Nudging individuals’ creativity using social labeling

Simple instructions have been shown to robustly influence individual creativity, which is key to solve local problems. Building on social labeling theory, we examine the possibility of nudging individual’s creativity using “creative” and “not creative” labels. Study 1 showed that subjects labeled as “creative” or “not creative” performed better in a creative task than unlabeled subjects and established the moderating effect of self-perceived creativity. Among subjects scoring low on self-perceived creativity, those labeled as “creative” performed better than those labeled as “not creative”. Conversely, among subjects scoring high on self-perceived creativity, those labeled as “not creative” tend to perform better than those labeled as “creative”. Study 2 and Study 3 further explored the psychological mechanisms at play in both cases: specifically, Study 2 showed that applying a “creative” label has the ability to increase creative self-efficacy through self-perceived creativity, whereas Study 3 demonstrated that applying a “not creative” label has the ability to increase individual creativity performance through a higher involvement in the creative task.