Creators Have Difficulty Abandoning Ideas They Generated

Abstract

Creativity researchers often distinguish between two stages of the creative process: generation versus selection. While much is known about the psychology of idea generation (e.g., the factors that lead to a greater number of novel and useful ideas), less is understood about the nature of selection, or how generation and selection interact. Here we investigate how the act of generating ideas may potentially distort the selection process. Using an incentive-compatible paradigm in which pairs of participants reviewed the same ideas and were rewarded for submitting only high-quality ideas, we find that people submit a greater number of lower-quality ideas when selecting among their own ideas than when selecting among another person's ideas (the Creative Endowment Effect). This effect generalizes across three tasks in two domains and is resistant to an informational intervention (i.e., explicitly telling people about the effect). However, having participants revisit their ideas several months later increases their selectivity. The broader implications for individuals and organizations are discussed.