Mental contrasting turns positive feedback on creative potential into successful performance

a r t i c l e i n f o In two studies employing a creativity test (i.e., solving insight problems), we hypothesized and observed that mental contrasting of a desired future with present reality (Oettingen, Pak, & Schnetter, 2001) transforms positive feedback into strong performance. Participants received positive or moderate bogus feedback on their creative potential and then engaged either in mental contrasting, indulging in the desired future, dwelling on present reality, or irrelevant contrasting with respect to taking a creativity test. Mental contrasting participants who received positive feedback performed better than those who received moderate feedback. They also performed better than indulging, dwelling, and irrelevant contrasting participants, regardless of the feedback received. By manipulating expectations of success through bogus feedback, the present research adjusts for confounding variables and validates previous findings showing that mental contrasting produces expectancy-dependent goal commitments and performance. Implications for designing interventions to enhance people's creativity are discussed. Introduction Consider a situation in which a person is praised as having creative potential because she painted a unique picture, solved a tricky puzzle, or prepared a sophisticated dinner. Such positive feedback makes her expect to succeed on further tasks that demand creativity. She wanted to engage and succeed in similar tasks, but she never did. What went wrong? The present research explores whether people can use self-regulation strategies to translate positive feedback on creative potential into strong creative performances. We will use an insight task paradigm (Dow & Mayer, 2004) to test whether mental contrasting, a self-regulation strategy fostering goal commitment and performance, helps people capitalize on positive feedback. We base our hypotheses on the dual pathway to creativity model (DPCM; De Dreu, Baas, & Nijstad, 2008). The DPCM postulates that creative performance depends on flexible processing of information and cognitive perseverance. As mental contrasting fosters both flexible processing of information and cognitive persistence (review by Oettingen, 2012), we reasoned that it should enhance creative performance. Specifically, because mental contrasting unfolds its effects on flexibility and persistence based on a person's high expectations of success, and positive performance feedback fosters high expectations of success, mental contrasting should translate positive feedback about people's creative potential into creative performance. The present research adds to the literature on mental contrasting as in previous studies preexisting expectations of success were measured , but not manipulated. We manipulate expectations of success by giving ad hoc positive feedback on people's creative …