Teresa Amabile

Creativity, Productivity, and the Psychology of Everyday Work Life

Academnic researchers can now access diary data

February 28, 2018

Academic researchers now have free access to data from Teresa Amabile's daily diary study of 200+ professionals working on 26 creative projects in 7 companies in 3 industries. These data cover topics such as motivation, emotion, work environment, creativity, and productivity.  Diary data were collected each weekday throughout the life of the projects or discrete project phases - over 4 months on average, and up to 9 months; the response rate was 75%. Most projects involved new product development. Publications based on the data have included the book The Progress Principle, as well as several scholarly journal articles, practitioner articles, and case studies. The database includes detailed coding of "event of the day" stories from the nearly 12,000 diary submissions, as well as quantitative measures of psychological state collected daily; performance ratings collected from close colleagues and supervisors monthly; and demographics, personality, motivational orientation, cognitive style, perceptions of the work environment, and other measures, collected at other times during the study. Look for the Daily Diary Study database on Harvard University's Dataverse platform:   (LINK)

Retirement Research

September 21, 2018

Read about Teresa's new research on retirement here!

Science of Success

January 07, 2017

Teresa was interviewed by Matt Bodnar at The Science of Success.

Korn Ferry Institute

January 07, 2017

Teresa's work on motivation was discussed in this article from The Korn Ferry Institute.

Thinkers 50 List

December 17, 2015

Teresa was again voted to to the Thinkers 50 List for 2015.

CBC Radio

January 21, 2015

Teresa was interviewed on CBC radio's "The Current," on the topic of redesigning workplaces to enhance creativity.

IDEO’s Culture of Helping

December 27, 2013

Teresa and her colleagues, Colin Fisher and Julianna Pillemer, explore the culture of helping at IDEO. (LINK)

Harvard Gazette

August 29, 2013

Teresa talks to the Harvard Gazette about slowing down the work treadmill. (LINK)

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