Do real or hypothetical rewards facilitate creative performance? The effect of reward on creative problem solving

While reward cues have long been considered to enhance creative performance, little is known about can rewards affect creative problem solving by manipulate the flexibility and persistence state. Real and hypothetical rewards and two creative problem-solving tasks were used to answer this question. We tested the hypothesis that real rewards would positively affect creativity tasks that benefit from a persistence state (e.g., compound remote associate, CRA), while hypothetical rewards would positively impact tasks that benefit from a flexibility state (e.g., chunk decomposition, CD). Additionally, we hypothesized that low rewards would yield better solution performance than high rewards. The results revealed that hypothetical-high rewards resulted in lower solution performance compared to other reward conditions. Furthermore, hypothetical rewards enhanced performance in novel CD tasks requiring reconfiguration. Participants motivated by real rewards exhibited higher persistence compared to those motivated by hypothetical rewards. Hypothetical rewards during the preparation interval induced a metacontrol bias favoring flexibility. These findings could lead to new views about how the reward impact a creative mindset.