Question: Creative writing Do external rewards-things like money, praise, fame, and grades-promote creativity? Researcher Teresa Amabile designed an experiment to find out. She recruited 47 experienced creative writers who were college students and divided them into two groups using a chance process (like drawing names from a hat). The students in one group were given a list of statements about external reasons (E) for writing, such as public recognition, making money, or pleasing their parents. Students in the other group were given a list of statements about internal reasons (I) for writing, such as expressing yourself and enjoying playing with words. Both groups were then instructed to write a poem about laughter. Each student's poem was rated separately by 12 different poets using a creativity scale. These ratings were averaged to obtain an overall creativity score for each poem. Dotplots of the two groups' creativity scores are shown below. Compare the two distributions. What do you conclude about whether external rewards promote creativity?
