EFFECTS OF VICARIOUS PUNISHMENT ON CREATIVITY

Abstract

I examine the cognitive effects of vicarious punishment in my thesis. I propose that vicarious punishment can impair one’s creativity, and such an effect depends on one’s sensitivity to behavioural restrictions induced by vicarious punishment. I further identify one situational factor and one dispositional factor that determine how sensitive people are to behavioural restrictions. I show that: 1) people who have the intention to commit (or continue committing) the misbehaviour depicted in the vicarious punishment, and 2) people who have a high chronic trait reactance tend to be more sensitive to the effect of vicarious punishment and they are the ones whose creativity will be impaired due to vicarious punishment. I further identify a mediator for the effects of vicarious punishment. I find that the effect of vicarious punishment on creativity is mediated by the negative emotions triggered by vicarious punishment. I conducted four experiments to test my hypotheses. In Experiment 1, I established the link between vicarious punishment and creativity and tested for the moderating role of participants’ inclination to misbehave. In Experiment 2, I generalized the effects of vicarious punishment on creativity by using a creativity task that was different from the one in Experiment 1. Then, I tested the moderating role of psychological reactance in Experiments 3 and 4. Again, two different creativity tasks were used in these experiments to achieve generalization. In Experiment 4, I investigated the mediating role of negative emotions. In summary, I provide evidence that vicarious punishment is more likely to impair creativity among people who have a stronger inclination to misbehave (vs. those who have a weak inclination to do so) (Hypothesis 1), and also among people with stronger psychological reactance (vs. those with weaker psychological reactance) (Hypothesis 2). I also suggest that this effect is mediated by the effect of vicarious punishment on negative emotions (Hypothesis 4) and not by its effect on regulatory focus (Hypothesis 3).