It has been generally observed that individuals high in promotion-focus are more likely to show flexible and creative thinking patterns. Therefore, researchers believed that situations that activate promotion-focus should result in greater creativity. It was found that those who put a high emphasis on social obligation had less desire to be creative, and therefore manipulation of the salience of ought self-guides inhibited creative output while manipulation of ideal self-guides increased creative output. Furthermore, priming of promotion-focus lead subjects led to more novel answers on a word association test. However, it is believed that these results came from an increase in creative expression, not creative ability, as the boost to creative output vanished among speeded trials.
