Increasing Group Creativity by Fulfilling Personal Needs: The Intriguing Individual-Group Dynamic in Group Performance

Research conducted in the framework of the Motivated Information Processing in Group Model (MIP-G) shows that, creative performance of team-works is enhanced under high epistemic motivation and pro -social orientation (De Dreu, Nijstad, & Bechtold, 2011). Indeed, pro-social orientation, that is cooperation as a means to achieve an outcome, provides better results in creativity performance than pro-self orientation, conceived as egoistic competition to achieve a personal gain within the group. In the light of these results, an interesting issue to tackle concerns the antecedents of this pro-social success. According to the General Model of Group Socialization (Moreland & Levine, 1982), individuals are primarily searching for groups that better satisfy their personal needs. In this vein, joining groups that fulfill personal needs could play a key role in the endorsement of cooperation and, ultimately, on creativity outcomes. The present study experimentally investigated this assumption. Participants were primed with information that the group they were going to join fulfilled personal vs collective needs. They were than motivated to pursue pro-self vs pro-social goals. Then they engaged in a brainstorming task aimed at generating ideas, which were subsequently rated by two independent coders in terms of creativity. Results showed an interaction between needs and social orientation: pro-social motivations led to more creativity when groups were believed to fulfill personal rather than collective needs. The implications of these findings in terms of pre-conditions enhancing group creativity will be discussed. Moreover, the conceptual links between the General Model of Group Socialization and MIP-G will be addressed