Goutlet-Pelletier et al. (2023) investigated the relationship between academic motivation, openness to experience, and creative abilities in order to fill a research gap in the literature on the interplay between academic motivation and creativity. They used subjective and objective (divergent thinking) measures in their research. 

Goulet-Pelletier et al.’s (2023) study included 279 undergraduate students, ages 17-54, from a Canadian university. The participants completed a questionnaire that evaluated their motivation, creativity, and personality, as well as a task that measured their creative abilities, such as divergent thinking (i.e. capacity to generate unique tasks or solutions), and their self-rated creativity in school. To assess their divergent thinking (DT), the participants were required to generate as many uses as possible for three items: a newspaper, a brick, and things that make noise. The researchers used the 50-item Kaufman Domains of Creativity scale (Kaufman, 2012) to investigate the participants' beliefs about their own creativity. Goulet-Pelletier et al. (2023) found that individuals who were more open to experience had greater intrinsic motivation. They also found that intrinsic academic motivation was associated with greater self-ratings of creativity but not better performance on the DT tasks. This suggests that other types of motivation, such as the motivation to explore, may be a better predictor of DT abilities. This study also found that higher controlled academic motivation (i.e. students’ drive for success or avoidance of negative outcomes) and motivation (unrelated to school activities) were associated with lower divergent thinking abilities. 

Goutlet-Pelletier et al.’s (2023) study can support educators to better understand the nuances of students’ academic creativity and the factors that contribute to it. It also paves the way for future EPIC studies to examine the relationship between motivation and students’ response to failure. For example, EPIC can investigate the potential for more intrinsically motivated students’ to perceive themselves as creative in coping with failure and, in turn, demonstrate greater capacity for persistence. 

If you are interested in delving deeper into this article, check out this link:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1041608023000717

This post is written by Eliza Hong. 

References:

Goulet-Pelletier, J. C., Gaudreau, P., & Cousineau, D. (2023). Do students motivated to learn have better creative abilities?. Learning and Individual Differences, 106, 102327.