Phyllis Goldfarb

Social influences on creativity: Evaluation, coaction, and surveillance

Abstract: Two experiments examined the effects of evaluation expectation and the presence of others on creativity. In both experiments, some subjects expected that their work would be evaluated by experts, and others expected no evaluation. Evaluation expectation was crossed, in each experiment, with the presence of others. In the first experiment, the presence of others was operationalized as coaction; half of the subjects worked individually in small groups, and the others worked alone. In the second experiment, the presence of others was operationalized as surveillance; half of the subjects believed they were being watched while working. In both studies, subsequent creativity ratings of subjects’ products were made by expert judges. Effects of evaluation expectation were consistently strong. On a verbal task in Study 1 and an artistic task in Study 2, creativity was lower in the groups expecting evaluation than those not expecting evaluation. Evidence for the social facilitation or social inhibition of...

Demography and Democracy

During oral arguments in Shelby County v. Holder, 1 Justice Antonin Scalia provoked audible gasps from the audience when he observed that in 2006 Congress had no choice but to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act, because it had become “a racial entitlement.”2 Later in the argument, Justice Sonia Sotomayor obliquely challenged Scalia’s surprise comment, eliciting a negative answer from the attorney for Shelby County to a question about whether “the right to vote” was “a racial entitlement.” 3 As revealed by these dueling remarks from the highest bench in the land, demography and democracy are linked in the public consciousness of Americans, but in dramatically different ways.