Self‐Regulation Prompts Improve Creative Performance

Abstract

While people approach creative actions in diverse ways, navigating them effectively requires self‐regulatory effort. In this preregistered experiment, we examined whether simple self‐regulation prompts, provided across the stages of the creative process, make the outcomes more creative. Participants (N = 332) engaged in one of three creativity tasks—designing a logo, writing a short story, or preparing a greeting card—and documented their ongoing progress with photos. During the task, half of the participants received prompts tailored to their task progress, encouraging the employment of various self‐regulatory mechanisms (e.g., uncertainty acceptance, adjusting approach). Consistent with our predictions, promoting a strategic approach throughout the task led participants to develop more creative products than those in the no‐prompt condition. Moreover, we demonstrated two indirect paths behind the prompts' effectiveness: first, via enhancing positive active emotions, and second, through fostering a greater time commitment to the task. On a theoretical level, the proposed prompting approach highlights the advantages of self‐regulatory engagement during creative actions beyond solely idea generation strategies. Methodologically, our study underscores the simplicity of such interventions and their potential broad applicability.