M A T HI A S BE N E DE K

R A P H A E L A B R UC K DO R F E R
E M A N U E L J A U K

Motives for Creativity: Exploring the What and Why of

Everyday Creativity

ABSTRACT
People spend a lot of time on creative activities in their leisure time, but we still know little about what
these activities are and what drives them. The literature suggests that several specific motives may be rele-
vant for everyday creative behavior, including enjoyment, expression, challenge, coping, prosocial, social,
material, recognition, and duty motives. Across two online studies totaling 750 participants, enjoyment was
the strongest motive for everyday creativity, consistent with previous research linking creativity to intrinsic
motivation and positive affect. Importantly, however, the relevance of motives differed across creative
domains: visual arts, literature, and music were more strongly motivated by expression and coping motives,
whereas handicrafts and creative cooking were more strongly motivated by prosocial and recognition
motives. Intrinsic motives for creative activities were substantially related to high openness to experience,
but explained incremental variance in the prediction of self-reported creativity as well as rated creative
achievements. Together, these findings provide new insights into the motivational basis and function of
everyday creativity.
Keywords: creativity, little-C, creative leisure, motivation, personality.

INTRODUCTION
There is often not much time left between work and daily chores. Yet, many people spend much of this
valuable leisure time on creative activities. While everyday creativity is arguably the most prevalent form of
creativity, we still know little about the diversity of these creative activities, and why people engage in them.
Therefore, this research pursued two main goals: First, to assess the incidence of everyday creative activities
across different domains, and second, to examine their underlying motives. We developed a scale measuring
nine motives for engaging in creative activities. Across two independent studies, we examined what motives
are most significant for everyday creativity and how they predict engagement in different creative domains.

EVERYDAY CREATIVITY
Creativity research has traditionally been intrigued with exceptionally creative people and their achieve-
ments (Eysenck, 1995; Simonton, 1999), but more recently, much attention has been devoted to more wide-
spread forms of creativity as manifested in everyday creativity (Silvia, 2018). Everyday creativity can be
defined as creative activities taking place in one’s leisure time (i.e., the time off work and free from necessi-
ties like eating, hygiene, or household chores; Hegarty, 2009), and which involves creative activities of per-
sonal significance rather than publicly recognized accomplishments (Richards, Kinney, Benet, & Merzel,
1988). Everyday creativity corresponds to the concept of little-c creativity, which is to be distinguished from
Pro-c and Big-c creativity that reflect professional and genius levels of creativity (Kaufman & Beghetto,
2009). In fact, a 2-week daily diary study found that young adults, on average, are a little creative each day
(Conner & Silvia, 2015). Another experience sampling study that queried participants eight times per day
for 1 week showed that people were doing something creative 22% of the time (Silvia et al., 2014).
Several inventories have been developed to estimate the frequency of everyday creative behaviors, such as
the Creative Behavior Inventory (CBI; Hocevar, 1979), the Biographical Inventory of Creative Behaviors
(BICB; Batey, 2007), the Kaufman Domains of Creativity Scales (K-DOCS; Kaufman, 2012), and the Inven-
tory of Creative Activities and Achievements (ICAA; Diedrich et al., 2018). Some of these inventories

The Journal of Creative Behavior, Vol. 0, Iss. 0, pp. 1–16 © 2019 The Authors. The Journal of Creative Behavior published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Creative Education1
Foundation (CEF). DOI: 10.1002/jocb.396
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License,
which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Motives for Creativity

organize creative activities into broader creative domains such as literature, music, or visual arts, with differ-
ent inventories considering partly different domains (Silvia, Wigert, Reiter-Palmon, & Kaufman, 2012). Clas-
sification analyses of creative behaviors often report only quantitative differences at the level of self-reported
creative activities, but provide some evidence for domain specificity at the level of public creative achieve-
ments (Silvia, Kaufman, & Pretz, 2009; Von Stumm, Chung, & Furnham, 2011), with the broadest distinc-
tion commonly made between artistic and scientific creativity (e.g., Batey & Furnham, 2006). The available
inventories already give a good impression of the diversity of everyday creativity, although each single mea-
sure is obviously limited in covering the whole range of possible creative behaviors.

CREATIVITY AND MOTIVATION

What motivates people to engage in creative activities? One general distinction is usually made between
intrinsic and extrinsic motivation (e.g., in the context of self-determination theory; Ryan & Deci, 2000),
where intrinsically motivated behaviors are experienced as rewarding in themselves, and extrinsically moti-
vated behaviors are driven by their consequences such as money, evaluation, or the need to meet a deadline
(Amabile, 1997; Eisenberger & Rhoades, 2001). Creativity has been consistently linked to intrinsic motiva-
tion, suggesting that creative work is often interesting, or satisfying in itself (Amabile, 1997; Baas, De Dreu,
& Nijstad, 2008; Grant, 2008; Hegarty, 2009; Hegarty & Plucker, 2012). Since intrinsic and extrinsic motiva-
tion can act independently (Amabile, Hill, Hennessey, & Tighe, 1994), these findings do not necessarily
imply a negative relationship between creativity and extrinsic motivation. Studies have, however, produced
mixed results regarding the effect of extrinsic motivators like expected rewards or deadlines on creativity
(Amabile, 1985, 1993; Amabile, Hennessey, & Grossman, 1986; Eisenberger & Rhoades, 2001; Hegarty &
Plucker, 2012).
Apart from the basic discrimination between an intrinsic and an extrinsic motivational orientation, we
can also consider more specific motives of human behavior (e.g., Bernard, Mills, Swenson, & Walsh,
2008; Deci & Ryan, 2000; Maslow, 1943; Sheldon, Elliot, Kim, & Kasser, 2001). For example, common
motives for leisure activities include intellectual challenge, social contact, and the experience of compe-
tency but also the wish to relieve stress and tension, as measured by the Leisure Motivation Scale (LMS;
Beard & Ragheb, 1983). Necßka (1986, cited after Cropley, 1990) proposed that creative behavior can be
energized by five classes of motives including intrinsic, playful, expressive, instrumental, and control
motives. More recently, Luria and Kaufman (2018) have identified six creative needs including beauty,
power, discovery, communication, individuality, and pleasure. A comprehensive review of the literature on
creativity, motivation, and leisure revealed a total of nine motives that appeared relevant for everyday cre-
ativity (Bruckdorfer, 2017):
(a) Enjoyment refers to doing something because it is enjoyable, pleasurable, or fun (Amabile et al.,
1994); similar conceptions also used the terms passion (Auger & Woodman, 2016), pleasure (Sheldon et al.,
2001), or play(fullness) (Bernard et al., 2008; Necka, 1986). (b) Expression refers to the motive to express
one’s feelings, emotions, thoughts, or personality, either toward others or toward oneself (Alderfer, 1969;
Auger & Woodman, 2016; Gould, Moore, McGuire & Stebbins, 2008; Hegarty, 2009). It seems related to the
concept of self-actualization, which is the desire to really be oneself and “to become everything that one is
capable of becoming” (Maslow, 1943, p. 382). (c) Challenge refers to the desire to achieve something, to
expand one’s knowledge and skills, and to prove that one is able and competent (Alderfer, 1969; Amabile
et al., 1994; Beard & Ragheb, 1983; Manfredo, Driver, & Tarrant, 1996). (d) Coping refers to the need for
tension reduction (McGuire, 1974) and the desire for emotional calm (Reiss, 2001). This motive has also
been framed as stimulus avoidance (Beard & Ragheb, 1983) or health motive (Bernard et al., 2008). (e) The
social motive refers to the wish to spend time with others and be close to others. It is one of the most con-
sistently considered motives in the literature (Tay & Diener, 2011), and has also been conceived as the need
for relatedness (Alderfer, 1969; Ryan & Deci, 2000; Sheldon et al., 2010), affection (Bernard et al., 2008) or
social contact (Reiss, 2001). (f) Prosocial refers to the altruistic aim to help or bring pleasure to others
(Auger & Woodman, 2016; Beard & Ragheb, 1983; Grant & Berry, 2011). (g) Recognition represents the
desire to gain acceptance, acknowledgement, or admiration from others. Related motives refer to outward
motivation (Amabile et al., 1994), need for respect (Tay & Diener, 2011), popularity (Sheldon et al., 2010),
and the desire for status (Reiss, 2001). (h) The material motive relates to activities that are carried out
mainly in pursuance of monetary rewards or some other form of material compensation (Gould et al.,
2008). Similar conceptions speak of compensation (Amabile et al., 1994), saving (Reiss, 2001), or existence
needs (Alderfer, 1969). (i) Duty refers to general feelings of responsibility or obligation; something simply

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 Journal of Creative Behavior

has to be done, maybe to avoid feelings of guilt or blame (Bernard et al., 2008; Ryan & Deci, 2000). We
hence decided to examine the relevance of these nine motives for everyday creativity.

AIMS OF THIS RESEARCH

Research has already provided valuable insights into the role of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for cre-
ative behavior at work (e.g., Amabile, 1997; Amabile et al., 1994; Grant & Berry, 2011). In the present work,
we aimed to extend this work in two ways. (a) We focused on the driving forces underlying everyday cre-
ativity taking place during leisure time rather than creativity at work. To this end, we first took stock of the
diversity of everyday creative activities and explored how they organize into creative domains, before explor-
ing their motivational basis. (b) We considered specific motives beyond the broad conceptions of intrinsic
and extrinsic motivation. Specifically, we identified nine motives that appeared consistently relevant in the
context of everyday creativity. We hypothesized that everyday creativity is particularly driven by intrinsic
motives, but assumed that the relevance of specific motives might differ across creative domains. Finally, we
expected that motives for everyday creativity are related to the personality trait of openness (Feist, 1998;
McCrae, 1987), and examined whether motives predict creativity incrementally beyond standard measures of
personality.

STUDY 1
METHODS
Participants
The final sample consisted of 433 participants (79.0% females, 19.9% males, and 1.1% other definition),
aged between 15 and 77 years (M = 32.8, SD = 13.86). Data from an additional 30 subjects were discarded
because they did not report any creative activity. About half of participants were University students
(46.9%); the others were employed or self-employed (41.8%,) looking for work or on sabbatical (5.7%), or
retired (5.5%). The majority was German speaking (89.9%), and the remaining part English speaking. Par-
ticipants completed all tasks in their native language and received no special compensation for participation.
The study procedure was approved by the local University’s ethics committee.

Tasks and materials

Motives for creativity
We devised a scale that assesses the most important motives in the context of everyday creativity. A thor-
ough review of the theoretical and empirical literature on creativity and motivation revealed nine central
motives for creativity, including enjoyment, expression, challenge, coping, prosocial, social, material, recog-
nition, and duty motives (see Introduction). Each motive was covered by two statements, for example, “I
engage in this activity because I enjoy it”, resulting in a total of 18 statements. The full motives for creativity
scale (MoCS) is provided in Table 1.
To provide a context for the motives, participants were first asked to name all creative activities in which
they typically engage in their leisure time. They were encouraged to think of creative activities not only in
terms of arts or handcraft but to also consider other areas such as technology, design, sports, game and play,
social activities, cooking, or others. We instructed them to describe each creative activity in one or two sen-
tences, avoiding short and overly general descriptions like “art”. Participants were then asked to consider
the creative activity with which they spend the most of their leisure time, and then, to indicate to what
extent each motive statement applied using an analogue scale ranging from total disagreement to total agree-
ment (corresponding to values of 0–1). At the end, they were given the opportunity to openly add further
reasons for engaging in this activity in order to capture potential other reasons not covered by the motive
scale. Since participants occasionally reported non-creative activities (e.g., horseback riding), two raters eval-
uated all reported activities for creativity (yes/no). After resolving rare cases of disagreement, 6.5% partici-
pants were excluded to maintain only participants that had reported creative activities, resulting in the final
sample of n = 433.

Creativity
Self-perceptions of creativity were assessed with an 11-item Short Scale of the Creative Self (SSCS; Kar-
wowski, 2012; Karwowski, Lebuda, Wisniewska, & Gralewski, 2013). This scale provides separate indicators
of creative self-efficacy (CSE) and creative personal identity (CPI) and a total score. A German translation
of the SSCS was devised by two authors of this article. We further measured self-reported creative

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Motives for Creativity

TABLE 1. Motives for Creativity Scale (MoCS; English and German Version)
English items German items
Why do you engage in these creative Warum gehen Sie diesen kreativen Besch€aftigungen
leisure activities? in Ihrer Freizeit nach?
Enj1 It is fun Weil es mir Spaß macht
Enj2 I enjoy it Weil ich es genieße
Exp1 It allows me to express my Weil ich damit meine Gedanken und Gef€ uhle
thoughts and feelings ausdr€ucken kann
Exp2 It allows me to be myself Weil ich dabei ich selbst sein kann
Cha1 It allows me to develop my skills Weil ich dadurch meine F€ahigkeiten weiterentwickeln
and to learn new things und Neues lernen kann
Cha2 It allows me to discover Weil ich dabei herausfinden kann, wozu ich
my true potential wirklich in der Lage bin
Cop1 It helps me to cope with difficult Weil es mir hilft, mit schwierigen Situationen
situations or stress oder Stress umzugehen
Cop2 It allows me to distract Weil ich mich damit gut von Problemen ablenken kann
myself from problems
Pro1 It allows me to help others Weil ich anderen damit helfen kann
Pro2 It allows me to bring pleasure to others Weil ich anderen damit eine Freude machen kann
Soc1 It allows me to meet new people Weil ich dadurch neue Leute kennen lernen kann
Soc2 It is a great opportunity to Weil ich dadurch mit anderen Menschen
spend time with others Zeit verbringen kann
Rec1 It allows me to show others Weil ich damit anderen zeigen kann, wozu
what I can really do ich wirklich f€ahig bin
Rec2 I get positive feedback for it Weil ich daf€
ur positive R€ uckmeldungen bekomme
Mat1 I can earn some money with it Weil ich damit etwas Geld verdienen kann
Mat2 It is financially profitable Weil es sich finanziell lohnt
Dut1 Others expect it from me Weil andere es von mir erwarten
Dut2a Others want me to do it Weil andere m€ ochten, dass ich es tue
Notes. Enj = Enjoyment; Exp = Expression; Cha = Challenge; Cop = Coping; Pro = Prosocial; Soc = Social;
Mat = Material; Rec = Recognition; Dut = Duty. In Study 1, we presented one item per motive in two sub-
sequent blocks, and in Study 2, items were presented in an individually randomized sequence. a. This
reflects the item used in Study 2. The Duty 2 item in Study 1 originally read: “Everyone should do some-
thing creative from time to time”/”Weil jeder ab und zu etwas Kreatives tun sollte”.

achievements by asking participants to describe the three most creative achievements of their lives (Diedrich
et al., 2018). Each statement was rated by three independent raters on a 6-point rating scale ranging from
(0 = not at all creative, to 5 = ingenious). The inter-rater reliability was high (ICC = .88). The average rat-
ing for the highest rated achievement was used as an index of creative achievement. A total of 389 partici-
pants (89.8%) reported at least one creative achievement, so analyses using this variable were limited to this
subsample.

Personality and well-being

Creativity has been consistently related to the personality trait openness to experiences (Feist, 1998;
McCrae, 1987) and to positive affect (Ashby, Isen, & Turken, 1999; Baas et al., 2008). For a brief assessment
of personality structure, we employed the Mini-International Personality Item Pool (Mini IPIP) developed
by Donnellan, Oswald, Baird, and Lucas (2006). This 20-item inventory measures the Big-Five factors Neu-
roticism, Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness with four items each. We further
assessed different aspects of emotional well-being with three subscales (worries, tension, and demands) of
the German version of the Perceived Stress Questionnaire (PSQ; Fliege, Rose, Arck, Levenstein, & Klapp,
2001), and the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (WEMWBS; Lang & Bachinger, 2017). Finally,
people answered some additional questions on their coping behaviors, which are not relevant to this article.

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 Journal of Creative Behavior

Procedure
Data were collected via an online study using SoSci Survey. The survey was announced via the Univer-
sity’s student mailing list, public bulletins, and postings in various Facebook groups. Participants followed
an online link, where they received information about the study and provided informed consent. They first
answered some demographic questions and then completed the motives for creativity scale with respect to
their most important creative activities. Finally, they reported their most creative achievements, and com-
pleted the SSCS, the Mini IPIP, the PSQ, the WEMWBS, and answered some questions on their coping
behavior. The total survey took on average 20 minutes.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Domains of everyday creative activities
In a first step, we attempted to map all reported creative activities to the domains of available creativ-
ity inventories. To this end, two independent raters categorized all creative activities twice: once using the
domains as suggested by the CBI (i.e., literature, fine arts, performing arts, math/science, and music), and
once using those of the ICAA (i.e., literature, fine arts, performing arts, music, creative cooking, crafts,
sports, technology, and natural science). Inter-rater reliabilities were high (CBI: Cohen’s Kappa = .91;
ICAA: Cohen’s Kappa = .92). Averaged for both raters, 12.5% of activities did not fit any of the CBI
domains, and 9.5% of activities did not fit any of the ICAA domains. A closer inspection of the creative
activities that could not be assigned to any domain revealed that they commonly included social activities
such as inventing games and organizing theme parties, or referred to the design and decoration of one’s
home and garden. Moreover, some domains presumed by available inventories showed only little rele-
vance. For example, we observed that hardly any creative activities belonged to the domain of sports
(1.3%), and many of them aimed at devising group activities (e.g., drafting training sessions or backpack-
ing tours) and thus could also be categorized as interpersonal or social creativity. Interpersonal creative
activities have been included in other inventories such as the SCDD (Kaufman & Baer, 2004) or the
CDQ (Kaufman, Cole, & Baer, 2009), whereas activities related to interior design or garden design have
not been much acknowledged so far. In the end, creative activities seemed to be best captured by nine
domains, including handicrafts (25.9%; designing/making cards, clothes, bags etc.), creative cooking
(15.9%; creating original dishes, adapting cooking/baking recipes to own taste/need etc.), visual arts
(15.5%; drawing, graphic design, photography, video editing etc.), literature (13.9%; writing poetry/short
stories/lyrics, keeping a blog etc.), music (12.5%; improvising on a musical instrument, composing/arrang-
ing music etc.), social (5.5%; creating theme parties, inventing games etc.), interior and garden design
(5.1%; designing/decorating home or garden, adapting furniture etc.), performing arts (2.8%; acting,
inventing choreography/dance moves etc.), and science/technology (1.6%; conducting scientific work, com-
puter programming, solving technical problems etc.). Half of the activities were categorized by two raters,
showing very good inter-rater consistency (Cohens’ Kappa = .95); the remaining activities hence were cat-
egorized by one rater.
This set of nine creative domains allowed categorizing 98.7% of all reported creative activities; the
remaining 1.3% of activities could not clearly be assigned, partly because two or more activities were men-
tioned within a single response. Most of these domains have already been recognized in available inventories
(Silvia et al., 2012), although no inventory included all and some included domains that turned out to be of
little importance in this study (e.g., sports or architecture). Interestingly, the domains strongly differed in
their prevalence: More than half of the reported creative activities refer to handicrafts, visual arts, and cre-
ative cooking, suggesting that these are the most popular forms of everyday creativity. The proposed final
set of nine creative domains builds on previous domain structures and covers the majority of reported cre-
ative activities very well, and thus was used for further analyses.

Motives for engaging in everyday creative activities

Table S1 presents an item analysis of the motive items. It shows that motive items pertaining to the
same motive facet were highly correlated and typically showed much lower correlations with items from
other motives. As an exception, the two duty items were found to be uncorrelated. A closer look revealed
that the second duty item (“Everyone should do something creative from time to time”) reflects an attitude
toward creativity in general, rather than a specific motive for one’s own creative activities. Therefore, the
second duty item was excluded from further analyses. Motive scores thus were generally defined by the aver-
age of two motive items except for the duty facet, where only the first duty item was used.

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Motives for Creativity

30.5% of participants took the opportunity to add individual reasons motivating their creative activities
after answering the motive items. An examination of these responses suggested that they are already well
represented in the given motives. For example, “It makes me happy and relaxed”, or “I can share this pas-
sion with friends” refer to enjoyment and social motives, respectively. The employed nine motives hence
seemed to cover common reasons for engaging in creative activities well. The motives still differed consider-
ably in their relevance (see Table 2). The strongest motive was enjoyment, followed by challenge and expres-
sion, three intrinsic motives. Further important, though less strong motives were coping, recognition, as
well as prosocial and social motives. The weakest motives for everyday creative activities were material rea-
sons and duty, two classic extrinsic motives. These findings corroborate the high relevance of intrinsic
motives for everyday creativity (Amabile, 1997; Hegarty & Plucker, 2012).
In a next step, we analyzed whether the relevance of motives differed across creative domains. This
analysis was possible because motive ratings were available for single creative activities referring to separa-
ble domains. To ensure robust estimates of motives per domain, we only included those domains for
which motive ratings were available from at least 50 participants (i.e., handicrafts, creative cooking, visual
arts, literature, and music; see Figure 1). A MANOVA indicated that the relevance of motives varied
across domains (F[36, 1408] = 5.74, p < .001). Univariate ANOVAs showed that the relevance of enjoy-
ment (F[1,4] = 1.88, p = .11), and challenge (F[1,4] = 1.23, p = .30) was equally high across domains,
and the relevance of material motives (F[1,4] = 0.23, p = .92) and duty (F[1,4] = 1.12, p = .35) was
equally low across domains; however, domain specificity was observed for the motives of expression (F
[1,4] = 26.1, p < .001, ɳ2 = .23), coping (F[1,4] = 3.97, p = .004, ɳ2 = .04), prosocial (F[1,4] = 10.37,
p < .001, ɳ2 = .10), social (F[1,4] = 6.49, p < .001, ɳ2 = .07), and recognition (F[1,4] = 3.53, p = .008,
ɳ2 = .04). Tukey-HSD post-tests revealed that expression was a much stronger motive for engaging in lit-
erature, music, and visual arts than for doing handicrafts or creative cooking (all ps < .001). Similarly,
coping was a stronger motive for engaging in literature and music than in cooking (all ps < .05). In con-
trast, prosocial motives were considered more relevant to creative handicrafts and cooking than to visual
arts, literature, and music (all ps < .01), and recognition fueled the engagement in handicrafts more than
in literature (p < .05). Finally, music was more strongly driven by social motives than any other creative
domain (all ps < .01).
We conclude that creative activities are driven by general but also specific motives. In general, creative
leisure activities are highly intrinsically motivated, as they provide pleasurable and challenging experiences.
Yet, self-expression and coping with troublesome experiences are stronger motives to engage in writing,
drawing, or creating music than for creative cooking or handicrafts (Drake, Hastedt, & James, 2016). The
latter creative activities were often motivated by altruistic motives of bringing pleasure to others in the form

TABLE 2. Descriptive Statistics and Intercorrelation of Motives

Correlation (Study 1: below the diagonal/Study 2: above the
Study 1 Study2 diagonal)
M (SD) M (SD) ENJ EXP CHA COP PRO SOC REC MAT DUT
ENJ 0.91 (0.14) 0.86 (0.20) – .66 .52 .35 .26 .20 .34 .09 .19
EXP 0.68 (0.27) 0.67 (0.26) .35 – .52 .50 .27 .20 .35 .15 .04
CHA 0.70 (0.25) 0.65 (0.25) .31 .25 – .34 .30 .24 .46 .17 .08
COP 0.58 (0.31) 0.56 (0.30) .27 .44 .26 – .20 .14 .23 .11 .02
PRO 0.51 (0.30) 0.50 (0.28) .11 .01 .23 .02 – .41 .50 .29 .27
SOC 0.29 (0.29) 0.46 (0.29) .14 .18 .33 .19 .47 – .27 .30 .13
REC 0.48 (0.30) 0.45 (0.22) .11 .06 .45 .09 .47 .32 – .32 .23
MAT 0.12 (0.22) 0.14 (0.19) .03 .01 .25 .04 .26 .28 .39 – .30
DUT 0.13 (0.23) 0.11 (0.15) .20 .03 .08 .01 .28 .34 .29 .30 –
Note. Motive scores were recoded to a value range of 0–1. ENJ = Enjoyment; EXP = Expression;
CHA = Challenge; COP = Coping; PRO = Prosocial; SOC = Social; REC = Recognition; MAT = Material;
DUT = Duty. In Study 1, the duty scale consisted only of the first duty item, as the second was excluded
due to poor internal consistency. Correlation coefficients of |r| ≥ .10/.11 are statistically significant in sam-
ples of n = 411/317 (Study 1/2).

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 Journal of Creative Behavior

FIGURE 1. Relevance of motives by creative domain (Study 1). The analysis included those five creative
domains where data were available from at least 50 participants. ENJ = Enjoyment;
EXP = Expression; CHA = Challenge; COP = Coping; PRO = Prosocial; SOC = Social;
REC = Recognition; MAT = Material; DUT = Duty. ** p < .01.

of self-devised gifts or dishes. Finally, creating music seems a good way to get in touch with other similar-
minded fellows.

Motives, creativity, and personality

Table 3 presents the correlations between motives for creativity and measures of creativity, personality,
and mental well-being. Intrinsic motives such as enjoyment, expression, and challenge were positively corre-
lated to self-reported creative personality and creative self-efficacy as well as to openness. Enjoyment was
further associated with higher subjective well-being and lower stress. The coping motive, in contrast, was
related to neuroticism and higher levels of stress. Extrinsic motives were largely unrelated to personality or
measures of well-being.

STUDY 2
Study 2 aimed to conceptually replicate and extend findings from Study 1. First of all, we revised one
item of the motives for creativity that had not worked well in the first study, and motives now referred to
everyday creativity in general. We reran and extended psychometric analyses including analyses of reliability
and factorial structure. Moreover, we employed further creativity and personality measures to examine the
robustness of the validity evidence for the motives of creative scale. Specifically, we measured self-reported
creativity, frequency of creative activities in different domains, and quality of creative achievements to
ensure a comprehensive assessment of manifest everyday creativity (Diedrich et al., 2018; Jauk, Benedek, &
Neubauer, 2014).

METHODS
Participants
The final sample consisted of 317 German speaking participants (54.9% females), aged between 18
and 68 years (M = 27.58, SD = 11.13). An additional 17 participants were excluded because they had
failed to correctly answer an interspersed control question or had finished the online survey too quickly
(<10 min), suggesting unreliable response behavior. The sample consisted of students (59%) with diverse
majors, as well as employed or self-employed non-students. Participants received no special
compensation for participation. The study procedure was approved by the local University’s ethics
committee.

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Motives for Creativity

TABLE 3. Correlation Between Motives and Measures of Creativity and Personality (Study 1)
ENJ EXP CHA COP PRO SOC REC MAT DUT 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
1 SSCS .28 .29 .36 .19 .09 .13 .22 .18 .00 –
2 CPI .31 .34 .33 .22 .08 .14 .20 .16 .01 .90 –
3 CSE .23 .15 .28 .11 .08 .08 .17 .15 .01 .87 .57 –
4 C-Ach .08 .14 .06 .07 .03 .10 .03 .12 .10 .20 .25 .08 –
5N .12 .09 .02 .20 .11 .06 .00 .07 .02 .08 .01 .18 .01 –
6E .01 .00 .10 .05 .09 .09 .09 .08 .02 .18 .10 .23 .04 .05 –
7O .20 .16 .23 .13 .04 .02 .00 .05 .12 .41 .36 .36 .14 .01 .04 –
8A .16 .16 .07 .10 .14 .04 .03 .01 .11 .17 .19 .12 .00 .05 .29 .12 –
9C .09 .02 .00 .10 .04 .01 .06 .03 .02 .00 .04 .04 .01 .17 .13 .08 .16 –
10 WMBS .19 .00 .10 .12 .17 .07 .11 .02 .00 .24 .13 .31 .01 .55 .31 .11 .24 .27 –
11 PSQ-W .07 .12 .02 .29 .12 .05 .05 .02 .05 .11 .01 .22 .12 .61 .24 .04 .01 .27 .66 –
12 PSQ-T .12 .05 .00 .21 .05 .01 .06 .05 .06 .09 .02 .14 .01 .67 .11 .05 .03 .25 .63 .73 –
13 PSQ-D .12 .04 .05 .21 .05 .08 .06 .07 .06 .01 .04 .03 .05 .39 .03 .01 .03 .15 .37 .54 .64 –
Note. ENJ = Enjoyment; EXP = Expression; CHA = Challenge; COP = Coping; PRO = Prosocial; SOC = Social; REC = Recognition; MAT = Material;
DUT = Duty. SSCS = Short scale of creative self; CPI = Creative personal identity; CSE = Creative self-efficacy; C-Ach = Creative achievement; N = Neu-
roticism; E = Extraversion; O = Openness; A = Agreeableness; C = Conscientiousness; WMBS = Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale; PSQ-W/T/
D = Perceived stress questionnaire: worries, tension, and demands. Correlation coefficients of |r| ≥ .10 are statistically significant in samples of n = 411.
 Journal of Creative Behavior

Tasks and materials

Motives for creativity
We administered the motives for creativity scale used in Study 1, after rephrasing the second duty item,
as it had not correlated with the first duty item. The final scale is given in Table 1. In order to stimulate
reflections on one’s everyday creative behavior, we first assessed the frequency of creative activities in differ-
ent domains (see next section), followed by the motive scale asking “Why do you engage in these creative
activities?” Items were presented in an individually randomized sequence, and were rated on a 5-point Likert
scale reflecting the extent of agreement. Values were recoded to the range of 0–1.

Creativity
We obtained three different measures of self-reported creativity. First, we assessed the frequency of cre-
ative activities based on the nine domains established in Study 1 (see Supplemental Material, Table S2).
Additionally, they could name further creative activities not covered by these domains. Second, we asked
participants to judge their own creativity from 1 to 10 compared to people of the same age (Batey & Furn-
ham, 2008; Kaufman & Baer, 2004). Finally, as in Study 1, we asked to describe the three most creative
achievements of their lives. All achievements were evaluated by 29 raters (participants of a psychology
course) on a 6-point rating scale ranging from (0 = not at all creative, to 5 = ingenious). Inter-rater reliabil-
ity was excellent (ICC = .96). The average rating for the highest rated achievement was used as an index of
creative achievement. Analyses for this variable were limited to the subsample of 261 participants (82.3%)
who had reported at least one creative achievement.

Personality
We administered a short version of the brief Big-Five Inventory (BFI-K; Rammstedt & John, 2005). This
self-report inventory consists of 21 items and provides a compact assessment of the Big Five of personality.

Procedure
Data were collected via online assessment using LimeSurvey. Data collection was part of a course on
empirical methods in psychology where students recruited participants from their personal environment,
aiming for a sample with heterogeneous background and balanced gender distribution. Participants followed
an online link, where they received information about the study and provided informed consent. They pro-
vided basic demographic information and completed the BFI-K. Then they reported the frequency of cre-
ative activities, completed the motives for creativity scale, answered the creativity self-assessment item, and
reported their top creative achievements. Some additional questionnaires were added, which are not relevant
to this article. The total online survey took on average half an hour.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Everyday creative activities
Participants reported to engage quite regularly in creative cooking (M = 2.14, SD = 1.25), interior and
garden design (M = 1.90, SD = 1.12), creative social activities (M = 1.79, SD = 1.12), and somewhat less
frequently in the domains of handicrafts (M = 1.29, SD = 1.13), visual arts (M = 1.28, SD = 1.20), literature
(M = 1.08, SD = 1.00), science/technology (M = 1.02, SD = 1.28), music (M = 0.84, SD = 1.23), and per-
forming arts (M = 0.82, SD = 1.10). 5.7% of the sample seized the opportunity to add further creative activ-
ities, but they mostly stated activities that were not clearly creative like “sports” or “playing with pets”,
suggesting that the domain structure established in Study 1 represents the diversity of creative activities
quite well.

Motives for engaging in everyday creative activities

Descriptive statistics of the revised version of the motives for creativity scale are presented in the Supple-
mental Material (Table S1). The total correlation pattern of motive items was highly similar to that observed
in Study 1, with high correlations between items within same motives and lower correlations across motives.
This was also true for the revised duty items, suggesting that the revision had been successful. Given that
each motive facet consisted of only two items, they showed reasonable to good reliability in terms of inter-
nal consistency ranging from Cronbach’s alpha = .63 (prosocial) to .84 (enjoyment).
Table 2 presents the descriptive statistics and correlations of the nine motives for creativity. The relative
importance of motives was essentially the same as in Study 1, with highest relevance of intrinsic motives

9
Motives for Creativity

such as enjoyment, expression, and challenge, and lowest relevance of purely extrinsic motives such as duty
and material reasons. 6.6% of participants added individual motives such as “as an intellectual compensa-
tion to work”, “to stay mentally active”, or “so I will be remembered”. Interestingly, social motives were
rated more important than in Study 2.
The correlation pattern of motives was very similar to Study 1, but correlations were more pronounced,
which may be due to the fact that motives referred to one’s creative activities in general and not just one
specific activity as in Study 1. The highest correlations were again observed between intrinsic motives such
as enjoyment, expression, and challenge, while these motives were largely unrelated to more extrinsic
motives such as material or duty. We examined the factor structure of the nine motive facets using a princi-
ple component analysis. Velicer’s (1976) original and revised (Velicer, Eaton, & Fava, 2000) MAP test indi-
cated a two-factor solution, with the two factors explaining 55% of the variance. After oblique factor
rotation the two factors were only moderately correlated with r = .21 (p < .01). The first factor was defined
by high factor loadings of enjoyment, expression, challenge, and coping, and the second factor was defined
by high factor loadings from prosocial, social, recognition, material, and duty motives (see Table S3 in the
Supplemental Material). These two factors are consistent with the conception of intrinsic and extrinsic moti-
vation as largely independent factors rather than poles of the same continuum (Amabile, 1993, 1997; Ama-
bile et al., 1994; Hegarty & Plucker, 2012; Ryan & Deci, 2000).

Motives, creativity, and personality

Table 4 presents the correlation between motives and various measures of creativity and personality.
Intrinsic motives and the recognition motive were positively related to the frequency of engaging in creative
activities in most creative domains. The correlation pattern provided further evidence for the domain speci-
ficity of certain motives. As in Study 1, the expression motive was most strongly related to visual arts, litera-
ture, and music (Drake et al., 2016), whereas prosocial motives were more strongly associated with
handicrafts and creative cooking compared to other creative motives. The social motive, as could be
expected, was most strongly related to social creativity.
Several motives showed substantial relationships with different measures of creativity, including the fre-
quency of creative activities, self-reported creativity, and rated creative achievements, with associations being
generally higher for intrinsic motives such as enjoyment, expression, and challenge, than for extrinsic
motives. All intrinsic motives, but not the extrinsic motives, were also strongly related to trait openness.
Neuroticism was again specifically correlated with the coping motive. These results largely replicate the find-
ings from Study 1 for different measures of personality, creativity, and for motives referring to creative
activities in general, suggesting that findings are robust.
Since several motives, personality traits, and creativity measures were substantially correlated, in a last
step, we examined which motives and traits can actually explain unique variance in different measures of
creativity. We computed multiple regression analyses with the Big-Five traits and the nine motives as predic-
tors, and self-rated creativity, creative activity, and creative achievements as separate criteria. Due to the
large number of predictors and the risk of collinearity, predictors were entered stepwise as long as significant
incremental variance was explained. In all three regression analyses, creativity was independently predicted
by openness and the expression motive (see Table 5). Self-reported creativity was additionally predicted by
the recognition motive and to a weak extent by low conscientiousness. The frequency of creative activity
additionally was weakly predicted by extraversion, challenge, and material motives. Hence, personality (espe-
cially openness) and motives (especially expression) independently predict creativity across different opera-
tionalizations ranging from self-rating to rated creative achievements. The findings are consistent with
qualitative analyses showing that self-expression is a central theme when people describe their reasons for
engaging in everyday creativity (Hegarty & Plucker, 2012). Other motives that showed significant univariate
correlations did not explain incremental variance in these criteria. This was particularly true for enjoyment,
which showed the highest relevance for everyday creativity, yet little variability across participants.

GENERAL DISCUSSION
CREATIVE ACTIVITIES AND CREATIVE DOMAINS
The exploration of motives for everyday creativity provided the opportunity to take stock of the variety
of creative activities and how they divide into different creative domains. This bottom-up approach differs
from the more common top-down approach to ask for the frequency of pre-selected creative activities (cf.
Silvia et al., 2012). While the latter approach enables a standardized assessment, it comes with the risk of

10
 TABLE 4. Correlation Between Motives for Creativity with Measures of Creativity and Personality (Study 2)
ENJ EXP CHA COP PRO SOC REC MAT DUT IM EM 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

1 Handi .28 .23 .22 .20 .16 .01 .22 .14 .05 .29 .15 –
crafts
2 Visual .31 .40 .22 .21 .09 .01 .18 .04 .02 .36 .06 .41 –
arts
3 Creative .21 .17 .21 .11 .14 .07 .19 .08 .02 .23 .12 .23 .18 –
cooking
4 Literature .13 .30 .14 .14 .08 .01 .07 .07 .03 .21 .06 .10 .33 .15 –
5 Music .24 .28 .26 .17 .06 .12 .19 .06 .02 .30 .10 .14 .18 .09 .13 –
6 Interior/ .24 .24 .16 .20 .18 .06 .12 .11 .05 .25 .14 .42 .30 .27 .17 .04 –
garden
design
7 Social .22 .20 .19 .12 .23 .18 .17 .19 .08 .23 .24 .17 .18 .22 .25 .14 .25 –
8 Per .21 .25 .19 .11 .05 .15 .03 .08 .01 .23 .08 .15 .33 .18 .32 .26 .19 .27 –
forming
arts
9 Science .12 .04 .13 .08 .10 .10 .14 .15 .09 .05 .17 .16 .05 .03 .01 .19 .06 .10 .03 –
10 C-Act .41 .43 .36 .24 .23 .14 .28 .20 .05 .49 .20 .58 .63 .50 .53 .47 .56 .53 .57 .36 –
11 SR .43 .49 .41 .20 .19 .07 .36 .17 .00 .45 .24 .32 .51 .12 .26 .27 .27 .17 .25 .12 .48 –
Creativity
12 C-Ach .28 .30 .18 .09 .13 .04 .18 .04 .01 .27 .10 .20 .30 .05 .21 .18 .06 .03 .11 .03 .23 .34 –
13 N .09 .05 .04 .24 .02 .01 .05 .03 .11 .02 .07 .12 .08 .11 .00 .12 .09 .06 .07 .17 .05 .02 .09 –
14 E .13 .11 .09 .01 .11 .13 .04 .03 .02 .12 .07 .01 .05 .15 .08 .13 .10 .27 .19 .01 .20 .06 .02 .27 –
15 O .50 .46 .35 .21 .13 .09 .17 .03 .10 .49 .03 .23 .41 .11 .32 .23 .20 .14 .29 .07 .43 .46 .33 .01 .22 –
16 A .21 .11 .04 .03 .12 .11 .05 .07 .07 .15 .02 .05 .07 .09 .07 .03 .06 .14 .03 .01 .11 .06 .09 .09 .13 .20 –
17 C .03 .02 .03 .07 .10 .07 .08 .00 .02 .03 .06 .02 .01 .07 .03 .03 .12 .03 .04 .18 .09 .06 .02 .12 .15 .09 .01

Note. ENJ = Enjoyment; EXP = Expression; CHA = Challenge; COP = Coping; PRO = Prosocial; SOC = Social; REC = Recognition; MAT = Material;
DUT = Duty. IM = Intrinsic motivation; EM = extrinsic motivation; IM and EM were obtained from principal component analysis, see Table S3. C-
Act = Frequency of creative activities; SR-Creativity = Self-rated creativity; C-Ach = Creative achievement; N = Neuroticism; E = Extraversion; O = Open-
ness; A = Agreeableness; C = Conscientiousness. Correlation coefficients of |r| ≥ .11 are statistically significant in a sample of n = 317.
Journal of Creative Behavior

11
Motives for Creativity

TABLE 5. Multiple Regression Predicting Creativity by Personality and Motives (Entering Method: Step-
wise)
Creative
Self-rated creativity Creative activity
achievement
b p b p b p
Openness .31 <.001 .27 <.001 .24 <.001
Conscientiousness .11 .014
Extraversion .11 .029
Expression .28 <.001 .20 .001 .19 .005
Recognition .23 <.001
Challenge .13 .024
Material .15 .002
R2 = .37; F R2 = .30; F R2 = .13; F
[4,312] = 44.79, [5,311] = 26.42, [2,258] = 20.00,
p < .001 p < .001 p < .001

underestimating creative activities or domains, especially if they have not been popular in the past (e.g.,
creating websites, blogging, vlogging etc.). Therefore, Study 1 asked participants to report openly their
most important creative activities. Most of the reported activities actually could be assigned to the
domains in available inventories such as CBI or ICAA; however, some activities did not fit well into
any of the assumed domains and some of the assumed domains showed little relevance. We ended up
with nine creative domains that captured the reported creative activities most comprehensively, including
handicraft, visual arts, creative cooking, literature, music, interior/garden design, social, performing arts,
and science/technology.
The second study assessed how often people engage in these nine creative domains. It provided further
evidence that typical everyday creative activities are covered well by these domains, but the prevalence of
creative domains was found to differ between the two studies. This suggests that creative activities on which
people spend the most time (as assessed in Study 1; i.e., handicrafts and visual arts) are not necessarily the
most frequently pursued creative activities (as assessed in Study 2; i.e., creative cooking and interior/garden
design). Obviously, some activities such as creating a new dish or decorating a room are more easily inte-
grated into daily routines compared to complex activities that consume much more time and often require
preparations or special facilities. This observation has important implications for the assessment of everyday
creativity, which commonly focusses on frequency. Since creative activities may differ substantially in their
complexity, frequency will provide only rough proxy of the actual time spent on them. Given the diversity
and idiosyncrasy of creative activities, there is likely no easy, best way to assess everyday creativity. Yet, we
need to be aware of potential validity differences when asking either how many different creative activities
have been performed in the past year, how often they have been performed, or how much time people have
spent on them.

WHAT MOTIVATES EVERYDAY CREATIVITY?

We explored the relevance of nine different motives for creativity, including enjoyment, expression,
challenge, coping, prosocial, social, recognition, material, and duty. Across two studies, we obtained
strong evidence that creative activities are predominantly motivated by intrinsic motives such as enjoy-
ment, and the expression and development of one’s potential. Creative activities make people feel good
or, in the context of coping with stress, feel better. This finding is consistent with the extensive litera-
ture associating creativity with intrinsic motivation (Amabile, 1997; Hegarty, 2009) and positive affect
(Ashby et al., 1999; Baas et al., 2008). While much research has focused on the idea that positive mood
enhances creativity, our findings highlight the opposite direction of effects: People pursue creative activi-
ties in order to have a good time or as means to cheer up (Conner & Silvia, 2015; Silvia et al., 2014).
Together, these findings corroborate the notion that everyday creativity can be both a cause and a con-
sequence of positive affect (Baas et al., 2008; Richards, 2010) and mental well-being (Creek, 2008; Crop-
ley, 1990).

12
 Journal of Creative Behavior

While enjoyment seems to be a strong, universal motive for all creative activities, a few motives were
found to be more relevant to some creative domains compared to others. For example, people striving
to express themselves or to cope with distressing events more often turn to visual arts, literature, and
music than to other forms of creative activity (Drake et al., 2016). In contrast, creative cooking or handi-
crafts are more often driven by altruistic motives and expected recognition. These nuances support the
value to differentiate between different forms of intrinsic and extrinsic motives. Moreover, although
intrinsic motives were always judged most important, some forms of everyday creativity can additionally
be fueled to a considerable extent by extrinsic motives. Creative activities hence are not only rewarding
in themselves, but often provide indirect rewards via social exchange, gratitude, or recognition from
others.
Intrinsic motives, and to a lesser extent also extrinsic motives, were associated with creativity in terms of
higher self-rated creativity, higher frequency of engaging in creative activities, and higher rated creative
achievements. Importantly, some motives explained incremental variance beyond personality traits in the
prediction of creative outcomes. This underscores the significance and validity of these motives with respect
to self-perception of creativity as well as actual creative behavior. Creative achievements have always been
conceived as a multifactorial outcome determined by many factors including personality, ability, expertise,
motivation, and environmental factors (Amabile, 1997; Byron, Khazanchi, & Nazarian, 2010; Eysenck, 1995;
Glaveanu, 2014; Jauk et al., 2014). While much research has traditionally focused on the role of personality
and ability in creativity, the complemental assessment of motives may contribute to a more comprehensive
picture of the determinants of creative behavior (Roccas, Sagiv, Schwartz, & Knafo, 2002). It is important to
acknowledge that some theorists make a clear distinction between personality and motives or goals, whereas
others conceive them as inseparable. According to the latter view, motives underlie the covariation of speci-
fic traits that can be bundled into broad traits (Fleeson & Law, 2015; Wood, Gardner, & Harms, 2015), or,
in other approaches, they are thought to reflect people’s cognitive strategies to express their dispositions
(Cantor, 1990; Roberts & Robins, 2000). For example, openness to experience is probably partly constituted
by the intrinsic goal to be creative and the enjoyment of creative activities. Contextualized motives hence
may help to elucidate the consistent openness-creativity relationship and yet explain additional variance of
creativity beyond broad, context-free traits.

LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS

This research relied on people’s self-reports and thus their ability to recognize the motivational basis of
their creative behaviors. This approach can only assess explicit as opposed to implicit forms of motivation
(e.g., McClelland, Koestner, & Weinberger, 1989). Moreover, this kind of research is challenged by the typi-
cal methodological issues associated with cross-sectional designs and common-method variance. The
employed motives covered the typical reasons for engaging in everyday creativity reasonably well. Across
two studies, only very few additional personal reasons were mentioned that were not covered by one of the
available motives. For example, some people stated to engage in those activities because they want to stay
mentally fit, which seems only partly addressed by the challenge motive. On the other hand, some purely
extrinsic motives such as material reasons or the feelings of duty played only a very minor role for everyday
creativity. They may be of higher importance for creative professionals, as their livelihood and reputation
depend on their creative work. Professional creativity may also rely on further intrinsic motives such the
feeling of being on a mission and deep passion (Amabile, 1997; Auger & Woodman, 2016; Necßka, 1986;
Luria & Kaufman, 2018), which may be relatively less significant in the context of everyday creativity (Groh-
man, Ivcevic, Silvia, & Kaufman, 2017). Future research thus should explore differences in the relevance of
motives between everyday creativity and professional creativity potentially including, for example, mission/
passion as additional motive. Moreover, it would be highly interesting to study variations in the structure
and strength of certain motives as a function of gender (Weygandt White & Gruber, 1985) and culture
(Chen & Pang, 2012). Together, this research will help us to better understand the various reasons and
important functions of everyday creativity.

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Mathias Benedek, University of Graz

Raphaela Bruckdorfer , Universitaet Duisburg-Essen
Emanuel Jauk, Technische Universitaet Dresden
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Mathias Benedek, Institute of Psychology, University of Graz.
Universit€atsplatz 2, Graz 8010, Austria. E-mail: mathias.benedek@uni-graz.at

AUTHOR NOTE
Benedek and Bruckdorfer contributed equally to this work.
Mathias Benedek, Institute of Psychology, University of Graz, Austria; Raphaela Bruckdorfer, Universitaet
Duisburg-Essen, Germany; Emanuel Jauk, Technische Universitaet Dresden, Germany

SUPPORTING INFORMATION
Additional Supporting Information may be found in the online version of this article at the publisher’s web-site:
Table S1. Item difficulty and intercorrelation of the motive items.
Table S2. Assessment of everyday creativity across nine domains.
Table S3. Results of principal component analysis of the motives for creativity

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