creativity
grows, Social Psychology’s key contribution has been to highlight
the importance of the 4th P.
Motivation and Environment
Social Psychology has long studied the social influences on
motivation. In the context of creativity research, this has also
proved to be a valuable entry point. What is the relationship
between creativity, motivation, and the environment?
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To be motivated, means to be moved to do something.
Unless we are moved to do something, it is unlikely we will
be creative in doing that task. Motivation can therefore be
thought of as a person’s attitude toward a task, which ranges
from being highly motivated and therefore wanting to move
towards a task, to being highly unmotivated to do it, and
wanting to move away from it, presumably as fast as possible.
Research indicates that intrinsic motivation is a key factor in
creativity. Intrinsic means ‘from within.’ Intrinsic motivation
literally means that we are moved from within to do something.
The intrinsically motivating factors can include fascination
for the subject, enjoyment while performing the task, or a
feeling of accomplishment. Intrinsically motivated people
enjoy what they do, and they do so because they find the task
itself rewarding. The journey is the reward.
Extrinsic motivation is motivation that comes from external
sources rather than the pleasure of the task itself. Financial
incentives and social approval are examples of extrinsic motivation.
Extrinsically motivated people do the task because
there is an external reward attached to it. The task itself is not
what they enjoy; it is the reward (financial or otherwise) that
provides the appeal.
There is ample evidence to suggest that people are much
more creative when they are intrinsically motivated, rather
than when they are driven to perform by extrinsic motivation.
This finding makes intuitive sense: performing a task because it
provides personal enjoyment or a basic feeling of gratification
is a very different type of motivation than doing something
because of external pressures or extrinsic rewards, or ‘just to
make a buck.’ Yet, using rewards to manipulate or control
behavior, achieving an expected reward, meeting deadlines,
winning or competing, or managerial edicts are all frequently
used motivators.
A particularly interesting implication of this research of
course is that whether a job is intrinsically interesting to us or
not is on some level a personal choice. This choice as to how
we view a task or job reflects a subjective dimension of work.
We can choose to find our particular task boring, or we can
find something fascinating about it. Even dishwashing can
be interesting if performed with certain states of mind. It is
possible to focus not on the nature of the task itself (dishwashing
does not strike most people as an intrinsically
fascinating task), but on the nature of our awareness while
we perform a task. If we are not interested in a task, we tend
not to do such a good job. If our interest is in doing a good
job, and working at our peak regardless of the nature of the
task, we can actually ‘be moved’ by the task. It is also possible
to reframe the task at hand, from one that is desperately
boring to one that is potentially exciting – finding a new
way of performing the task, or finding something that we
can learn while we do the task.
Intrinsic motivation is diminished when external rewards
are used to make people perform. The presence of such extrinsic
factors alters peoples’ perceptions or reasons for engaging in
the task. Creativity will be inhibited if the perception is that a
task is being performed for the purposes of getting a reward,
rather than because of intrinsic interest in the task itself. This
does not mean that creativity requires the total absence of
rewards or recognition for good work, simply that external
reward should not be the main motivation.
Expanding the Creative Process: The Where and
How of Creativity
When approached in a wider perspective, the creative process
can be seen as a phenomenon that emerges in many different
contexts and in different ways. Even in the arts and sciences,
historically the privileged contexts for creativity, there are many
different ways in which creativity manifests. The novelist at his
desk, a scientist in her lab, a jazz band performing together on
stage, and a large crew working on a motion picture. Most of
the eminent creative individuals studied by psychologists did
their work essentially alone. They were scientists, novelists,
mathematicians, painters, and poets. Poets, novelists, and
painters can do their work almost entirely on their own, if we
limit our scope to the production of the actual poem, rather
than its distribution and dissemination. But what of the
performing arts, where theater or musical groups have to
work together to create a performance, or songwriting teams
or softwa