Gender Differences in the Effects of Extrinsic Motivation on Creativity*

Four studies were conducted to assess gender differences in the effects of extrinsic motivation on creativity. The first study replicated an earlier one (Baer, 1997) in which expectation of evaluation lowered the creativity of middle school girls, but not boys. The second study investigated the effects of doing work for reward; again, middle school girls' creativity suffered, but not boys'. The third study, also with middle school subjects, investigated the impact of expecting ungraded feedback; this reduced both the overall negative impact of expecting evaluation and the gender difference in this regard. The fourth study investigated the impact of evaluation expectation on second-grade subjects and found that boys', but not girls', creativity was increased when they expected evaluation.