Kreativitet och offentlig självmedvetenhet : En experimentell sutdie om hur offentlig självmedvetenhet påverkar kreativitet

Sammanfattning: The current study aimed to test the public self-consciousness impact on creative performance. An experimental design was used in which 40 participants were randomly assigned to two groups, one of which was the experimental group and the other was the control group. A mirror was used in the experimental group to induce public self-consciousness among the participants while they performed creativity tests. A consequence test was used where the participant had to give suggestions for the given scenario "What would happen if everyone became blind?" which was then measured in the number of proposals (fluency). In the second part of the experiment, participants were instructed to produce a greeting card using materials they were assigned. The greeting cards came to be judged on the aspects; novelty/originality and creativity. The number of used materials was measured as the variable flexibility. In the control group, the same creativity tests were performed but with the mirror covered up, which therefore could not induce public self-consciousness. The results showed that public self-consciousness had no effect on creative performance which differs from the previous research. The results also found that there was a censoring effect among participants in both groups, which means that the participants chose to censor some suggestions by not writing them down on paper. The study has led to the conclusion that self-consciousness does not at all affect the creative performance, which is an important contribution to the previous research which has claimed that self-consciousness to have inhibitory effects on creativity. Another important conclusion is that creativity can be measured in both censored ideas and ideas that are written which future research on creativity should take note on.