Jennifer Haase

• The demand for a creative workforce is every growing and effective measures to improve individual creativity are searched for. This study analyzes the possibility to use games as a prime for a creative mindset. Two short entertainment games, plus a no-game-comparison condition were set up in three versions of an online-study, along with two creativity tasks and scales to assess the individual creative mindset (fixed-vs-growth, creative self-efficacy and affect). Results indicate priming effects of the games, but in the opposite intended direction: gaming diminished the creative test performances. Those playing the games reported more ideas in the open-ended creative problem task, but those answers were of less quality and they solved less closed-problem items compared to those not playing. An impact of further mindset differences could be ruled out.