Self‐esteem and the self‐censorship of creative ideas

Abstract

Creative processes halt when those who generate creative ideas self‐censor them. Self‐censorship may become a greater concern in performance management as organizations of the future are likely to face growing pressures to be creative, innovative, and adaptive. Self‐censorship was addressed in early research on managing the performance of brainstorming groups, and may have broad implications for creative performance in many facets of today’s organizations. This paper re‐examines the research on self‐censorship in view of recent management and social psychology research in an effort to better understand how the self‐esteem motive and a lack of self‐concept clarity cause self‐censorship. Person‐focused and feedback‐focused strategies to reduce self‐censorship are described, and directions for future research are suggested.