Orientation Toward Intrinsic Motivation Mediates the Relationship Between Metacognition and Creativity

Metacognition and motivation are considered key facets of self-regulation in various contexts. Recent studies identified a link between metacognition and creative performance, with metacognitively aware students performing more creatively and exhibiting higher levels of intrinsic and identified extrinsic motivation. The present study aims to examine the relationship between metacognition, orientation toward intrinsic or extrinsic motivation, and creative performance. One hundred nineteen university students completed the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (MAI) and Scale of Intrinsic versus Extrinsic Orientation in the Classroom and performed four verbal creativity tasks (product improvement task, consequences task, and two unusual uses tasks). The partial correlation network showed that all the creativity tasks were uniquely related to at least one facet of metacognition, and that the most complex task (product improvement task) was linked to both metacognitive knowledge and regulation. Furthermore, the structural equation model indicated that orientation toward intrinsic motivation mediated the relationship between metacognition and creative performance, explaining 16% of the variance in creative performance.