The effect of time constraint awareness on creativity test performance

Abstract

Abstract Our perception of time is often a subjective dimension of our conscious awareness which varies across context and situational demands. It can be influenced by our internal psychological state and similarly, our creative potential can be affected by the interplay of our perception, mood, and situational factors. Our study aims to examine how participants’ creativity can be limited or enhanced by their perception of time constraint introduced or unspecified as assessed by a simple form of Wallach-Kogan Creativity Test (WKCT). It is hypothesized that a pressure-inducing time constraint awareness condition would decrease the quality of participants’ creativity test performance by demanding greater attentional resource and increasing test anxiety levels through a prevention-focused motivation. In contrast, the absence of pressure when a time constraint is unspecified would likely result in increased creativity through promotion-focused motivation by decreasing negative affect and anxiety level, which consequently enhances creativity. The results showed a small difference in test scores between participants in both informed and uninformed time constraint conditions with the former group performing better than the latter. It is interpreted that limitations in the study’s design and the factor of anxiety could provide a beneficial motivation for enhancing creativity performance.