AI Insight
This study of 1,067 Chinese undergraduate students found that satisfaction of three basic psychological needs—autonomy, competence, and relatedness—was positively associated with both intrinsic motivation and everyday creative ideation. Intrinsic motivation served as a significant mediator between these psychological needs and creativity, meaning that satisfying these needs enhanced students' creative thinking partly by increasing their intrinsic motivation. All three psychological needs showed both direct effects on creativity and indirect effects through intrinsic motivation.
Why it matters
These findings suggest that fostering students' sense of autonomy, competence, and belonging in educational settings could enhance their creative thinking abilities. Universities and educators could potentially support student creativity by designing learning environments and activities that satisfy these fundamental psychological needs.
Understand the Science
Creativity has received considerable attention as a core competency in higher education, yet the psychological processes associated with everyday creative ideation remain insufficiently understood. Drawing on self-determination theory and the componential theory of creativity, this study examined the relationships among autonomy, competence, relatedness, intrinsic motivation, and creativity, operationalized as self-reported everyday creative ideation, in a sample of 1,067 Chinese undergraduate students. Structural equation modeling was employed, with age and gender included as control variables in the structural model. The results showed that autonomy, competence, and relatedness were all significantly and positively associated with intrinsic motivation (β = 0.299, p < 0.001; β = 0.218, p < 0.001; β = 0.370, p < 0.001, respectively), and intrinsic motivation was significantly and positively associated with everyday creative ideation (β = 0.252, p < 0.001). Autonomy, competence, and relatedness were also significantly and positively associated with everyday creative ideation (β = 0.252, p < 0.001; β = 0.209, p < 0.001; β = 0.198, p = 0.002, respectively). Further analyses revealed significant indirect relationships between autonomy, competence, and relatedness and everyday creative ideation through intrinsic motivation (β = 0.075, p = 0.002; β = 0.055, p = 0.004; β = 0.093, p = 0.002, respectively). Simulation-based sensitivity analyses further indicated that these indirect relationships remained relatively robust under moderate levels of potential unmeasured confounding. These findings provide further theoretical insight into the associations among basic psychological need satisfaction, intrinsic motivation, and creativity in higher education, while the practical implications are primarily relevant to supporting students’ creative ideation.