Head Trips

If your work is interesting and enjoyable, odds are you'll crank out an imaginative product. But throw in a judging look, a competitive situation, and creativity takes a dive. At least that's what years of research have found.

Now psychologists say that whether a dip in inventiveness goes hand in hand with a watchful eye (or other constraints) depends on how creative a person is. For some folks, knowing that you're being evaluated can actually boost original thought.

A research team led by Harvard creativity guru Teresa Amabile, Ph.D., asked undergrads with varying degrees of writing talent to pen a story about being a particular age. Half were told their tale would be judged by others; the rest were told it didn't matter how well they did. All the stories were rated for creativity.

What the researchers found surprised them. The threat of evaluation didn't squelch imaginative thinking across the board. Highly skilled writers wrote less creative stories under pressure of criticism, but their less-skilled classmates were actually more inventive when judged.

Why the difference? According to Dean Whitney, a research associate at Harvard, the interplay between a person's skill level and motivation may be the key: "At high skill levels, you're intrinsically motivated to write, and you'll be really creative." For these folks, performance expectations take attention away from the joy that usually goes with writing, and it puts it on the fact of evaluation. Creativity suffers.

Writers who aren't very good, however, generally have low motivation to begin with. But the threat of evaluation bumps up their inspiration a bit, explains Whitney. "Although it's external motivation, it's better than none."

PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): The watchful eye affects creativity