Do external rewards—things like money, praise, fame, and grades promote creativity? Researcher Teresa Amabile recruited 47 experienced creative writers who were college students and divided them at random into two groups. The students in one group were given a list of statements about external reasons (E) for writing, such as public recognition, making money, or pleasing their parents. Students in the other group were given a list of statements about internal reasons (I) for writing, such as expressing yourself and enjoying wordplay. Both groups were then instructed to write a poem about laughter. Each student’s poem was rated separately by 12 different poets using a creativity scale. These ratings were averaged to obtain an overall creativity score for each poem. Parallel dotplots of the two groups’ creativity scores are shown here.

a. Is the variability in creativity scores similar or different for the two groups? Justify your answer.

b. Do the data suggest that external rewards promote creativity? Justify your answer.

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:.. 10 15 20 25 30 Average rating Reward Internal (I) External (E)