Creative artwork Does competing for a prize improve

Chapter 1, Problem 1.35

(choose chapter or problem)

Creative artwork Does competing for a prize improve childrens artistic creativity? A psychologist carried out a study with about 100 third-graders that was designed to help answer this question. In the study, the children were divided into two groups and instructed to make a silly collage using materials that were provided. Before they started, the children in one group were told that their collages would be judged by experts and that the winners would receive prizes. Th e children in the other group were told that they would share their collages in an art party. In fact, expert judges rated the creativity of all the collages.21 (a) Was this an observational study or an experiment? Justify your answer. (b) Th e judges were not aware of which students collages came from which group. Why is this important? (c) Describe two possible sources of variation in this study. (d) Children in the group who believed they were competing for prizes received much lower average creativity ratings than children in the art party group. Can we conclude that the difference in creativity scores was caused by the difference in what the two groups of children were told? Why or why not?