ArticleCognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience2018
The effects of expected reward on creative problem solving.
Article in Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
24 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 46 citations in OpenAlex.
- A Systematic Review of Creativity-Related Studies Applying the Remote Associates Test From 2000 to 2019.Frontiers in psychology · 2020Pooled it
- Creative Motivation and Self-Efficacy Moderate the Differences in Individual Creativity Performance in Interactive Situations.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Dopaminergic and Noradrenergic Contributions to Divergent and Convergent Creativity Task Performance, a Systematic Review.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Can rewards enhance creativity? Exploring the effects of real and hypothetical rewards on creative problem solving and neural mechanisms.Behavioral and brain functions : BBF · 2024Article
- An Integrated theory of false insights and beliefs under psychedelics.Communications psychology · 2024Review
- Does social rigidity predict cognitive rigidity? Profiles of socio-cognitive polarization.Psychological research · 2023Article
- Individuals with High Metacognitive Ability Are Better at Divergent and Convergent Thinking.Journal of Intelligence · 2023Article
- Insight Problem Solving Ability Predicts Reduced Susceptibility to Fake News, Bullshit, and Overclaiming.Thinking & reasoning · 2023Article
- Motivated semantic control: Exploring the effects of extrinsic reward and self-reference on semantic retrieval in semantic aphasia.Journal of neuropsychology · 2022Article
- Animal Creativity as a Function of Behavioral Innovation and Behavior Flexibility in Problem-solving Situations.Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2022Article
- The mnemonic effects of insight on false memory in the DRM paradigm.Psychological research · 2022Article
- Brain Structural Correlates of Dispositional Insight and the Mediation Role of Neuroticism in Young Adults.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2022Article
- Does Machine Understanding Require Consciousness?Frontiers in systems neuroscience · 2022Article
- The influence of natural environments on creativity.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2022Article
- Event-related potentials support the mnemonic effect of spontaneous insight solution.Psychological research · 2021Article
- The Effect of Dopaminergic Replacement Therapy on Creative Thinking and Insight Problem-Solving in Parkinson's Disease Patients.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- Task Difficulty Regulates How Conscious and Unconscious Monetary Rewards Boost the Performance of Working Memory: An Event-Related Potential Study.Frontiers in systems neuroscience · 2021Article
- Oculometric signature of switch into awareness? Pupil size predicts sudden insight whereas microsaccades predict problem-solving via analysis.NeuroImage · 2020Article
- The relation between state and trait risk taking and problem-solving.Psychological research · 2020Article
- TDCS to the right anterior temporal lobe facilitates insight problem-solving.Scientific reports · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Creative problem solving involves search processes, and it is known to be hard to motivate. Reward cues have been found to enhance performance across a range of tasks, even when cues are presented subliminally, without being consciously detected. It is uncertain whether motivational processes, such as reward, can influence problem solving. We tested the effect of supraliminal and subliminal reward on participant performance on problem solving that can be solved by deliberate analysis or by insight. Forty-one participants attempted to solve 100 compound remote associate problems. At the beginning of each problem, a potential reward cue (1 or 25 cents) was displayed, either subliminally (17 ms) or supraliminally (100 ms). Participants earned the displayed reward if they solved the problem correctly. Results showed that the higher subliminal reward increased the percentage of problems solved correctly overall. Second, we explored if subliminal rewards preferentially influenced solutions that were achieved via a sudden insight (mostly processed below awareness) or via a deliberate analysis. Participants solved more problems via insight following high subliminal reward when compared with low subliminal reward, and compared with high supraliminal reward, with no corresponding effect on analytic solving. Striatal dopamine (DA) is thought to influence motivation, reinforce behavior, and facilitate cognition. We speculate that subliminal rewards activate the striatal DA system, enhancing the kinds of automatic integrative processes that lead to more creative strategies for problem solving, without increasing the selectivity of attention, which could impede insight.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.