Priming creativity: Doing math reduces creativity and happiness whereas playing short online games enhance them
Jennifer Haase
Paul H. P. Hanel- 1Department of Business Informatics, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany
- 2Weizenbaum Institute, Berlin, Germany
- 3Department of Psychology, University of Essex, Colchester, United Kingdom
Creative thinking is an indispensable cognitive skill that is becoming increasingly important. In the present research, we tested the impact of games on creativity and emotions in a between-subject online experiment with four conditions (N = 658). (1) participants played a simple puzzle game that allowed many solutions (priming divergent thinking); (2) participants played a short game that required one fitting solution (priming convergent thinking); (3) participants performed mental arithmetic; (4) passive control condition. Results show that divergent and convergent creativity were higher after playing games and lower after mental arithmetic. Positive emotions did not function as a mediator, even though they were also heightened after playing the games and lower after mental arithmetic. However, contrary to previous research, we found no direct effect of emotions, creative self-efficacy, and growth- vs. fixed on creative performance. We discuss practical implications for digital learning and application settings.
Introduction
Digital learning scenarios are becoming increasingly important, as they increase access to education and knowledge acquisition worldwide (Sailer et al., 2021). Especially the response measures to reduce the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic caused a shift toward online teaching (Chiu et al., 2021). One often-used component are gamified learning elements or games. Gaming supports learning processes, as learning progress is usually more visible with games than with traditional learning methods. Additionally, the gameplay is often perceived as rewarding, as the playfulness elicits positive emotions (Li et al., 2022). Positive game-based learning effects could be demonstrated from diverse research angles: education research (Plass et al., 2015), psychology (Pavlas et al., 2010), neuroscience (Howard-Jones and Jay, 2016), and organizational studies (Hernández and Moreno, 2018). Digital game-based learning positively influences the learner’s affection (e.g., enjoyment), cognition (e.g., cognitive load), and behavior (e.g., intention to participate in learning; Koivisto and Hamari, 2019). On the downside, learning with games potentially lacks ecological validity, especially as games tend to be oversimplistic (Li et al., 2022). Consequently, the benefits of digital games could be harvested by using them to increase motivation rather than to teach students specific learning content. This gamification approach is often used to improve the engagement of the participants in online courses (Subhash and Cudney, 2018).
Due to the emotional engagement and playful character, gamified learning contexts are believed to be associated with creativity (Agogué et al., 2015). Creativity is an essential individual skill that becomes more important in an increasingly complex, digitalized world (van Laar et al., 2017). When creativity is nurtured, this can have benefits for the individual, as well as for the society as a whole (Glăveanu, 2018). Games can support individual creative thinking skills in many ways. Here we focus on two: First, games can directly impact creativity by acting as a prime (Haase, 2020), thereby making specific patterns of thinking more likely to occur. Second, engaging in games can activate positive emotions, which are positively associated with creativity (Baas et al., 2008).
Even though gamified learning contexts, as well as teaching and training methods to enhance creativity, are both intensely researched areas, the impact of games on creative performance in digital learning settings is not well studied and theorized yet. Usually, the educational impact of complex games that are played for several hours is studied (e.g., Ashinoff, 2014; Halbrook et al., 2019). As gamified learning contexts with only short game-like aspects are increasingly used in learning scenarios, their impact on creative thinking needs to be better understood. This study aims to elicit more information on the relation between short gameplay and subsequent creative performance by setting up an experiment to test this impact with different games.
Enhancing creativity
Creativity is a complex individual trait characterized by cognitive elements, personality traits, and social embeddedness (Glăveanu et al., 2019). Therefore, there are a diverse set of methods to enhance creativity (Scott et al., 2004b), such as more complex and time-consuming training sessions (Birdi, 2005), short-term interventions like meditation (Colzato et al., 2012), physical movement (Campion and Levita, 2014), and cultural exposure (Maddux et al., 2010). Overall, those enhancement methods can be distinguished into conscious training methods vs. unconscious stimulation. Whereas training helps to understand the creative process better and potentially improves the creative self-perception through positive feedback on creative performances (Scott et al., 2004a), short-term stimulations influence the individual situational mindset (DeCoster and Claypool, 2004) and impact emotions which are also related to creative performances (Newton, 2013).
Emotions
Emotions can enhance creative task motivation. Research repeatedly showed that associations flow best when the person is in an active, positive emotional state (Amabile et al., 2005; Baas et al., 2008). Negative emotions such as emotional pain and frustration can also lead to more creativity, but mainly only after an extended period: Negative emotions lower initial task motivation but can increase the search for creative solutions to counter the cause of frustration or pain (Newton, 2013). However, as it is ethically problematic to induce negative emotions in a learning setting, our research focuses on positive, especially engaging emotions to foster creative performance. There is also a circular relation between positive situational emotions and individual self-evaluation. Students in a more positive mood rate their creative self-efficacy higher, engage more in learning opportunities, and tend to report a greater increase in their creative self-efficacy through the learning experience (Tan et al., 2008).
Interventions, such as playing games that lead to heightened emotions, were found also to increase the creative performance (for a tabletop role-playing game, see Dyson et al., 2016). Games were repeatedly found to improve players’ positive and negative emotions, depending on the game content (Ninaus et al., 2019; Cheng et al., 2020). Gamifying learning content leads to greater engagement with the content and a more positive learning experience (Zatarain Cabada et al., 2020). This association qualifies game content in a digital learning setting to show positive effects on creative performances by increasing the task motivation through emotions.
Creative mindset
A positive, creative self-concept is essential to be creativity (Karwowski and Brzeski, 2017). A creative mindset is an enduring belief about one’s creative abilities and situational cognitive conditioning. For the former, individuals who believe in their creative competencies are more likely to face creative challenges and persist through difficulties (Beeftink et al., 2012). This individual’s creative self-efficacy (CSE), defined as the belief in one self’s creative abilities (Tierney and Farmer, 2002), can be enhanced through positive feedback on actual performance. Creative self-efficacy is positively associated with creativity (Haase et al., 2018). When the task is slightly demanding, a positive accomplishment will enhance individual beliefs about mastering them (Byrge and Tang, 2015). Personal feedback on task performance and individualized learning content are strengths of digital learning scenarios (Jensen et al., 2021).
For the creative mindset as a situational cognitive conditioning, the mental operations allow for flexible, broad, and remote associations (Sassenberg et al., 2022). Such mental processing is based on global perception and increased working memory capacity (Dreu et al., 2010). This “should facilitate the processing of remote rather than close associations, and thus increase cognitive flexibility” (Sassenberg et al., 2017, p. 129), which is the basis for creative thoughts. Such a mindset cannot be achieved by willpower alone, but priming methods can induce it (Sassenberg and Moskowitz, 2005; Sassenberg et al., 2017).
Priming a creative mindset
Priming is “the presentation of a stimulus designed to subconsciously implant a concept in working memory that alters subsequent behavior” (Dennis et al., 2013, p. 195). When individuals are presented with certain information, the associated mental representation evokes equivalent changes in the individual’s behavior. Various concepts can be primed, including counterfactual thinking (Galinsky et al., 2000), stereotype-activation (Sassenberg and Moskowitz, 2005), deliberative vs. implemental thinking (Gollwitzer et al., 1990), individualistic vs. collectivistic norms (Bechtoldt et al., 2012), or achievement (Dennis et al., 2013). They all result in a mindset activation, an adjusted thinking pattern, and, finally, better preparedness for subsequent tasks (Gollwitzer et al., 1990). By priming a mindset, people tend to behave or think in line with the primed mindset even in an unrelated context (Sassenberg et al., 2007).
The central issue with creative thinking is that it cannot be forced (Sadler-Smith, 2015). When individuals are asked to be more creative, they cannot intentionally activate a broad, free-flowing associative thinking network. This makes the priming paradigm so promising for improving creative work, as it aims to alter subconscious thinking processes without the person’s awareness (Sassenberg and Moskowitz, 2005). Studies that primed creativity achieved this by presenting stimuli without participants’ awareness of its priming intention (Dennis et al., 2013). Directly priming remote associations is an effective way to improve a person’s immediate creative performance. In several experiments, participants were instructed to remember past creative experiences, which increased their mindset of remote associations, leading to better creative performance. Such positive priming effects were still found when participants’ emotions were controlled for (Sassenberg et al., 2017).
A creative mindset can also be indirectly primed. For example, adjusting light conditions in the workplace, with darker settings, leads to better creative performance (Steidle and Werth, 2013). A certain level of darkness potentially evokes the feeling of being free from constraints, facilitating an open, explorative cognitive processing style. In another experimental setting, participants were successfully primed with a creative mindset when exposed to an illuminated lightbulb. Participants were shown the typical image of an idea in the form of an enlightened lightbulb before or while they tried to solve an insight problem. This alone led them to solve more insight problems in less time than participants without such a prime (Slepian et al., 2010). These examples show that no complex intervention is required to prime creativity.
Differentiating types of creative thinking
Creative problems can be solved with two distinct types of thinking: associative or divergent thinking vs. convergent thinking. Divergent thinking is based on broad associations which lead to a higher number of possible solutions to an open-ended problem. This thinking style is mainly associated with creativity, as it helps solve problems by bringing in new aspects and ideas (Runco and Acar, 2012). In contrast, selecting one suitable idea from a pool of ideas is convergent thinking. Thereby one solution to a close-ended problem is reached (Cropley, 2006). Thus, the creative process typically requires divergent thinking for generating novel ideas and convergent thinking for reflecting and evaluating those ideas. Since people tend to prefer and perform differently on those measures (Sternberg, 1999), this suggests that they might need to be enhanced differently.
Indeed, primes can affect divergent and convergent thinking differently. For example, Steidle and Werth (2013), who used the darkness-prime, found only significant positive effects on divergent thinking using a drawing task. In contrast, Slepian et al. (2010) found that the lightbulb-prime only affected convergent thinking. Kray et al. (2006) replicated the findings from Slepian et al. (2010) using the same lightbulb prime but surprisingly found reduced divergent thinking scores. In contrast, Sassenberg et al. (2017) found that one prime (thinking of past creative achievements) enhanced divergent and convergent thinking alike, potentially because they activated a holistic creative mindset.
Together, this shows that primes can affect creativity, but it remains unclear how and why primes impact divergent and convergent thinking. In the present experiment, we aim to separately prime both thinking styles.
Gaming to enhance creativity
Games can be used to teach skills, as they transfer knowledge and allow gamers to practice (Chung, 2013; Stolaki and Economides, 2018). Especially engaging and fun games keep players motivated to continue playing and can positively impact creativity.
In a virtual reality scenario, students who break walls and thereby proverbially overcome obstacles to reach a goal scored better in a divergent thinking test compared to a control group (Wang et al., 2018). Participants who were virtually breaking walls also reported greater emotional engagement. They perceived the VR interaction as fun and engaging, which might explain the improved creative performances compared to the control group that did not experience much fun. The positive impact of gaming on creativity was even found for kindergarten children when playing age-appropriate games that stimulate imagination and problem-solving (Behnamnia et al., 2020).
In another student study (Blanco-Herrera et al., 2019), Minecraft was used as an example of a game suitable to elicit players’ creativity, as it is based on only a few rules and allows players to engage in a virtual world openly. The authors compared Minecraft with tv-watching and a car racing game. The racing game players showed the lowest fluency levels (i.e., fewest new ideas) in a divergent thinking measure compared to the other experimental conditions. The explanation by the authors was that some games can enhance functional fixedness, which in turn leads to decreased creative test performance. In contrast, Minecraft players outperformed the other conditions on the creativity assessments for divergent thinking and an alien drawing task (used as a performance measure for spontaneous imagination). They further found that participants in an undirected Minecraft condition (no instructions on how to play) were more creative, especially in the alien drawing task, compared to a directed Minecraft condition (with instructions on how to play). This shows that not only the game scenario creates a difference in creativity but also the degree of freedom the player perceives when engaging with the same game (Blanco-Herrera et al., 2019).
Further, there is some vagueness regarding what kind of game primes the divergent or convergent thinking aspect of creativity. For example, Haase (2020) used short, interactive games to prime a divergent and a convergent thinking mindset, by using a more open vs. closed game. Surprisingly, both games resulted in lower levels of divergent and convergent thinking, even after controlling for emotions. However, the control group did not engage in any demanding cognitive activity. It might therefore be possible that playing the game leads to cognitive fatigue, negatively influencing the subsequent creative task performance (Lorist et al., 2000; Massar et al., 2018).
The studies shortly discussed here demonstrate that games can be used as a prime for a creative mindset, especially when games are fun and allow for flexibility. However, the results are partly inconclusive or contradicting, suggesting that more research is needed to better understand what games influence which type of creative thinking (divergent or convergent).
Research question
The main aim of our experiment is better to understand the impact of short gameplay on creativity. Based on the discussed literature, we postulate that overall engaging, flexible games positively impact divergent and convergent thinking. Therefore, we state the following hypotheses:
Hypothesis 1. Participants playing an open-end game show higher divergent thinking-test performances compared to the other experimental conditions.
Hypothesis 2. Participants playing a closed-game show higher convergent thinking-test performances compared to the other experimental conditions.
To consider the potential cognitive fatiguing effects of the gameplay (cf. Haase, 2020), we include additionally to a passive control condition a mental arithmetic (math) condition. The latter task should elicit a focused mindset but might potentially also tire participants out as it requires focus.
Hypothesis 3. Participants doing mental arithmetic task will show lower creative test performances, compared to the control condition.
Creative performance is not just influenced by a situational mindset, but also by stable self-perceptions of self-efficacy and a fixed-vs. growth mindset (Tierney and Farmer, 2002; Karwowski and Brzeski, 2017; Haase et al., 2018). We therefore postulate:
Hypothesis 4. A person’s creative mindset (CSE and fixed-vs.-growth mindset) moderates the effect of the experimental interventions on divergent and convergent thinking.
As short games are often fun inducing whereas mental arithmetic is less so (Haase et al., 2019), we postulate:
Hypothesis 5. Participants in both game conditions report more positive emotions than participants in the mental arithmetic condition.
As positive and active emotions are positively associated with creativity (Baas et al., 2008), they influence creative performance.
Hypothesis 6: Positive and active emotions mediate the priming effect of games on creative performance.
Materials and methods
Participants
A power analysis with G*Power 3.1.9.4 (Faul et al., 2009) revealed that to detect a small-to-medium effect size of f = 0.175 with a power of 0.95 in a one-way factorial design with four levels, a sample size of at least 568 was required. In total, we recruited 658 study participants online on Prolific. However, 20 participants revoked their consent and were excluded. The final sample size consisted of 638 participants (Mage = 35.15, SD = 9.48; 328 men, 220 women). Ninety participants reported playing video games between 0 and 3 hours during an average week, 98 between 3–6 h, 98 between 6–9 h, 85 between 10–12 h, and 178 for more than 13 h. About 86 participants were students, whereas 463 were not.
Materials and procedure
We used a one-factorial design with four levels. The study was conducted using a between-subject design. Participants were recruited online via Prolific and paid US-$5.50 for approx. 25 min of their time. The games were integrated into the online survey, which was created in three versions: Participants played a simple digital puzzle game in the first condition that allowed many solutions (divergent thinking condition). In the second condition, participants played a short game that required one fitting solution (convergent thinking condition). In the third condition, participants solved mathematical problems. The fourth condition was a passive control condition. Participants were randomly allocated into one of the four conditions.
Games were administered within the online survey as embedded webpages using HTML. The precise games were chosen based on a small pre-study: six different HTML-based online games were randomly presented to eight participants. They were asked to play the games for around 5 min and report their associations and assumption of the kind of cognition required to play the game. They evaluated one game a day to avoid an impact of previous games on the evaluation of others. Based on the results, a bubble-shooter game (compare Figure 1) was chosen for the divergent thinking condition. It was reported to be engaging, fun and allowed for multiple possible actions at a time. A number-sorting game was chosen for the convergent thinking condition (compare Figure 2), in which a certain sequence of numbers is found in a square of 9 × 9 numbers. Participants in the mathematical problems condition performed mental arithmetic (e.g., 20 + x = 67; 45-33 = x; 80/x = 4). They were presented with a list of 90 tasks and instructed to solve as many as possible. Participants had three minutes to engage with the game or solve the math tasks for these three conditions.
Figure 1. Bubble-shooter game used as prime in the divergent thinking condition.
Figure 2. Number-sorting game used as prime in the convergent thinking condition.
Next, all participants completed two measures of creative performance: for divergent thinking, a sub-task of the Torrance-Test of Creative Thinking (Torrance, 1972), in which the participants were asked to imagine as many consequences as possible, for the assumption that humans do not need to sleep anymore. Divergent thinking scores of fluency and originality were assessed as measures of quantity and quality of the creative output (Reiter-Palmon et al., 2019). Fluency was counted, and originality was evaluated following the Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT) with two judges, with a high judgment agreement of Cronbach’s alpha = 0.95 (Amabile, 1982). Both raters are trained and experienced in rating such divergent thinking scores using the CAT. The Remote Associates Test (RAT) was used for convergent thinking, which measures the convergent thinking (Bowden and Jung-Beeman, 2003). Twenty items were presented for 20 s each. The RAT score was computed as the sum of correct answers.
Participants’ state emotions were assessed in the games and math conditions before and after the intervention with three items: happy, active, and excited on a 9-point scale. Test-retest reliabilities were high, rit = 0.71–0.74. We measured creative self-efficacy with three items based on Tierney and Farmer (2002) (α = 0.91). An example item includes “I have confidence in my ability to solve problems creatively.” We measured fixed and growth mindsets with ten items of the Creative Mindset Scale (Karwowski, 2014). Example items include “Some people are creative, others aren’t – and no practice can change it” (fixed mindset; α = 0.83) and “Anyone can develop his or her creative abilities up to a certain level” (growth mindset; α = 0.80).
Results
Mean comparisons
First, we tested using three one-way ANOVAs whether the three state-emotions happy, active, and excited groups differed between groups before the intervention. This was not the case, ps = 0.12–0.98. Next, we performed a series of one-way ANOVAs to test whether playing a game or performing mental arithmetic impacts creativity and state emotions. Descriptive and inferential statistics are displayed in Table 1. Testing hypothesis 1, the effect of condition on fluency was not significant (see also Supplementary Figure 1).
Table 1. Impact of playing games or performing mental arithmetic on creativity and emotions at t2: Descriptive and inferential statistics.
In contrast, the effect of condition on originality was significant, with participants in the convergent condition being, on average more original than participants in the math condition (Figure 3).1 This refutes hypothesis 1, as no positive priming effect could be found for the divergent thinking condition on the divergent thinking measures. In contrast, hypothesis 2 is supported: condition’s impact on the RAT (convergent thinking) was significant, with participants in the math and control condition scoring on average significantly lower than participants in the convergent thinking condition. Additionally, participants in the divergent thinking condition scored on average higher on the RAT than those in the math condition (Figure 4).
Figure 3. Effect of condition on divergent thinking (originality).
Figure 4. Effect of condition on convergent thinking (RAT).
Focusing on the math condition, solving arithmetic tasks led to a worse divergent thinking performance in terms of the ideas’ quality, but not quantity compared to the control (Hypothesis 3, see Figure 2 and Supplementary Figure 1). Whereas for the RAT measure, both the math and the control condition performed similarly. Hypothesis 3 could thus only be partly supported.
Moderation
We explored whether the effect of condition on divergent and convergent thinking was moderated by creative self-efficacy, fixed and growth mindset (Hypothesis 4), emotions at time 1, age, gender, student status and hours of video games played. The control group was coded as a reference group. In total, we performed 3 (DVs: fluency, originality, and RAT) × 10 (moderators: CSE, fixed and growth mindset, happy t1, excited t1, active t1, age, gender, student status, video games played) = 30 moderated regressions.2
Only the growth mindset significantly interacted with the condition in predicting convergent thinking (RAT), p < 0.001. Specifically, only participants with a lower growth mindset had a higher RAT score in the convergent thinking game compared to the control group, p < 0.001. In contrast, the difference between the two groups was not significant among those with a higher growth mindset, p = 0.695.
Mediation
Regarding emotions, participants who played the game that stimulated convergent thinking reported the highest happiness and excitement levels. In contrast, participants in the math condition reported the lowest happiness and excitement levels (Figures 5, 6). In contrast, we found no effect on active (Supplementary Figure 2). This—in parts—supports our Hypothesis 5.
Figure 5. Effect of condition on happiness.
Figure 6. Effect of condition on excitement.
Before testing whether the effect of conditions on creative performance is mediated by emotions (Hypothesis 6), we computed zero-order correlations between all variables. Interestingly, fluency, originality, and RAT were all uncorrelated with emotions and most other variables (Table 2). Therefore, we can reject Hypothesis 6 because the path between the mediator and the outcome is non-significant.
Table 2. Correlations between all variables.
Control variables
Several variables were assessed as control variables to determine their possible influence on the relationships tested here: we assessed the age, gender (0 = men, 1 = women), and whether they are students (0 = no, 1 = yes) and video games played in hours per week (compare Table 2). We found small positive correlations for age, with older people showing higher RAT scores and assigning higher activity levels at t1. Otherwise, no meaningful correlations are found beyond the participants’ descriptive: students tend to be younger, and males tend to play more video games.
Discussion
Our priming experiment investigated the impact of playing short games and solving arithmetic tasks on creative performances compared to a no-intervention. The results show that creativity, as operationalized through divergent and convergent thinking, is enhanced through the games, whereas math tasks lead to worse creative performance. Specifically, one of the games allowed for many potential solutions (divergent thinking condition), whereas the other required precise solutions (convergent thinking condition). In line with Hypothesis 2, we found that participants in the convergent thinking condition scored higher on a convergent thinking task. Interestingly, this positive priming effect was not achieved through the math tasks, even though mental arithmetic also leads to enhanced focused attention. This suggests that games are more engaging, resulting in a more open and creative mindset.
In comparison, the math condition reveals that a task that requires an intense focus leads to less creative performance, as it potentially primes a hyper-focused, closed mindset. As we only used a simple form of a math task, which is comparably easy but nevertheless cognitively demanding, our results need to be interpreted within this limited scope. Other mathematical tasks requiring more flexible thinking could potentially work as a prime for a flexible, creative mindset (Ismunandar et al., 2020).
We also found some intriguing effects of our interventions on emotions. Although participants in the math condition reported being less happy and less excited, this change in emotion was not the reason for their reduced creative performance. Overall, contrary to previous findings (Baas et al., 2008), emotions were unrelated to creative performance, as were CSE and the fixed- vs. growth mindset. However, the correlations between those measures align with the literature: CSE is positively associated with the growth mindset but uncorrelated with the fixed-mindset (e.g., Hass et al., 2016; Karwowski and Brzeski, 2017). This further supports the validity of our measures.
However, we found that a growth mindset moderated the association between convergent thinking vs. control condition and RAT: Only participants with a lower growth mindset scored higher on the convergent thinking task after participating in the convergent thinking game. Potentially, those with a more inferior growth mindset (who do not necessarily have to have a higher fixed mindset) can be more effectively primed as their creative potential is not yet utilized due to a rather negative self-perception. This is in line with other research, which found that participants with lower creative skills benefit more from creative training methods than individuals with advanced creative skills (e.g., Agnoli et al., 2018; Meinel et al., 2018).
Our analysis showed no effect of gender, age, or student status on creative performance. Also, the number of hours participants usually played online games was uncorrelated with their creative performance. This suggests that playing a short game can have priming effects but playing games over a more extended period of time does not necessarily lead to more creative performance. However, the data we have about their gaming habits is scarce, and we also do not know the kind of game they usually play. Based on the study based on Minecraft gameplay (Blanco-Herrera et al., 2019), games need to be very open and flexible to effect creative performance positively when played repeatedly.
Our findings provide further evidence that priming is an easy to implement and an effective way to alter human cognitive performance. As it is often unconscious, it does not require active engagement. Indeed, even minor situational conditions can act as a prime. For example, when studying the effects of remote work, Brucks and Levav (2022) found that simply looking at a screen, like a laptop, lowers our creative performance compared to similar interactions with the same person in the room. Another study used a more subtle achievement prime to elicit a creative mindset (Minas and Dennis, 2019): participants used special software for the creativity measures. The software presented visual banners with motivational slogans to prime achievement in one condition. This had a small but positive impact on the participants’ creative test performance compared to those in the control condition not seeing such banners.
Seemingly small changes in the (digital) environment we interact with can directly affect our cognitive abilities. Putting our results into the context of digital learning scenarios enforces the need to cautiously design environments that support the thinking patterns relevant to the learning content. In the case of creativity, when students are required to develop ideas and solve problems in an online course, their performance could be enhanced through engaging games as used in our study. When students reach an open, flexible, and free-associative mindset, developing ideas and solutions is easier for them. Feedback on successful creative performance should improve a student’s creative self-efficacy beliefs, contributing to a positive motivation for future creative tasks (Meinel et al., 2018). This creates a positive feedback loop that improves diverse aspects of students’ creativity. Even students with a fixed creative mindset can be convinced of individual improvement with repeated feedback on their (even minor) performance improvements through practice (Dweck, 2008).
Limitations
As with every empirical approach, we face methodological issues, which require us to interpret our results cautiously. The order of the creativity tests was not balanced, potentially resulting in order effects. As the divergent thinking task came first, this could work as a prime for the convergent thinking task. However, as this is true for all three experimental conditions, this does not challenge our conclusions. Further, priming effects diminished over time, although it is unclear how strong a prime works and how long its impact can last (Sassenberg et al., 2022). Potentially, there are individual differences we have not considered. While we have not found an impact of regular gameplay on the creative performance of the participants, we cannot exclude the potential influence of different gameplay perceptions (and thus different prime effectiveness) based on regular gameplay. More studies are required on the relation between gameplay, games as primes, and subsequent creative performance.
Future directions and conclusion
Future research should investigate other gamified and game-based learning scenarios and their potential impact on creative performances. Our analysis used short and engaging games. However, the transferability to other games or aspects of games is uncertain. In addition, there are many aspects to be notorious around creative thinking, such as self-awareness beyond CSE, and also other more detailed aspects of divergent thinking. The use of alternative tests of creativity may provide further clues to specific interactions with games. Finally, extending our method to an educational design would be important: Are students less creative after math classes than after other subjects (e.g., history, languages)? This would have important implications for the structure of the class schedule.
Including games and gamified learning content in digital settings can benefit students’ creative performances. Games can elicit an interactive, flexible, broad-associative mindset that facilitates creative thinking and problem-solving. In contrast, math tasks requiring a high concentration level tend to harm subsequent creative performance. Designers of digital learning environments should keep these connections in mind. Together, playing short games, for example, in brief breaks, can be an effective tool to enhance creative performance.
Data availability statement
The original contributions presented in this study are included in the article/Supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.
Ethics statement
Ethical review and approval was not required for the study on human participants in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.
Author contributions
JH contributed to developing the study design, conduction, and manuscript preparation. PH contributed to the statistical analysis and the manuscript preparation. Both authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.
Funding
This research project was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Funding Number: 16DII127). The authors are responsible for the content of this publication.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Publisher’s note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
Supplementary material
The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2022.976459/full#supplementary-material
Footnotes
- ^ For the pairwise comparisons, we set our alpha threshold to0.01 to control for multiple comparisons. We report the uncorrected p-values instead of corrected p-values because the choice of a method to correct for multiple comparisons (e.g., Holms, Hochberg, Bonferroni) is subjective, and researchers might have different preferences. Since it is more challenging to choose a different correction (e.g., Holm) once a corrected p-value (e.g., Bonferroni) is reported, we report the uncorrected p-value.
- ^ Because of the large number of comparisons, we set the alpha-threshold to 0.003. In other words, only if p < 0.003 we consider a moderation to be significant. This number is in our view neither too conservative nor too liberal, as it balances correlated predictors with the number of comparisons. This approach follows Hanel et al. (2019).
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Keywords: creativity, priming, enhancement, math, games, happiness
Citation: Haase J and Hanel PHP (2022) Priming creativity: Doing math reduces creativity and happiness whereas playing short online games enhance them. Front. Educ. 7:976459. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2022.976459
Received: 23 June 2022; Accepted: 12 August 2022;
Published: 30 August 2022.
Edited by:
André Renz, Berlin University of the Arts, GermanyReviewed by:
Swathi Krishnaraja, Humboldt University of Berlin, GermanyRomy Hilbig, Berlin University of the Arts, Germany
Copyright © 2022 Haase and Hanel. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Jennifer Haase, jennifer.haase@wi.uni-potsdam.de; Paul H. P. Hanel, p.hanel@essex.ac.uk