Effects of Instructional Set on Production of Creative Responses

Sumn~ary.-Two groups of 40 highly creative Ss and 2 groups (ns = 40) who scored low in creativity on the Revised Art Scale of the Welsh Figure Preference Test were given the tcst again under standard instructions or a set to be creative. Highly creative Ss remained high but did not improve, low initial scorers increased creativity scores under the set to be creative. Analysis showed level of creativity and instructions as well as their interaction contributed to total variance. There has been relatively little investigation of the role that experimentally induced set may play in creative performance. A pair of studies by Datta (2, 3) produced variable findings. The first study showed that instructions to be creative increased the test scores of scientists found initially to be more creative and depressed the scores of those found initially to be less creative. In the second experiment, these results were replicated for Ss rated above average in creativity but there was no depressive effect for Ss rated below average in creativity. One possible reason for the difference in findings is that the two studies utilized Ss from different occupational groups; the second study involved engineers-craftsmen. The present .experiment mas designed to help clarify the relationships between inscructions and creative production in a test situation. It was hypothesized that: (a) both level of creativity of the Ss and instructions given them would significantly affect creative performance; (b) instructions to be creative would significantly increase the creative performance of highly creative individuals but not significantly affect the performance of less creative Ss. Method.-The Revised Art Scale (5) of the Welsh Figure Preference Test (4) was selected as the measure of creativity for several reasons: (a) the scale discriminates well among people who are and are not consensually designated as creative (5); (b) it has the advantage over the Barton-Welsh Art Scale (1) of being corrected for acquiescence although these two measures of creativity correlate .85; (c) the Revised Art Scale contains nonverbal, somewhat ambiguous stimuli and therefore should be more resistant to faking. The standard scale was administered to a preliminary group of 160 students from which the top and bottom quartiles were selected by obtained scores. These two groups of 40 Ss each comprised the high and low creativity groups respectively. One week after the initial administration, Ss of both groups were readministered the scale after teing randomly assigned to one of mo conditions: standard instructions, as in the first testing, or inscrucdons to "Be creative." Thus, four groups were formed: (a) high creativity with standard instructions (HiC-S); (b) high creativity with instructions to be crrative (MC-C); (c) low creativity with standard instructions (LOGS); and. (d) low creativity with instmaions to be creative (LoC-C) . Results.--t tests demonstrated no significant differences between the mean initial scores of either the two highly creative groups or the two low groups. The means and standard deviations of the four experimental groups were as follows: LoC-S: M = 13.35, SD = 5.96; LoC-C: M = 43.80. SD = 12.01; HiC-S: M = 47.90, SD = 5.92; HiC-C: M = 48.04, SD = 6.59 (ns = 20). A two-way analysis of variance indicated a significant main effect for Level of