Vol. 28 No. 1 (2025)
Articles

MOTIVATING THE CREATIVE ACTIVITY: THE SEARCH FOR THE NEW AND THE BEST

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  • Katya Stoycheva
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7546/PsyRB.2025.28.01.01

Published 07/21/2025

Keywords

  • creative motivation,
  • need for achievement,
  • creative product,
  • creative process,
  • creative personality

How to Cite

Stoycheva, K. (2025). MOTIVATING THE CREATIVE ACTIVITY: THE SEARCH FOR THE NEW AND THE BEST. Psychological Research (in the Balkans), 28(1). https://doi.org/10.7546/PsyRB.2025.28.01.01

Copyright (c) 2025 Psychological Research (in the Balkans)

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

The proposed theoretical analysis examines two motivational characteristics of the personality and their rela- tionship to creative behavior and creative performance. The review of the empirical research indicates that both creative motivation (intrinsically motivated exploration and experimentation with new ideas, problems, and approaches) and need for achievement (striving to achieve high standards of performance in an activity) are related to creative productivity in high school students, university students and adults (Feist, 1999; Da Costa et al., 2015). Although interrelated, the two variables correlate weakly and differ in their relationships with other personality traits (Stoycheva, Stetinski, & Popova, 2008; Stoycheva & Popova, 2019). The paper will offer a summary of the available data and advance an explanation of the results, drawing on the current concepts of creativity (Runco & Pritzker, 2020). First, the paper outlines the specific contributions of these individual characteristics to the production of creative outcomes, i.e. finding new, original and ef- fective solutions. Second, the paper highlights the role of these motivations in the unfolding of the creative process from problem discovery through idea generation to solution selection and implemenation. Finally, some guidelines to support individuals’ creative behavior in education and at work are derived.

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