The Effects of Feedback on Creativity

Zhou (1998) conducted one of the first studies specifically dedicated to investigate the ef- fects of feedback on creativity (however, not on collaborative but on individual creativity). She investigated feedback valence (positive or negative), feedback style (informational or controlling) (Pittman et al., 1980), task autonomy (high or low control over how to carry out a task) (Hackman and Oldham, 1980) and the combination of these factors. Feedback was provided in a written form on a feedback sheet. Creativity was measured using a simplified form of a technique by Amabile (1982), using three judges that rated ideas on an 11-point scale. Results showed that positive feedback led to greater creativity as well as informational feedback. Most interesting were the interactions that emerged: with positive feedback in an informational style and with high autonomy, individuals were most creative. The results of the study additionally show the superiority of positive feedback compared to no feedback on creativity.

However, additional challenges exist in the context of collaborative creativity compared to individual creativity. As described in Section 3.1.2, several studies could show that nominal groups outperform real groups in brainstorming sessions (Diehl and Stroebe, 1987; Mullen et al., 1991). Paulus and Dzindolet (1993) conducted several studies to understand the rea- sons behind that productivity loss better. In one of their studies (Paulus and Dzindolet, 1993, 5th study), they undertook a first approach of investigating the influence of feedback on brainstorming. They compared how nominal groups and interactive groups performed in

two different conditions. Those were an “information condition”, in which participants were provided with a standard, meaning that they were told how many ideas other groups/other subjects produced typically and a condition in which participants were not told about this standard. Results showed that the productivity gap could be eliminated when interactive groups were provided with a standard. As this standard is some kind of normative feedback, these results provided first evidence of the potential of feedback in collaborative creativity. An environment in which creativity often occurs in relation to other people or in collabo- ration is at work. A considerable amount of research exists that investigates feedback on creativity in work environments. Zhou (2003) and George and Zhou (2007) for instance could show that supervisor developmental feedback could increase creativity of employ- ees. With developmental feedback, the authors refer to valuable feedback that employees can use to learn and improve. Specifically, results showed that creativity increased for less creative personalities in companion of creative co-workers, leading supervisors to provide more developmental feedback. These results indicate that the group composition plays a role in collaborative creativity, as creative individuals can affect the situation. A study by De Stobbeleir et al. (2011) indicates that not only the feedback that is passively received but also feedback that is actively seeked can facilitate creativity. The authors suggest to provide employees with an environment in which they can easily inquire feedback.

I will now turn from these general insights on feedback in creativity to the influence of feed- back on creativity in computer-mediated settings. Roy et al. (1996) investigated the effects of feedback in an electronic brainstorming scenario, particularly focusing on the factors of

social matching and social loafing. In their study, groups of 5 to 6 participants generated ideas using an EBS. Each group member was seated at an individual work station in the same room. In the study, three conditions were compared: nominal groups with a public screen displaying the ideas of the other group members (1) during the brainstorming (2) af- ter the brainstorming and (3) without a public screen. It was not possible to see, who wrote which idea. The results of this study reveal that groups who had a public screen (either continuously or afterwards) outperformed the groups without feedback in terms of number of unique ideas. The authors could furthermore show that the continuous feedback induces social matching and thereby equalized performance. These results provided first evidence of the positive influence of feedback on electrical brainstorming.

Besides that, the question remains how computer-mediated feedback works in interactive

(i.e. co-located) groups engaged in a creative task. To my knowledge, two studies investi- gated this aspect in more detail. One is a study with the MEETING MEDIATOR(Kim et al.,

2008), the other a study by Schiavo et al. (2014). Both systems are described in detail in Section 2.2.2. The study with the MEETING MEDIATOR used brainstorming as a use case,

but the displayed information (e.g., speaking time, social signals, body movements) is not necessarily specific to brainstorming. However, in the evaluation, a metric for measuring the success of the brainstorming was used (number of ideas). The number of ideas did not increase due to the feedback of the MEETING MEDIATOR. Furthermore, the results ob-

tained during the brainstorming phase were compared with a problem solving phase. For instance, having a dominant person in a group affected the brainstorming negatively, which

3 Application Areas

was not the case when dominant group members were present during a problem solving task. The authors could observe that this effect emerged because non-dominant group members tended to state less ideas when a dominant person was present compared to groups with only non-dominant participants.

The second approach dealing with technologically-mediated feedback for creative tasks in co-located groups was performed by Schiavo et al. (2014, 2016). One of the main goals of their system was to balance participation during a brainstorming session. In their first study with only private displays, Schiavo et al. (2014) evaluated the differences between subtle directives without explanation, subtle directives with explanation and overt directives. A summary of the results, about the influence of different social traits on the attitude towards the system, for example, can be found in Section 2.2.2. However, results did not reveal significant differences regarding the amount of ideas of the brainstorming. In the second study (Schiavo et al., 2016), a public display was added to the setup. Again, no significant differences were found between the three conditions regarding the number of ideas.