Mary Ann Collins

Motivation and creativity.

A popular stereotype of creative people is that they approach their work with a kind of crazed intensity, often forgoing sleep, food, and other seeming necessities of life in order to advance their creative work. Undoubtedly, this view is one source of the widespread belief that creativity stems from madness. Although the connection between creativity and insanity remains a controversial point, there is considerable anecdotal and empirical evidence that creative production does require a high level of motivation. For example, the novelist John Irving reported spending as many as 12 hours per day, for several consecutive days, while writing his novels. When asked what drove him to work so hard, even years after attaining wide readership, fame, and financial success, he replied: “The unspoken factor is love. The reason I can work so hard at my writing is that its not work for me” (from an interview reported in Amabile, 1989, p. 56). What motivation drives creative activity? Is it generally based in the love that Irving describes? Does it derive from the desire to attain ever more wealth and fame, or are there other motivational forces at work? This chapter reviews theory and research on the motivation for creativity, revealing that, although creativity can arise from a complex interplay of motivational forces, motivation that stems from the individuals personal involvement in the work - love, if you will - is crucial for high levels of creativity in any domain.

Accurate Social Perception at Zero Acquaintance: The Affordances of a Gibsonian Approach

We review research on accurate social perception at zero acquaintance and apply a Gibsonian ecological approach to redress several shortcomings. We argue that recent use of Brunswiks lens model to determine what physical qualities accurately communicate psychological traits has limited utility because it fails to consider the structured information provided by configural physical qualities that is central to Gibsons (1979) theory. We elaborate a developmental model of relationships between physical and psychological qualities that highlights research needed to identify configural physical qualities that may inform accurate perceptions. This model and tenets of the ecological theory yield several hypotheses regarding such qualities. Finally, we advocate the value of studying perceived affordances (opportunities for acting, interacting, or being acted upon) because this will focus attention on the neglected issue of contextual influences on social perception accuracy, and because affordances may be perceived more accurately than global personality traits.

Bright, bad, babyfaced boys: appearance stereotypes do not always yield self-fulfilling prophecy effects.

Three studies tested the hypothesis that babyfaced adolescent boys would compensate for the undesirable expectation that they will exhibit childlike traits by behaving contrary to it. Studies 1 and 2 revealed that babyfaced boys from middle- and lower class samples, including a sample of delinquents, showed higher academic achievement than their mature-faced peers, refuting the stereotype of babyfaced people as intellectually weak. In the lower class samples, this compensation effect was moderated by IQ and socioeconomic status (SES), variables that influence the ability to overcome low expectations. Study 3 showed that babyfaceness also can produce negative compensatory behaviors. Low-SES babyfaced boys were more likely than their mature-faced peers to be delinquent, and babyfaced delinquents committed more crimes, refuting the stereotype of babyfaced people as warm, submissive, and physically weak.

The Relationship between Appearance and Personality Across the Life Span

Using archival data, the relationship of appearance to personality was investigated from childhood to age 60. Lagged effects of appearance on personality and vice versa, as well as accuracy of appearance stereotypes, were assessed. For men, lagged effects of attractiveness on personality were consistent with a self fulfilling prophecy; for adolescent boys, lagged effects of babyfaceness on personality were consistent with a self-defeating prophecy; for women, lagged effects of personality on attractiveness were consistent with a Dorian Gray effect, whereby early personality produces a congruent later appearance. There was no evidence for accuracy of the baby-face stereotype, which was significantly inaccurate for adolescent boys. Accuracy of the attractiveness stereotype required effects of a stable earlier appearance on later personality or a stable earlier personality on later appearance.