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Toward More Creative and Innovative Group Idea Generation: A Cognitive‐Social‐Motivational Perspective of Brainstorming
Abstract
In many meetings and work sessions, group members exchange ideas in order to come up with novel, creative solutions for problems and to generate ideas for future innovations. This type of group idea generation or brainstorming process has been studied in detail, and we have discovered much about the cognitive and social processes that underlie group idea generation. It appears that the brainstorming performance of groups is often hindered by various social and cognitive influences, but under the appropriate conditions, group idea exchange can be quite effective. In this article, we summarize the present state of knowledge, point out some significant gaps in our knowledge, and suggest a cognitive-social-motivational perspective to integrate the major findings and to guide future research in the area of group creativity and group idea generation.
... Sharing different opinions during discussions exposes team members to multiple perspectives and offers subsequent opportunities for novel recombination of those shared ideas (Paulus and Nijstad 2003). As such, social interaction in groups provides fertile conditions for enhancing individual creativity (Paulus and Brown 2007). However, studies that integrate information technology and teamwork focused primarily on the direct benefits of providing interactive, real-time feedback on group collaboration and neglected the potential for such feedback to boost individual creativity (e.g. ...
... In other words, would the collaborative experience enriched by interactive feedback make individual members more creative? Since scholars have long debated the mechanisms underlying creative stimulation in collaborative group work (Nemeth 2018;Paulus and Brown 2007), we argue that this is an important research area that needs to be addressed. In a related vein, studies suggest that collaborative experience and individual performance are linked. ...
... Our findings are consistent with previous studies of creativity that suggested positive benefits for individual members of teams working in a collective setting. For example, Paulus and Brown (2007) have long argued a need to better understand the creative benefits that team members receive from engaging in active group discussion. In addition, Choi et al. (2011) have demonstrated that the creative stimulation provided by a team setting is a potent factor that can further boost individual team members' creativity. ...
Smart technologies that provide immediate and timely feedback may unleash far greater individual creativity in teams. Yet until now, we possess little empirical research to assess whether such promise matches reality. Using interactive feedback on the participation of team members during a discussion, we examine whether interactive feedback encourages individual team members to experience a higher self-efficacy in their partake of group discussion, and thereby boost their creative potential. We conducted a laboratory study in which 176 individuals (59 groups) were randomly assigned to either the interactive feedback or control condition. In the interactive feedback condition, participants wore sociometric badges that provided real-time feedback on their relative participation rate during the group discussion. In the control condition, participants wore sociometric badges that did not provide any feedback. Results showed that individuals in the feedback condition experienced increased participatory self-efficacy, which, in turn, was related to higher individual creativity. In addition, we identified team reflexivity as a key group-level moderator such that when individuals worked in highly reflexive teams, they demonstrated a further boost in their participatory self-efficacy under the feedback condition.
... Therefore, these types of brainstorming issues may hinder performance if they happen to override high team psychological safety. Another aspect to consider at the concept generation stage is that while some literature supports the benefits of generating many ideas in terms of originality [56,57] and allowing teams to explore a diverse pool of ideas [58], other literature has found that larger quantities of ideas do not necessarily mean that those ideas will be high quality and sometimes the opposite [59,60], which should be considered when making any claims about psychological safety and ideation. In other words, idea production (more ideas) does not necessarily equal idea effectiveness (producing the right ideas). ...
... Our hypothesis was that as psychological safety increases, the total number of ideas (fluency) created per team would increase, as would the average idea goodness rating per team. This is important during concept generation, as a greater number of ideas per team could present a diverse pool of designs to choose from [58], allowing teams to explore the solution space. Specifically, psychological safety has been shown to facilitate the contribution of ideas [7] and encourage people to take initiative to develop new products and services [51]. ...
... This is particularly critical for subsequent design outputs, as selection processes can impact outputs such as the final design [67]. Furthermore, we hypothesized that as perceptions of psychological safety decreased at the individual level, incidence of ownership bias would increase [58]. ...
While psychological safety has been shown to be a consistent, generalizable, and multilevel predictor of outcomes in team performance across fields that can positively impact the creative process, there have been limited investigations of psychological safety in the engineering domain. Without this knowledge, we do not know whether fostering psychological safety in a team environment is important for specific engineering design outputs from concept generation and screening practices. This study provides one of the first attempts at addressing this research gap through an empirical study with 69 engineering design student teams over the course of 4- and 8-week design projects. Specifically, we sought to identify the role of psychological safety on the number and quality (judged by goodness) of ideas generated. In addition, we explored the role of psychological safety on ownership bias and goodness in the concept screening process. The results of the study identified that while psychological safety was negatively related to the number of ideas a team developed, it was positively related to the quality (goodness) of the ideas developed. This result indicates that while psychological safety may not increase team productivity in terms of the number of ideas produced, it may impact team effectiveness in coming up with viable candidate ideas to move forward in the design process. In addition, there was no relationship between psychological safety and ownership bias during concept screening. These findings provide quantitative evidence on the role of psychological safety on engineering team idea production and identify areas for further study.
... Of course, this requires that brainstormers attend carefully to the shared ideas. Later developments of the model included the inhibitory roles of social factors such as evaluation apprehension and social comparison processes and their role in the level of motivation for creative idea generation in groups Paulus & Brown, 2007). However, social comparison processes in the form of some degree of competition among group members or between groups should yield a higher rate of idea generation. ...
... This sharing process can lead the group members to more fully tap their relevant expertise and use it to build on shared ideas in order to develop new ideas that are both novel and high in quality (feasible or useful, impactful, etc.). Having longer sessions and generating many ideas will increase the likelihood of novel ideas since early in the sessions group members are likely to tap the most accessible knowledge bases (Baruah & Paulus, 2016;Paulus & Brown, 2007). When groups begin to tap more conceptually remote knowledge, novel ideas or combinations are more likely. ...
... Social interaction between leaders and followers may affect 2 core cognitive processes of group creativity: idea generation and sharing. Idea generation involves the retrieval of task-relevant knowledge from memory and integration of existing knowledge into novel ideas (Paulus and Brown 2007). Idea-sharing may help individuals access less common categories of ideas in the semantic network, potentially leading to novel combinations of generated ideas (Paulus and Nijstad 2003). ...
... Significant interaction effect of Condition × Pair was observed on the IBS increment of rMTG-rMotor. The IBS increment for the LF pairs was higher in condition E, whereas that for the FF pairs was higher in condition A. Generating creative ideas requires individuals to search their relevant semantic knowledge for relevant ideas (Paulus and Brown 2007). The MTG plays the pivotal role in semantic memory processing, forming new concepts, and integrating creative associations (Binder et al. 2009;Ren et al. 2020). ...
This study aimed to investigate how the ways leaders arise (appointed vs. emergent) affect the leader–follower interaction during creative group communication. Hyperscanning technique was adopted to reveal the underlying interpersonal neural correlates using functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Participants were assigned into 3-person groups to complete a creative problem-solving task. These groups were randomly split into conditions of appointed (condition A) and emergent (condition E) leaders. Creative group outcomes were better in condition E, accompanied by more frequent perspective-taking behaviors between leaders and followers. The interpersonal brain synchronization (IBS) increment for leader–follower pairs was significantly higher at the right angular gyrus (rAG), between the rAG and the right supramarginal gyrus (rSMG), and between the right middle temporal gyrus and the right motor cortex in condition E and positively correlated with perspective-taking behaviors between leaders and followers. The graph-based analysis showed higher nodal betweenness of the rAG and the rSMG in condition E. These results indicated the neural coupling of brain regions involved in mentalizing, semantic processing and motor imagery may underlie the dynamic information transmission between leaders and followers during creative group communication.
... indicating a concern of an individual within a group to achieve joint outcomes and joint success, are more likely to pool available information and engage in collaboration . Hence, social factors can impact task motivation, which in turn impacts creative thinking (Paulus & Brown, 2007). ...
... It is thus crucial to understand how group interactions and compositions relate to the individual.Groups essentially broaden the breadth and variety of available knowledge, both domain and procedural, required to engage in creative thinking. Working creatively in groups can stimulate the exploration of existing domain knowledge if individuals are exposed to ideas of fellow group members, yielding beneficial effects on generating more original and more high-quality ideas(Paulus & Brown, 2007;Rietzschel et al., 2007). Sharing and communicating the results of individual creative thinking processes within a group thereby facilitate the formulation of relationships between single thoughts.As Caniëls et al. (2014, p. 104) find, 'by making ideas explicit to others, divergent thoughts are crafted into coherent concepts.' ...
Extant research provides vast information on antecedents to creativity. However, creative thinking is oftentimes treated as a black box, requiring input and producing creative output. Cognitive processes occurring during creative thinking tend to be neglected, although they can provide a bridge between the inputs to creativity and the resulting outputs. Literature offers different perspectives on creative thinking processes, such as the separation of divergent and convergent thinking, different stages of creativity or the concept of creative cognition. This variety of concepts underlying creativity has led to confusion and misinterpretations of some concepts. Moreover, the overemphasis on creative outcomes and divergent thinking has resulted in a neglect of a more comprehensive view on cognitive dimensions of creativity. Through reviewing and synthesizing multidisciplinary literature on creativity, an integrative framework is developed positioning cognitive elements of creativity within a system including organizational antecedents to creativity and creative outcomes. The framework seeks to offer pathways to increasingly incorporate the concept of creative cognition into future research. Suggesting different forms of creative cognition that individuals engage in during creative thought, this theoretical work further offers a theoretical development of creativity concepts that intends to inspire future research designs and facilitates cross‐disciplinary knowledge transfer.
... Social topics may increase flexibility and persistence more than mechanical topics. The social-cognitive-motivational perspective on creativity put forward by Paulus and Brown (2007) assumes that social factors affect task motivation, which, in turn, is the creative process. Amabile (1983) has suggested one of the three elements that contribute to creative activity is motivation. ...
... The motivational problem condition, which generates ideas about improving the university, may have increased performance through flexibility (see the Dual Way to Creativity Model) by supporting a positive mood. In addition, individuals with high intrinsic motivation may have supported their creativity performance by associating their working memory with semantic networks to benefit from rich stimuli and produce solutions from different perspectives (Paulus & Brown, 2007). ...
How de Bono's hats affect creativity is an interesting research question. Recent research indicates that the green hat enhances creativity more than the emotional red hat. However, the underlying mechanism of this increase is not yet known since the sample size was small in the previous study. It is also not known what effects the combinations of these hats are on creativity in the groups or dyads. For these purposes, two experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, in individuals, the green hat increased creativity more than the red one by increasing flexibility. In Experiment 2, the pairs were randomly formed as the green-green, red-red, green-red hat ones. The green-red hat dyads were more creative than the red-red hat ones. These findings indicate the beneficial effect of the combination that dictates creativity and emotionality. These findings were discussed in terms of the cognitive stimulation approach.
... More specifically, with access to other participants' work, participants will take the number of participants and quality of ideas generated by others as reference points for their own performance (Paulus and Dzindolet, 1993;Dugosh and Paulus, 2005). Further, a larger number of participants and higher-quality ideas could inspire more associative networks, thereby improving creative performance (Paulus and Brown, 2007). On co-creation platforms, such a participant-size effect has been believed to actively stimulate participants on creative tasks, thus positively influencing the quality of the task results (Zajonc, 1980). ...
... Firstly, the findings of this study expand the literature on the transparency of co-creation platforms. The previous literature provided little comparison between transparent and untransparent platforms, and generally only a single platform type was analysed (Nijstad and Stroebe, 2006;Paulus and Brown, 2007;Paulus et al., 2013). However, this study treats platform transparency as a variable while considering individual participants' creative performance on both transparent and untransparent platforms. ...
Purpose
Prosumers’ creative performance in a co-creation activity is greatly affected by the disclosure of activity information. Extant research has separately examined the impact of participant numbers and the impact of platform transparency, but there is a lack of research on the interaction between the two. However, testing the joint effect of the two sources of information can provide a more comprehensive understanding of individuals’ co-creation behaviour. This paper aims to fill the gap and further reveal the psychological mechanism behind the behaviour.
Design/methodology/approach
Three experimental studies were conducted to test the hypotheses.
Findings
The results show that a large number of participants will stimulate and inhibit creative performances on untransparent and transparent co-creation platforms, respectively. Moreover, this study found that the effect of the number of participants on creative performance is mediated by arousal on untransparent platforms and by the constraint on idea expression on transparent platforms.
Research limitations/implications
This study advances knowledge of how the number of participants in an activity and platform transparency jointly influence prosumers’ creative performance and the corresponding mechanism. However, the main limitation of the study is that the findings are from scenario-based experiments.
Practical implications
This study provides a more comprehensive understanding of prosumers’ creative performance under the influence of the number of activity participants and platform transparency. The findings can help co-creation sponsoring companies and co-creation platforms improve activity performance by designing better information disclosure strategies, thereby enhancing platform value.
Originality/value
The findings enrich the literature on platform ecosystem and co-creation by integrating previously separate knowledge on the effects of participant numbers and platform transparency. In addition, the findings deepen the overall understanding of prosumers’ behaviour.
... Another issue to consider is whether "generating ideas" happens better within a group or when done individually. The benefits of sharing ideas in groups is that it can be cognitively stimulating (Paulus and Brown 2007). More ideas are generated as a result of associative processes (Nijstad et al 2002) and exposure to different idea categories (Deuja et al 2014). ...
The article describes a new methodology being used by a group of OT consulants (called "Psalms that Sing") which uses principles of orality and performance to help poets/musicians engage in Bible translation, into their own languages. Six pilot studies are currently underway with six langauge-groups in Africa. This article illustrates the methodology with Psalm 3. See www.psalmsthatsing.org
... Collaborative creativity relies on shared forms of knowledge, expertise, and understanding of viewpoints brought in by each individual to the groups to generate new ideas or products (Baruah, Burch, & Burch, 2022;Chaharbaghi & Cripps, 2007). It is an integrative approach (Bissola & Imperatori, 2011) where individual ideas further cognitively stimulate each other's ideas leading to more novel connections and diverse set of ideas and thought processes from which groups can draw (Paulus & Brown, 2007) to make better decisions and evaluations. Additionally, the structure of creative tasks with a fine balance of free and structured thinking can play a key role in the collaborative creative process (Cirella, 2021). ...
This experimental research investigates the creativity of anonymous video-based groups through a series of collaborative divergent and convergent thinking stages of innovation. A sample of 113 undergraduate students participated in small groups of three or four to complete a creative problem-solving task in either anonymous or identified conditions. The findings revealed that although anonymity did not positively impact the divergent thinking task of brainstorming, it significantly enhanced creativity in the convergent thinking process of collaborative idea refinement. Furthermore, the ideas in the refinement stage were higher in originality, elaboration, overall quality, and good quality compared with the generation and selection task. The participants' attentional focus was critical in creating high-quality ideas by mediating the path from collaborative ideation to refinement. The current study contributes to the creativity literature by highlighting the importance of anonymous collaborative idea refinement as the teams proceed through multiple stages of convergent and divergent thinking processes.
... Laughter with the words to move forward the interaction mainly appeared as back-channels or repetitions of the counterpart's words in the ICED23 conversations recorded. Some studies have reported that such back-channels or repetitions of a counterpart's words play the role in conversation of delivering a psychological response to information received from the counterpart to sustain and facilitate the ongoing topic and even to inspire concept generation (Paulus and Brown, 2007;Rickards, 1999). These can suggest that a response in R to an idea proposed with comparatively more back-channels or repetitions of the counterpart's words elicited a positive psychological response from the counterparts, sustained their creative flow, inspired their concept generations, and brought them to resonance. ...
This study is aimed to understand the relationship between resonance and interpersonal phonetic communication during co-creation from the following points of view: linguistic functional factors and paralinguistic factors. The novice designers were assigned a concept generation task in pairs from the two nouns, “weather” and “stationery”. Linguistic function tags were contracted into five tag groups, Stuckness, Question, Seriousness, Proposition and Positiveness. The results suggest that phonetic communication in resonance showed significantly lower Stuckness and higher Positiveness towards the counterpart's utterances; Silence-based conversation was significantly observed when both were in creative states but had not reached resonance; Resonance was significantly more likely to occur with communication where one mainly spoke and the other also responded with utterances, neither one spoke in dominant amounts, or both spoke in equal amounts.
This study will contribute to understanding and facilitating resonance, which is an essential phenomenon in individual/interpersonal/group creativity, with practical implications, especially for co-creative concept generation and sustainable creative flow in collaborative design.
... These individuals are more likely to actively seek out higher levels of interaction with other people in their network (Burt, 1992) because it provides a higher level of contact with new and different ideas and thus provides cognitive stimulation. Several studies have reported that when group members are exposed to ideas generated by others, it increases their mental stimulation and acts as motivation and reference point for their own ideation process, furthering enhanced novel idea creation (Paulus and Brown, 2007). Aligned with componential theory, members who engage in novel idea creation are more likely to participate in OI, as collaboration offers intellectual stimulation to improve on their initial ideas (Amabile and Pratt, 2016): ...
... These individuals are more likely to actively seek out higher levels of interaction with other people in their network (Burt, 1992) because it provides a higher level of contact with new and different ideas and thus provides cognitive stimulation. Several studies have reported that when group members are exposed to ideas generated by others, it increases their mental stimulation and acts as motivation and reference point for their own ideation process, furthering enhanced novel idea creation (Paulus and Brown, 2007). Aligned with componential theory, members who engage in novel idea creation are more likely to participate in OI, as collaboration offers intellectual stimulation to improve on their initial ideas (Amabile and Pratt, 2016): ...
Purpose: Organizations increasingly seek to leverage open innovation (OI) communities to generate and advance novel ideas through collaborative innovation efforts of their members. However, success is far from guaranteed as OI communities can only thrive depending on individual and collective member contributions. This research examines individual and social determinants that encourage members to first generate novel ideas, then collaboratively advance these ideas through cocreation with other members, a process we term member ‘(co)creativity’.
Design/Methodology/Approach: A survey design was used to collect data from 301 OI community members, which we analyzed through component-based structural equation modeling using SmartPLS.
Findings: Drawing on componential theory of creativity and innovation, this study demonstrates the role of members’ creative identity, creative self-efficacy, and domain-relevant knowledge as determinants for their novel idea generation. While novel idea generation leads to members’ participation in collaborative innovation, this relationship is partially mediated by members’ willingness to cocreate in this process. This process is further conditioned by social determinants and leads to members’ creative self-enrichment as a result of collaborating in OI communities.
Research Implications: Taking a member perspective, this study advances marketing innovation theorizing by investigating critical determinants of effective OI communities, informing managers about success factors that promote collaborative innovation in OI communities.
... In addition to exploring cognitive style and paradigm-relatedness at the individual level, it is also important to analyze the impact at the team level. This is important because there is much debate over how to promote team creativity [17,18] due to the complex dynamics of teams [19]. Specifically, when team members' cognitive styles are diverse, cognitive gaps are created. ...
Thomas Kuhn revolutionized how we think of scientific discovery and innovation when he identified that scientific change can occur on a continuum from incremental developments to drastic change in the form of a paradigm shift. In engineering design, both types of scientific change are critical when exploring the solution space. This study investigates this gap under a psychological safety lens through an empirical study with 64 engineering design student teams over the course of a 4- and 8-week design project. Specifically, we sought to identify the role of cognitive style using KAI scores, derived from Kirton's Adaption-Innovation (A-I) theory, on the paradigm-relatedness of ideas generated by individuals and teams. Our results identify that cognitive style may not have a direct relationship to the paradigm of ideas an individual generates, or a team selects and develops. Similarly, both individual perceptions and team psychological safety do not predict the paradigm of ideas generated or selected in a team. The results instead identify that the availability of ideas in each paradigm is the primary driver for teams selecting a higher ratio of these ideas during concept screening. These results highlight that cognitive style at the individual and team levels may not be of paramount importance for developing paradigm challenging ideas, and that teams should instead turn their focus to developing strategies to generate more ideas within the paradigm that fits best with the desired goals of the design tasks.
... This study underscores the sharing and construction of ideas within a team as the catalyst for extending selected ideas into innovation (Baruah & Paulus, 2009;Dugosh et al., 2000;Nijstad & Stroebe, 2006;Paulus & Brown, 2007). Idea generation is akin to a chain reaction (Osborn, 1957) during the process of cognitive stimulation (Dugosh et al., 2000). ...
The Australian Tournament of Minds (TOM) is an annual collaborative problem-solving challenge for student teams inclusive of Years 3–10. TOM develops 21st century skills (21CS) of creativity,
critical thinking, communication, and collaboration (4Cs) as identified by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). TOM challenges accommodate student teams
with an enthusiasm for the Arts, Language Literature, Social Sciences, and Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics. The research employed a correlational design using quantitative
ANOVA to explore relationships between thinking processes and collaboration in producing creative answers. The data (N = 1445 teams) was collected from the Australian and New Zealand
teams of seven students participating in a five-minute spontaneous divergent thinking challenge in 2019. The data reported operational differences between the teams to generate creative outcomes. STEM teams saw enhanced collaborative thinking compared to other teams in a common challenge. The data has implications for teacher-initiated collaboration pedagogy in different learning areas.
... For example, unless guarded against, the presence of others tends to reduce the number of ideas generated and to induce a fixation on a limited number of ideas conforming to those produced by others (Camarda et al. 2021;Goldenberg and Wiley 2011;Kohn and Smith 2011;Paulus and Dzindolet 1993;Putman and Paulus 2009;Rietzschel et al. 2006). To overcome these cognitive and social biases, different variants of brainstorming techniques have shown positive effects (for reviews of methods, see Al-Samarraie and Hurmuzan 2018; Paulus and Brown 2007). These include: using (Osborn 1953) initial brainstorming rules (which aim to reduce spontaneous self-judgment of ideas and fear of this judgment by others); drawing attention to ideas generated by others by writing them down independently (e.g., the technique known as "brainwriting"); and requiring incubation periods between work sessions by forcing members of a problem-solving group to take breaks (Paulus and Yang 2000;Paulus and Kenworthy 2019). ...
This article addresses educational challenges posed by the future of work, examining “21st century skills”, their conception, assessment, and valorization. It focuses in particular on key soft skill competencies known as the “4Cs”: creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication. In a section on each C, we provide an overview of assessment at the level of individual performance, before focusing on the less common assessment of systemic support for the development of the 4Cs that can be measured at the institutional level (i.e., in schools, universities, professional training programs, etc.). We then present the process of official assessment and certification known as “labelization”, suggesting it as a solution both for establishing a publicly trusted assessment of the 4Cs and for promoting their cultural valorization. Next, two variations of the “International Institute for Competency Development’s 21st Century Skills Framework” are presented. The first of these comprehensive systems allows for the assessment and labelization of the extent to which development of the 4Cs is supported by a formal educational program or institution. The second assesses informal educational or training experiences, such as playing a game. We discuss the overlap between the 4Cs and the challenges of teaching and institutionalizing them, both of which may be assisted by adopting a dynamic interactionist model of the 4Cs—playfully entitled “Crea-Critical-Collab-ication”—for pedagogical and policy-promotion purposes. We conclude by briefly discussing opportunities presented by future research and new technologies such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality.
... When sales personnel work in groups with shared goals, they tend to "take it easy" if another salesperson is nearby who can do their work (George, 1992). People who are trying to generate new, creative ideas in group brainstorming sessions usually put in less effort and are thus less productive than people who are generating new ideas individually (Paulus & Brown, 2007). Students assigned group projects often complain of inequity in the quality and quantity of each member's contributions: Some people just don't work as much as they should to help the group reach its learning goals (Neu, 2012). ...
These materials will help students and instructors alike explore human behavior and how it is shaped and impacted by both traditional and non-traditional paradigms. This text will also support the reader in having a deeper understanding of how the environment, in all of its complexity, can affect individuals, families, groups, and communities. It is my hope that the information contained in this book will help you, as a future social worker, approach client systems with empathy, understanding, and a compassionate curiosity that allows for comprehensive assessment, individualized approaches to treatment, and continuity of care. Content in his book is adapted was from • Kennedy, Vera. (2018). Beyond race: cultural influences on human social life. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License • “Beyond Race: Cultural Influences on Human Social Life” by Vera Kennedy under the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. • Social Problems by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted. • Introduction to Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies by Miliann Kang, Donovan Lessard, Laura Heston, Sonny Nordmarken is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, • Principles of Social Psychology by University of Minnesota under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, • McAdams, D. P. (2019). Self and identity. In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba textbook series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF publishers. Retrieved from http://noba.to/3gsuardw. Self and Identity by Dan P. McAdams is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. • Immigrant and Refugee Families, 2nd Ed. by Jaime Ballard, Elizabeth Wieling, Catherine Solheim, and Lekie Dwanyen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
... Moreover, in the context of a creative assignment, group identification may influence not only the perception of group members ("we" instead of "I"), but also of their ideas ("our production" instead of "my production"). Because attention to others' ideas is key to creativity (Paulus and Brown 2007;Michinov 2012), increasing the salience of social identity may also improve cognitive stimulation. ...
Action research is an approach to research which aims at both taking action and creating knowledge or theory about that action as the action unfolds. It starts with everyday experience and is concerned with the development of living knowledge. Its characteristics are that it generates practical knowledge in the pursuit of worthwhile purposes; it is participative and democratic as its participants work together in the present tense in defining the questions they wish to explore, the methodology for that exploration, and its application through cycles of action and reflection. In this vein they are agents of change and coresearchers in knowledge generation and not merely passive subjects as in traditional research. In this vein, action research can be understood as a social science of the possible as the collective action is focused on creating a desired future in whatever context the action research is located.
... Idea generation is a cognitive process that involves knowledge retrieval from long-term memory and integration into the working memory through the moderation of social and motivational factors (Nijstad & Stroebe, 2006;Paulus & Brown, 2007). Idea generation involves setting an environment and implementing creativity techniques that will help students produce, express, and merge ideas (Escandon-Quintanilla et al., 2015). ...
Cross-cultural collaborative learning has been paid more and more attention in recent years. To promote productive cross-cultural collaborative learning, idea generation and improvement, and socially shared regulation is crucial. The study aimed to identify the differences in idea generation and improvement as well as socially shared regulation between high- and low-performance groups in cross-cultural online collaborative learning. In this study, 24 culturally diverse university students composed of eight groups conducted cross-cultural online collaborative learning to solve problems collaboratively. Epistemic network analysis and lag sequential analysis methods were employed to analyze data quantitatively and qualitatively. The results revealed that different strategies shape different learning performances. High-performance groups adopted more cognitive, social, and regulation processes than low-performance groups. The results extend the existing literature by indicating that idea elaboration, refining or building on ideas, and appraisal is strongly connected to new ideas. In addition, transitions from monitoring and controlling to adapting metacognition in collaborative learning activities are the main difference in socially shared regulation between high-performance and low-performance groups. This study shed light on how to engage culturally diverse students to generate and improve ideas as well as jointly regulate collaborative learning.
... Grohman et al. (2017) found students' creative behavior was correlated with teacher reported enthusiasm. Passion or enthusiasm is also closely related to intrinsic motivation (Amabile and Fisher, 2000;Moeller et al., 2015) which has been implicated in creative idea generation (Paulus and Brown, 2007;Dumas et al., 2020a;Gu et al., 2020). ...
In creativity research, ideational flexibility, the ability to generate ideas by shifting between concepts, has long been the focus of investigation. However, psychometric work to develop measurement procedures for flexibility has generally lagged behind other creativity-relevant constructs such as fluency and originality. Here, we build from extant research to theoretically posit, and then empirically validate, a text-mining based method for measuring flexibility in verbal divergent thinking (DT) responses. The empirical validation of this method is accomplished in two studies. In the first study, we use the verbal form of the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT) to demonstrate that our novel flexibility scoring method strongly and positively correlates with traditionally used TTCT flexibility scores. In the second study, we conduct a confirmatory factor analysis using the Alternate Uses Task to show reliability and construct validity of our text-mining based flexibility scoring. In addition, we also examine the relationship between personality facets and flexibility of ideas to provide criterion validity of our scoring methodology. Given the psychometric evidence presented here and the practicality of automated scores, we recommend adopting this new method which provides a less labor-intensive and less costly objective measurement of flexibility.
... To optimize the collaborative ideation process, group or team members must effectively share their relevant knowledge, attend to and process this knowledge and information, and then build on it by adding additional elements from their own knowledge or by suggesting new combinations or elaborations of the shared ideas (Brown & Paulus, 2002;Kohn, Paulus, & Choi, 2011;Mumford, Feldman, Hein, & Nagao, 2001;Rosing et al., 2018;van Knippenberg, 2017). Effective collaborative ideation thus requires a variety of inputs, effective cognitive and social processes, and a high level of motivation (De Dreu, Carsten, Nijstad, & van Knippenberg, 2008;Paulus & Brown, 2007;Paulus, Dugosh, Dzindolet, Coskun, & Putman, 2002). Several studies have tested hypotheses derived from these models. ...
We present the results of an ongoing collaboration between computer science and psychology
researchers that employs Natural Language Processing (NLP) methods to examine the trajectory of
semantic space used during group idea generation sessions. Specifically, we track and estimate the
region of semantic space being used and the degree to which new ideas expand that space. We
present a visualization of this space mapping endeavor and compare human ratings of creativity
dimensions (i.e., novelty, task-relevance, and elaboration) to algorithm-based estimations of those
same dimensions. The semantic space mapping and algorithm development projects can be used
to deliver real-time feedback to human creative groups in order to optimize the collaborative
creativity process. The overall goal of this research is to increase the “survival” of novel ideas and
their elaboration in the collaborative ideation and subsequent decision processes
... n.s.). The associative theory of creative cognition suggests that exposure to ideas initiallyunthought-of by a person can help them access remote concepts in their long-term memories and recombine those remote concepts to generate novel ideas [44,12,13]. Thus, a reduced overlap between the egos' and alters' ideas can better inspire novel idea generation in the egos, as we confirm. ...
Recent works suggest that striking a balance between maximizing idea stimulation and minimizing idea redundancy can elevate novel idea generation performances in self-organizing social networks. We explore whether dispersing the visibility of high-performing idea generators can help achieve such a trade-off. We employ popularity signals (follower counts) of participants as an external source of variation in network structures, which we control across four conditions in a randomized setting. We observe that popularity signals influence inspiration-seeking ties, partly by biasing people’s perception of their peers’ novel idea-generation performances. Networks that partially disperse the top ideators’ visibility using this external signal show reduced idea redundancy and elevated idea-generation performances. However, extreme dispersal leads to an inferior performance by narrowing the range of idea stimulation. Our work holds future-of-work implications for elevating idea generation performances of people.
... Idea generation is an important cognitive processing activity in group discussion. According to the search for ideas in associative memory (SIAM) model (Nijstad and Stroebe, 2006) and cognitive-social-motivational (CSM) model (Paulus and Brown, 2007;Paulus and Kenworthy, 2021) in group idea generation, ideas from others will serve as cognitive stimulation which activates the less accessible knowledge especially when these stimuli are semantically diverse. Therefore, cognitive diversity and further processing of these diverse information are the important features of productive discussion. ...
Group discussion is a common and important form of learning. The effectiveness of group discussion could be facilitated by the adaptive support of virtual agent. Argumentative knowledge construction is beneficial to learners’ acquisition of knowledge, but the effectiveness of argumentative scaffolding is not consistent in existing studies. In this study, a total of 64 college students (32 groups, two participants and one computer agent in each group) participated in the experiment and they were assigned to the experimental condition (16 groups) and the control condition (16 groups). In the control condition, the computer agent would give an idea from semantically different categories according to the automatic categorization of the current discussion. In the experimental condition, the computer agent provided argumentative scaffolding after giving diverse ideas to support participants’ deep processing. The argumentative scaffolding included two prompt questions, “do you agree with me?” and “could you give the reasons to support your viewpoint?.” The dependent variables were the interaction quality, network centrality, the breadth and depth of discussion, the self-reported of discussion effectiveness and the degree of change before and after the discussion. Findings revealed that compared with the control condition, the participants were more likely to discuss the keywords provided by the virtual agent and reported more comprehensive understanding of the discussion topic, but surveyed less ideas and interactions during the discussion under the argumentative condition. This study suggests that the argumentative scaffolding may have both positive and negative effect on the group discussion and it’s necessary to make a choice.
... Members of the group use internal cues to search for relevant information from long-term memory based on their own knowledge system to form new ideas, then share them with other members. At the same time, through interpersonal interaction, other members' ideas can also serve as external cues to prompt individuals to generate more ideas, acting as a facilitator of thinking (Paulus and Brown 2007). The leader, as an important role of the group, has multiple influences on group creativity. ...
The leader is considered to play key roles such as organization or management in promoting group creativity. Previous studies focused more on the psychological and behavioral characteristics rather than on the dynamic behaviors of leaders in group activity. In this study, two experiments were conducted to respectively explore the effects of emergent and elected leaders' problem-solving related utterances and turn-taking in conversation on group creativity. The results of Experiment 1 showed that, for emergent leaders, none of the utterances about problem solving of leaders was different from that of followers and leaders' utterances about retrospective summary were positively related to the appropriateness of group creativity; meanwhile, the frequency of turns of leaders was higher than that of followers and was positively related with the appropriateness of group creativity. The results of Experiment 2 showed that, for elected leaders, the utterances about problem analysis, strategy planning, control and reflection, and retrospective summary of leaders were more than that of followers and leaders' utterances about viewpoint generation were positively related to both novelty and appropriateness, while the frequency of turns of leaders was neither different from followers nor related to the novelty and appropriateness. This study focused on the dynamic behaviors of leaders in interpersonal interaction and revealed the role of leaders in group creativity.
... However, the key advantage of the individual creative skills in a team context is the informational resources that team members bring to the team-task-relevant information, knowledge, expertise, and perspectives (Jackson, 1991;van Knippenberg et al., 2004). Additionally, in a collaborative context, mutual cognitive stimulation that results from idea-sharing brings in unique knowledge to the table (Nijstad & Stroebe, 2006;Paulus & Brown, 2007) for group members to see things from different perspectives (Amabile, 1983). The great value in looking at things from different perspectives has led to the assertion that diversity has a role in creativity. ...
This comprehensive study investigates the role of diverse creativity relevant traits in collaborative innovation. An initial screening with 301 participants evaluated everyone’s dominant creativity skill. In a subsequent session, 50 teams based on their dominant creativity skill participated in a creative idea-generation and selection task either in a homogeneous (all specialized in same creativity domain) or in diverse-skill (each member with unique creativity domain) group. As hypothesized, the diverse-skill groups generated more ideas than the homogeneous original, fluent, and flexible thinkers but not from elaborate thinkers groups. The diverse-skill groups also outperformed the homogeneous original thinkers groups in the originality of ideas generated. Elaboration of ideas mediated the relationship between the quantity and the quality of ideas in both generation and selection phases. The current study extends creativity research by highlighting the importance of a multidimensional approach to creativity in a collaborative context that is controversial in the current literature.
... The integration of views emphasized by this theory is a process of building similarities within different perspectives and shaping collective attention and collective understanding, which may improve INS ( Cirelli, 2018 ;Fishburn et al., 2018 ;Gvirts and Perlmutter, 2020 ). Therefore, if leaders and followers integrate their views into a shared view in a cyclical generationevaluation process, the DMN and ECN between the two may be better coupled, which will help the group develop a good goal directed and improve task performance ( Harvey, 2014 ;Huang et al., 2021 ;Paulus et al., 2012 ;Paulus and Brown, 2007 ). ...
Group creation is the process by which group members collaborate to produce novel and useful ideas or products, including ideas generation and evaluation. However, the interpersonal neural mechanism of group creation during natural communication remains unclear. In this study, two groups of same-sex dyads with similar individual creativity collaborated to complete the Product Improvement Task (creative condition) and the Item Purchase Plan Task (control condition), respectively. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) was used to record both members’ neural activity in the left prefrontal (lPFC) and right temporal-parietal junction (rTPJ) regions during the task. Considering that the role asymmetry of group members may have an impact on interpersonal neural patterns, we identified leaders and followers in the dyads based on participant performance. The results showed that leaders and followers in the creative condition had significantly lower interpersonal neural synchronization (INS) in the right superior temporal gyrus-left superior frontal gyrus, right supramarginal gyrus-left superior frontal gyrus, and right supramarginal gyrus-left middle frontal gyrus than in the control condition. Partial multivariate Granger causality analyses revealed the influence between dyads was bidirectional but was significantly stronger from the leaders to the followers than the other direction. In addition, in the creative task, the INS was significantly associated with novelty, appropriateness, and conflict of views. All these findings suggest that the ideas generation and ideas evaluation process in group creation have poor interpersonal neural activity coupling due to factors such as the difficulty of understanding novel ideas. However, performances may be improved when groups can better integrate views and reach collective understanding, intentions, and goals. Furthermore, we found that there are differences in the dynamics of INS in different brain regions. The INS related to the novelty of the group creation decreased in the early stages, while the INS related to the appropriateness decreased in the middle stages. Our findings reveal a unique interpersonal neural pattern of group creation processes in the context of natural communication.
... It also took many efforts and time to organize documents for sharing at the end. As a result, many participants said that they had some difficulties in understanding others' expertise, thoughts, and activities; they could not collaboratively generate new ideas (i.e., collaborative ideation recommended by the literature [29,30]). ...
Teams in tech companies collaboratively solve creative problems, and this team creative process increasingly occurs online. Despite many innovative tool designs to support collaborative creativity, many teams did not adopt them. This study aimed to identify the barriers to adoption and teams’ needs for collaborative creativity support. We clarified the team creative process in practice by individual in-depth interviews with 15 employees in 12 different high-tech companies in China. The results suggested that the teams frequently shared information via communication tools or face to face, and many of them acknowledged the benefits of collaboration in team creativity. However, most of them ideated and evaluated ideas or solutions individually. The reasons for the low collaboration level included the features of their tasks, a lack of technical and managerial support for collaboration in the ideation and evaluation phase, and a lack of motivation for team creativity. Based on these findings, we outlined implications for designing tools to support team creativity and demonstrated a prototype of a communication tool with creative support features.
... There is good reason to expect that building on ideas is worthwhile. Paying attention to others' ideas and building on them is expected to stimulate the cognitive processes of ideators that allow them to access, combine and interpret information in creative ways (Brown et al., 1998;Michinov et al., 2015;Paulus & Brown, 2007). By building on ideas, ideators are expected to generate ideas that they would not have thought of otherwise (Litchfield, 2008;Osborn, 1953;Paulus & Nijstad, 2003). ...
Long-standing wisdom holds that building on ideas is beneficial for group creativity. We empirically verify this recommended practice. We analyse creativity sessions of nine groups of professionals tasked to synthesize new ideas into one final creative concept. Linkography and quantitative analysis are used for analysing the impact of building on ideas on group creativity. First, the results indicate that building on ideas does not lead to more novel, feasible, or useful ideas. Second, our study shows that building on ideas is beneficial only if the ideators build upon the “right” ideas. Ideators generate more novel ideas only when they build on novel ideas. Moreover, our research reveals a trade-off: Building on novel ideas leads to more novel but less feasible ideas while building on familiar ideas leads to less novel but more feasible ideas. Finally, we find that stimulus ideas (i.e., ideas that are built upon) are more likely to be selected and integrated into the final concept. Taken together, our results indicate that building on novel ideas enhances the generation and selection processes. Implications for theory and research on creativity in organizations are discussed.
... Creative communication (i.e., communication and brainstorming in creative collaborations) is a special type of communication. It involves a distinct constellation of communication challenges, such as sharing generated ideas, understanding and evaluating others' ideas, and integrating personal novelty into collaborative work (Jordan and Babrow, 2013); all in order to produce novel and applicable products (Vera and Crossan, 2005;Paulus and Brown, 2007;Runco and Jaeger, 2012). It is an indispensable driving force for the development of modern society. ...
Social interaction is a dynamic and variable process. However, most hyperscanning studies implicitly assume that inter-brain synchrony (IBS) is constant and rarely investigate the temporal variability of the multi-brain networks. In this study, we used sliding windows and k-mean clustering to obtain a set of representative inter-brain network states during different group communication tasks. By calculating the network parameters and temporal occurrence of the inter-brain states, we found that dense efficient interbrain states and sparse inefficient interbrain states appeared alternately and periodically, and the occurrence of efficient interbrain states was positively correlated with collaborative behaviors and group performance. Moreover, compared to common communication, the occurrence of efficient interbrain states and state transitions were significantly higher during creative communication, indicating a more active and intertwined neural network. These findings may indicate that there is a close correspondence between inter-brain network states and social behaviors, contributing to the flourishing literature on group communication.
... An excess of the ideas sent, users, feedback between the organisation and virtual community may discourage them from creating and sending ideas. It is said that it raises their stress level and causes uncertainty [Chan, Yim, Lam 2010] as well as it has a negative effect on the motivation to take part in the creative process [Paulus, Brown 2007]. The paradox discussed above refers to the engaging-disengaging paradox by G.S. Mick and S. Fournier [1998], according to which excessive motivation of the community to co-create may cause their passiveness, frustration, harmful actions, and a lack of willingness to cooperate. ...
The purpose of this article was to analyze the benefits, barriers and perspectives for the development of inter-school cooperation in Poland. A review of the literature on various forms of cooperation, competition and coopetition in the environment of higher educa-
tion institutions as well as challenges connected with them were presented. Subsequently, pilot in-depth interviews with decision-makers from universities educating in social sciences were conducted and analyzed. The main conclusion is that cooperation
between universities, in particular cooperation with a stronger partner, is considered to be beneficial. In practice, however, there are numerous barriers that make this cooperation very limited, mainly due to operating in conditions of competition for students and funds for scientific and research activities. Therefore, cooperation with a reputable foreign partner seems to be nowadays the most desirable form of cooperation.
Group processes study the structure, properties, and courses of action existing in collectivities in which members interact to achieve common and interdependent goals. A group is a collection of individuals who define themselves and are defined by others as members, marked by common goals and specialized tasks related to those goals, requiring cooperative interaction among members. Group structure depicts the relatively enduring characteristics or properties of the group itself, rather than its individual members, such as group size, established social roles, and procedures. Group processes include examining formal and informal settings, interaction among peers and between leaders and group members, and how organizational roles or status hierarchies influence intra‐ and intergroup relations. Popular topics include cohesion and teamwork, social identity theory, “groupthink,” group decision‐making, conformity and persuasion, leadership, communication, how groups affect achievement, and how groups influence organizational, social, and individual change.
Online learning environments are a vulnerable space, for learners as well as for course instructors. Online environments are frequently pre-designed spaces in which traditional and non-traditional learning experiences occur, removing the natural ability to pivot and shift the instructional process that is naturally occurring within traditional face to face learning environments. Recognizing this, the importance around course design towards learner engagement and underlying motivational supports become stronger imperatives. The authors come together as instructors, learners, and instructional designers, to discuss the experienced strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats towards motivational collegial engagement in online course design. An aligned Unalome reference supports the progressive journey of motivational collegial engagement, from beginnings of motivational engagement through the path that leads into collegial engagement and future potentials.
Team creativity can be strongly affected by communication. With the trend of online collaboration, the design of communication tools increasingly affects different creative processes of teams working online. To clarify this effect, this study took the perspective of affordances and reviewed 54 papers to map the needs of teams, the design of communication tools, and the effects of tools on creativity in different creative stages. First, we summarized teams’ requirements for communication tools in different stages. Second, we identified key affordances with relevant features. Third, we discussed how these affordances could affect communication and team creativity in different stages and built a mapping of creative teams’ needs and communication tools. The mapping can provide insights for both designing communication tools for creative teams and expanding the current team creativity theories to fit the online context and new communication technologies.KeywordsCommunicationCommunication ToolsTeam CreativityCreative ProcessOnline Collaboration
In this study, we propose a system that encourages users to generate ideas using information about tweets they are reading as hints and creates opportunities for users to generate various ideas. By intervening during Twitter browsing, the proposed system aims to use time-consuming Twitter browsing as an opportunity for casual idea generation. To encourage users to come up with a variety of ideas, the proposed system presents a tweet with low similarity to existing ideas as a hint for generating ideas while the user is browsing Twitter. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed system, we asked participants to use it in our user study.KeywordsUI/UXUser assistanceCreativity support
The manner in which we perceive and respond in accordance to the world is encompassed by our ability to process multimodal input stimuli. In other words, in order to perform any task, especially at a high degree of proficiency, high dependence is placed upon our ability to interact with, interpret, and visualize input stimuli from our environment, known as visuospatial cognition (Chueh et al., 2017). This article will explore and encapsulate the importance of visuospatial cognition, in terms of the link it has with the performance of tasks in various fields, such as artistry, musical performance, and athleticism. Alpha wave investigation will be discussed as a means of both identifying and characterizing the degree of performance within these domains. Findings from this investigation may be used as a modality to optimize performance in the explored domains (e.g., with Neurofeedback techniques). The limitations of using Electroencephalography (EEG) to support the enhancement of this task performance and the recommendations to elicit further research, will also be explored.
Vers une (nouvelle) psychologie sociale de la créativité
Avatars are virtual characters that now belong to the popular culture around video games, social networks, and digital applications in general. However, using an avatar may not be as insignificant as it seems, because avatars, by providing us with a fresh new appearance, may impact the very perception of our own identity. The aim of this entry is to offer an overview of the sociocognitive processes influenced by the use of avatars and illustrate them with empirical findings from the literature, including examples related to the Proteus effect. Finally, we will open avenues as to what could become possible through avatars, in particular in the field of avatar-mediated creativity.
We examine idea championing as a key intermediary process of the idea journey linking idea generation and idea implementation in teams. Building upon multilevel framework of emergence we theorize about how compositional and compilational emergence of idea generation along with idea championing behaviors translate team members’ creative ideas into team-level innovative solutions. We adopt a two-study research design including a two-wave two-source field study (309 employees nested into 92 teams with direct supervisors) and an experimental study (423 students nested into 79 teams) to test our conceptual model. The results of field study show that team innovation process featuring strong compilational (selected actor-maximum) idea generating followed by compilational idea championing leads to best team-level innovative solutions. Using a sociometric approach as a part of an experimental study, we further show that individuals exhibiting the strongest idea generating activity are also significantly more likely the ones engaging in most intense idea championing behavior. While having team members exhibiting such exceptional behaviors is relatively more effective in an unstructured team innovation setup, structured idea journey setups result in better team-level innovative solutions, when idea championing behaviors are more equally distributed among team members. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
Non-verbal cues tone our communication. Previous studies found that non-verbal factors, such as spatial distance and gaze direction, significantly impact interpersonal communication. However, little is known about the behind multi-brain neural correlates and whether it could affect high-level creative group communication. Here, we provided a new, scalable, and neuro-based approach to explore the effects of non-verbal factors on different communication tasks, and revealed the underlying multi-brain neural correlates using fNIRS-based hyperscanning technique. Across two experiments, we found that closer spatial distance and more direct gaze angle could promote collaborative behaviors, improve both creative and non-creative communication outcomes, and enhance inter-brain neural synchronization. Moreover, compared to the non-creative communication task, participants’ inter-brain network was more intertwined when performing the creative communication task. These findings suggest that close spatial distance and direct gaze serve as positive social cues, bringing interacting brains into alignment and optimizing inter-brain information transfer, thus improving communication outcomes.
The importance of creativity to organizations is significant, ergo, scholars have begun to investigate how sensory elements in the workplace might impact creative performance. Our research examines effects of the sensory experience of taste, specifically sweetness, on creativity. Using a range of real taste tests and imagination tasks, we demonstrate that sweet taste facilitates creative performance. We argue that this is because sweet taste, as a positive implicit affective cue, increases cognitive flexibility and creativity independent of the elicitation of positive emotions. However, when the positive associations of sweet taste are externally overridden, such as when health risks are made salient, the positive impact of sweet taste on creativity is attenuated. We further demonstrate that sensory experience of sweetness increases performance on related tasks that require cognitive flexibility, but does not increase performance on non-creative tasks.
Team innovation is innovation by a team, for the team, organization, or a broader group of stakeholders and is ever more prevalent in the workplace. Consequently, developing students' competence therein is of increasing importance. The development of team innovation competence is, however, not a priority in most education settings. To contribute towards addressing this shortcoming, this study reports on the use of a project-based assessment for learning, requiring team innovation, in an undergraduate accounting course. In particular, this study documents the design of the project, analyses the student teams' innovative outputs, and reports the students' individual reflections on collaboratively creating these outputs. The analysis of the students' outputs and their responses to a survey, suggest that most of the students' experience of the team innovation project was positive and the project enabled them to socially construct their knowledge of accounting and to develop their team innovation competence. This study contributes towards bridging the gap between professional education and practice and provides a basis for instructors to further develop students’ team innovation competence, even in disciplines not typically characterized as being innovative.
The interaction processes of culturally homogeneous and culturally diverse groups were studied for 17 weeks. Initially, homogeneous groups scored higher on both process and performance effectiveness. Over time, both homogeneous and heterogeneous groups showed improvement on process and performance, and between-group differences converged. By week 17, there were no differences in process or overall performance, but the heterogeneous groups scored higher on two task performance measures. Implications for management and future research are given.
This paper reports on a series of experiments which were conducted to test the hypothesis that design fixation, defined as a blind adherence to a set of ideas or concepts limiting the output of conceptual design, is a measurable barrier in the conceptual design process. The results of the experiments clearly demonstrate the existence of design fixation. The paper related issues such as the nature of the phenomenon, some experimental issues which arise in such investigations, and directions for future research.
Pages: 567 Item #: 4318581 ISBN: 978-1-55798-906-2 Copyright: 1997 Format: Softcover Creativity is a powerful and elusive force. It brings about scientific, technological, and artistic accomplishment, and it allows us to adapt to changes in our lives, to solve problems, and to resolve conflicts. Little wonder, then, that cognitive psychologists have long been fascinated by the mysteries of creative thought: Where do people get new ideas? How are they inspired to make new discoveries? How is old knowledge mapped onto novel situations, and how are old, mistaken ways of thinking replaced by innovative perspectives? Creative Thought examines these questions in light of the most important new research on the nature of creativity, with an emphasis on its generative aspects—that is, on how old concepts are used to generate new ideas. This is a unique focus, since most works on creativity have emphasized its receptive aspects. The chapters cover four major areas of study: conceptual combination, conceptual expansion, metaphor, and analogy. List of Contributors
The interaction process and performance of culturally homogeneous and culturally diverse groups were studied for 17 weeks. Initially, homogeneous groups scored higher on both process and performance effectiveness. Over time, both types of group showed improvement on process and performance, and the between-group differences converged. By week 17, there were no differences in process or overall performance, but the heterogeneous groups scored higher on two task measures, Implications for management and future research are given.
Abstract ,The first ideas to be considered during creative idea generation can have profoundly constraining effects on the scope of the ideas that are subsequently generated. Even if initial ideasare intended to serve as helpful examples, or they are given simply to get the creative process going, the constraints of initial ideas may,be inescapable. Such constraints can impede,successful problem,solving and inhibit creative invention. Overcoming these constraints can be enhanced by reconsidering initially failed problems in new contexts. Empirical research examining,cognitive mechanisms,for these constraints is discussed. ,3 The Constraining Effects of Initial Ideas ,What is the best source of creative ideas? The wisdom of proverbs advises us that if we are to see farther than others, wemust "stand on the shoulders of giants." This means,thatwe,should use the prior knowledge,that has been provided by our predecessors, because in solving problems there is no need to "re-invent the wheel." On the other hand, a different proverb advises us not to get "stuck in a rut," meaning that using prior knowledge to solve problems can lead us to the same,old tired ideas and blocked thinking that stymied progress on those problems,in the past. How are we to choose,between,these apparently contradictory sources of wisdom? One way to address this question is through empirical studies of creative thinking and problem solving, a method
Employees of a corporation who had undergone considerable training for effective teamwork were asked to brainstorm about a job-relevant issue in groups of four or alone. One half of the groups brainstormed alone first, and the other half brainstormed as a group before brainstorming alone. Participants were also asked to rate their performance and indicate whether they would perform better in groups or alone on a brainstorming task. Consistent with past laboratory research, groups generated only about half as many ideas as a similar number of individuals (nominal group), and group brainstorming led to more favorable perceptions of individual performance. Participants also believed that they would brainstorm more effectively in a group than alone. These results indicate that productivity losses in brainstorming groups are not restricted to laboratory groups. Such losses occur even in groups who work together on a daily basis, have considerable training in group dynamics, and are dealing with a job-relevant issue. The sequence of alone to group brainstorming did not influence overall productivity. The relation of this research to that of facilitated and electronic brainstorming is discussed.
A selective review of research highlights the emerging view of groups as information processors. In this review, the authors include research on processing objectives, attention, encoding, storage, retrieval, processing response, feedback, and learning in small interacting task groups. The groups as information processors perspective underscores several characteristic dimensions of variability in group performance of cognitive tasks, namely, commonality—uniqueness of information, convergence–diversity of ideas, accentuation–attenuation of cognitive processes, and belongingness–distinctiveness of members. A combination of contributions framework provides an additional conceptualization of information processing in groups. The authors also address implications, caveats, and questions for future research and theory regarding groups as information processors.
Experimental research indicates that people in face-to-face brainstorming meetings are less efficient at generating ideas than when working alone, This so-called productivity loss has led many brainstorming researchers to conclude that there is overwhelming evidence for the ineffectiveness of these sessions, We question this conclusion because it is based on efficient idea generation as the primary effectiveness outcome and on studies that do not examine how or why organizations use brainstorming. We report a qualitative study of a product design firm that uses brainstorming sessions. These sessions had six important consequences for this firm, its design engineers, and its clients that are not evident in the brainstorming literature, or are reported but not labeled as effectiveness outcomes: (1) supporting the organizational memory of design solutions; (2) providing skill variety for designers; (3) supporting an attitude of wisdom (acting with knowledge while doubting what one knows); (4) creating a status auction (a competition for status based on technical skill); (5) impressing clients; and (6) providing income for the firm, This study suggests that when brainstorming sessions are viewed in organizational context and the ''effectiveness at what'' and ''effectiveness for whom'' questions are asked, efficiency at idea generation may deserve no special status as an effectiveness outcome. We propose a broader perspective for assessing brainstorming effectiveness in organizations.
Despite laboratory evidence that group brainstormers produce fewer ideas than individual brainstormers, brainstorming groups remain popular in business and industry. Here the authors present a model of the cognitive factors involved in group idea generation. Simulations suggest that group interaction should be beneficial when one group member primes another into thinking of ideas they would not have considered alone, at least not in the context of the task at hand. Many concepts relevant to group cognition can be defined within the model framework (stochastic transition matrices) including fluency, flexibility, category accessibility, convergent/divergent thinking, attention to partners, and the relationship between the knowledge structures of the brainstorming participants. Attention plays a crucial role in the model, linking together individuals in a brainstorming group. Simulations also suggest that convergent group behavior may be the result ofcognitivefactors in addition to the socialfactors outlined by a number of researchers.
Time serves as a medium for collaboration in teams, allowing members to exchange personal and task-related information. We propose that stronger team reward contingencies stimulate collaboration. As time passes, increasing collaboration weakens the effects of surface-level (demographic) diversity on team outcomes but strengthens those of deep-level (psychological) diversity. Also, perceived diversity transmits the impact (if actual diversity on team social integration, which in turn affects task performance. Results from four waves of data on 144 student project teams support these propositions and the strong relevance of time to research on work team diversity.
Groups of 4 brainstormed on computers for 20 min. In some groups information about the number of ideas generated was exchanged every 5 min. Some groups verbalized their ideas as they were typed, and others only typed their ideas. Exchange of information about number of ideas increased group performance, but verbalization decreased performance. Both information exchange and verbalization increased the favorability of performance perception. These results are consistent with the Paulus and Dzindolet (1993) social influence model of group brainstorming.
We conducted four experiments to investigate free riding, evaluation apprehension, and production blocking as explanations of the difference in brainstorming productivity typically observed between real and nominal groups. In Experiment 1, we manipulated assessment expectations in group and individual brainstorming. Although productivity was higher when subjects worked under personal rather than collective assessment instructions, type of session still had a major impact on brainstorming productivity under conditions that eliminated the temptation to free ride. Experiment 2 demonstrated that inducing evaluation apprehension reduced productivity in individual brainstorming. However, the failure to find an interaction between evaluation apprehension and type of session in Experiment 3 raises doubts about evaluation apprehension as a major explanation of the productivity loss in brainstorming groups. Finally, by manipulating blocking directly, we determined in Experiment 4 that production blocking accounted for most of the productivity loss of real brainstorming groups. The processes underlying production blocking are discussed, and a motivational interpretation of blocking is offered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Experiment 1 examined the effects of additional brainstorming rules for groups and looked at whether the presence of a facilitator who actively enforced the rules of brainstorming was beneficial. Experiments 2 and 3 examined whether the additional rules and brief breaks were beneficial to individual brainwriters and electronic brainstormers working alone. Clear benefits of the additional rules were found under a variety of conditions. The presence of a facilitator to enforce the rules enhanced the efficiency of idea generation (number of words used to express ideas) but not the number of ideas generated. There appears to be a small benefit to taking breaks in brainwriting sessions, but the benefit of breaks is reduced or eliminated in electronic brainstorming sessions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
One technique that may facilitate group brainstorming is decomposition of the task so that categories of the problem are considered one at a time rather than simultaneously (A. R. Dennis, J. S. Valacich, T. Connolly, & B. E. Wynne, 1996). Two studies examined this possibility for both solitary and interactive brainstorming in which major categories of a brainstorming problem were presented simultaneously or sequentially. In the 1st study, participants in the sequential presentation condition generated more ideas than did those in the simultaneous condition in both the individual and the group conditions. In the 2nd study, individuals exposed to either a high number or low number of idea categories demonstrated enhanced performance. Simulations of the data demonstrated that the results were consistent with an associative memory model of the idea generation process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Counter to the common belief that expert performance reflects innate abilities and capacities, recent research in different domains of expertise has shown that expert performance is predominantly mediated by acquired complex skills and physiological adaptations. For elite performers, supervised practice starts at very young ages and is maintained at high daily levels for more than a decade. The effects of extended deliberate practice are more far-reaching than is commonly believed. Performers can acquire skills that circumvent basic limits on working memory capacity and sequential processing. Deliberate practice can also lead to anatomical changes resulting from adaptations to intense physical activity. The study of expert performance has important implications for our understanding of the structure and limits of human adaptation and optimal learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Contends that in most studies comparing majority and minority influence, there is an emphasis on influence in the sense of prevailing. Within this context, evidence exists that majorities exert more public influence and that minority influence, when it occurs, tends to operate primarily at the latent level. In the present formulation, it is proposed that the differences between majority and minority influence are more extensive once influence is considered in a broader context and that exposure to persistent minority views fosters greater thought about the issue. Furthermore, this thought tends to be divergent rather than convergent, so that people tend to be better decision makers because they attend to more aspects of the situation and reexamine premises. By contrast, it is proposed that exposure to persistent majority views fosters convergent thinking and leads to an unreflective acceptance of the majority position. Three studies by the author (1976) and by the author and J. Kwan (1985) that directly tested some of the propositions are reviewed, and the formulation is linked to available knowledge in the areas of social cognition, creativity, and problem solving both at the individual and group levels. (64 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Replies to H. Gardner's (see record
1996-10360-001) comments on K. A. Ericsson and N. Charness's (see record
1994-43905-001) review of the structure and acquisition of expert performance. In contrast to Gardner, they attribute differences to the individuals' history of relevant activities that differentially benefit the acquisition of associated skills. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The authors predicted that individuals high in dispositional anxiousness would perform poorly when brainstorming in groups but not during solitary brainstorming. Exp demonstrated this result in a comparison of groups of 4 that were all high or all low in interaction anxiousness. In groups with 2 low- and 2 high-anxious individuals, the low-anxious individuals lowered their performance in the direction of the high-anxious individuals. These results suggest that part of the productivity loss observed in interactive brainstorming groups may be due to the inhibited performance of individuals who are uncomfortable with group interaction. Moreover, these individuals may influence others in the group to lower their performance in line with that inhibited performance level. Exp 2 demonstrated that poor performance of socially anxious groups in interactive brainstorming is not dependent on whether group members have individual microphones or share 1 common microphone. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
As in most other areas of cognitive psychology, research on concepts and categories has provided a wealth of information about the more receptive aspects of cognition (e.g., how people classify category instances) but has been less systematic in assessing the more generative aspects (e.g., how people use their concepts to develop something new). Here, the contributors to this volume focus on the latter with the hope of stimulating additional work on the important topic. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
A series of studies examined the role of social influence processes in group brainstorming. Two studies with pairs and 1 with groups of 4 revealed that the performance of participants in interactive groups is more similar than the performance of those in nominal groups. A 4th study demonstrated that performance levels in an initial group session predicted performance on a different problem 2 sessions later. In a 5th study it was found that the productivity gap between an interactive and nominal group could be eliminated by giving interactive group members a performance standard comparable with the typical performance of nominal groups. These studies indicate that performance levels in brainstorming groups are strongly affected by exposure to information about the performance of others. It is proposed that social matching of low performance levels by interactive group members may be an important factor in the productivity loss observed in group brainstorming. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The paper on romance of teams provides a useful and coherent overview of the dilemma presently facing team researchers and practitioners. Teams are popular in organizations and are positively perceived by their members and 'outsiders', but objective evidence does not support such a positive bias. The authors take a clear stance against the invulnerable image of superiority that teams seem to have. To make us all feel a bit better about the apparent societal stupidity of this state of affairs, Allen and Hecht (2004) come up with a list of justifications for keeping teams around. These all seem very reasonable and are consistent with others who have made similar points about the use of groups or teams in organizations (e.g., Furnham, 2000; Hackman, 1998). We find ourselves in general agreement with their perception of the field—the lack of strong evidence for the effectiveness of teams, the pitfalls of using teams, the potential non-performance benefits of teams, and the need for more research. A parallel perspective comes from the work on group brainstorming (Paulus, Dugosh, Dzindolet, Coskun, & Putman, 2002). In this area of group research, the common finding is that groups do not perform better—they even do worse—than comparison groups of individual brainstormers. Even though face-to-face brainstorm-ing has been shown to be an ineffective procedure in comparison with individual ideation baselines, it continues to be a very common practice in organizations. Some scholars have justified this by pointing out all of the other benefits of group ideation compared with individual ideation, such as commitment to the decision, collective memory, impressing clients, and enjoyment (Furnham, 2000; Sutton & Hargadon, 1996). We think such a broad approach to evaluating the benefits of teams or groups in organizations as suggested by these scholars and by Allen and Hecht makes sense. However, for the sake of inducing a more elaborate perspective about this topic, we 475 would like to consider some additional alternatives. In doing so, we will contrast the literatures on 'groups' and 'teams'. Most theoretically based research on groups is performed within controlled labora-tory settings using tasks and contexts that may have little 'real-world' flavour. The groups literature constitutes the core of what is covered in psychology texts on group processes (e.g., Baron & Kerr, 2003) and in most social psychology textbooks. Much of the research on teamwork is done in field settings with groups that work together for extended periods of time, although there are studies of ad hoc groups performing tasks in laboratory settings over a limited period of time that use the term team in their title. The teams literature is typically not covered in the groups chapters of psychology textbooks, and the groups literature typically receives only cursory coverage in organi-zational texts. We will consider various perspectives on these two distinct but related areas of research. Alternative 1: Groups and teams are both bad apples and not very romantic.
Knowledge or idea exchange is an important function of groups in organizations. Much research has demonstrated that idea sharing in groups involves relatively inefficient processes. Some of these processes are briefly summarized. It is proposed that there are conditions under which idea sharing in groups can be productive. One important factor is the extent to which group members carefully process the ideas exchanged in the group (attention). Another is the opportunity for group members to reflect on the ideas after the exchange process (incubation). These factors were examined by using a “brainwriting” paradigm. Evidence was obtained for enhanced performance of sharing groups in comparison to nonsharing or nominal groups both during the idea-generation session and in a second individual idea-generation session. This study suggests that, under the right conditions, the idea exchange process in groups may be an important means for enhancing creativity and innovation in organizations.
The effects of idea sharing on cognitive processes and performance were assessed in an idea exposure paradigm. Participants generated ideas while being exposed to stimulus ideas that were semantically homogeneous or diverse, and were offered in an organized or a random sequence. As compared to a control condition, participants generated more diverse ideas when exposed to ideas from a wide range of semantic categories, and they generated more ideas per category when exposed to many ideas from only a few categories. The semantic organization of ideas was higher when participants were exposed to ideas that were organized in semantic clusters than when participants were exposed to unorganized ideas. Idea exposure had positive effects in general, because it reduced response latencies for category changes. Implications for information processing in groups are discussed.
This meta-analysis examines the influence of electronic communication media on group idea generation tasks. Data from the following three areas of the brainstorming literature are synthesized to assess differences across performance variables and group member satisfaction: (1) electronic brainstorming (EBS) groups versus traditional face-to-face (FTF) interacting groups, (2) EBS groups versus nominal groups, and (3) EBS versus electronic nominal (e-nominal) groups. The results of this integration show that EBS groups are more productive and more satisfied with the interaction process than FTF groups. Additionally, large EBS groups outperformed nominal groups, whereas small nominal groups outperformed EBS groups. These findings have important implications for electronic collaboration and teamwork in both academic and organizational settings, especially given the recent proliferation of virtual teamwork.
A series of studies examined the role of social influence processes in group brainstorming. Two studies with pairs and 1 with groups of 4 revealed that the performance of participants in interactive groups is more similar than the performance of those in nominal groups. A 4th study demonstrated that performance levels in an initial group session predicted performance on a different problem 2 sessions later. In a 5th study it was found that the productivity gap between an interactive and nominal group could be eliminated by giving interactive group members a performance standard comparable with the typical performance of nominal groups. These studies indicate that performance levels in brainstorming groups are strongly affected by exposure to information about the performance of others. It is proposed that social matching of low performance levels by interactive group members may be an important factor in the productivity loss observed in group brain storming.
We examined the impact of surface-level (demographic) and deep-level (attitudinal) diversity on group social integration. As hypothesized, the length of time group members worked together weakened the effects of surface-level diversity and strengthened the effects of deep-level diversity as group members had the opportunity to engage in meaningful interactions.
Cet article présente une synthèse des recherches et théories qui éclairent notre compréhension de la créativité et de la mise en œuvre de l’innovation dans les groupes de travail. Il semble que la créativité apparaisse essentiellement au cours des premières étapes du processus, avant la mise en œuvre. On étudie l’influence des caractéristiques de la tâche, des capacités et de l’éventail des connaissances du groupe, des demandes externes, des mécanismes d’intégration et de cohérence de groupe. La perception d’une menace, l’incertitude ou de fortes exigences entravent la créativité, mais favorisent l’innovation. La diversité des connaissances et des capacités est un bon prédicteur de l’innovation, mais l’intégration du groupe et les compétences sont indispensables pour récolter les fruits de la diversité. On examine aussi les implications théoriques et pratiques de ces considérations. In this article I synthesise research and theory that advance our understanding of creativity and innovation implementation in groups at work. It is suggested that creativity occurs primarily at the early stages of innovation processes with innovation implementation later. The influences of task characteristics, group knowledge diversity and skill, external demands, integrating group processes and intragroup safety are explored. Creativity, it is proposed, is hindered whereas perceived threat, uncertainty or other high levels of demands aid the implementation of innovation. Diversity of knowledge and skills is a powerful predictor of innovation, but integrating group processes and competencies are needed to enable the fruits of this diversity to be harvested. The implications for theory and practice are also explored.
SUMMARY—As the workplace has become increasingly diverse, there has been a tension between the promise and the reality of diversity in team process and performance. The optimistic view holds that diversity will lead to an increase in the variety of perspectives and approaches brought to a problem and to opportunities for knowledge sharing, and hence lead to greater creativity and quality of team performance. However, the preponderance of the evidence favors a more pessimistic view: that diversity creates social divisions, which in turn create negative performance outcomes for the group.
Teams of people working together for a common purpose have been a centerpiece of human social organization ever since our ancient ancestors first banded together to hunt game, raise families, and defend their communities. Human history is largely a story of people working together in groups to explore, achieve, and conquer. Yet, the modern concept of work in large organizations that developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries is largely a tale of work as a collection of individual jobs. A variety of global forces unfolding over the last two decades, however, has pushed organizations worldwide to restructure work around teams, to enable more rapid, flexible, and adaptive responses to the unexpected. This shift in the structure of work has made team effectiveness a salient organizational concern.
Teams touch our lives everyday and their effectiveness is important to well-being across a wide range of societal functions. There is over 50 years of psychological research—literally thousands of studies—focused on understanding and influencing the processes that underlie team effectiveness. Our goal in this monograph is to sift through this voluminous literature to identify what we know, what we think we know, and what we need to know to improve the effectiveness of work groups and teams.
We begin by defining team effectiveness and establishing the conceptual underpinnings of our approach to understanding it. We then turn to our review, which concentrates primarily on topics that have well-developed theoretical and empirical foundations, to ensure that our conclusions and recommendations are on firm footing. Our review begins by focusing on cognitive, motivational/affective, and behavioral team processes—processes that enable team members to combine their resources to resolve task demands and, in so doing, be effective. We then turn our attention to identifying interventions, or “levers,” that can shape or align team processes and thereby provide tools and applications that can improve team effectiveness. Topic-specific conclusions and recommendations are given throughout the review. There is a solid foundation for concluding that there is an emerging science of team effectiveness and that findings from this research foundation provide several means to improve team effectiveness. In the concluding section, we summarize our primary findings to highlight specific research, application, and policy recommendations for enhancing the effectiveness of work groups and teams.
This brainstorming experiment assessed the extent to which idea exposure produced cognitive stimulation and social comparison effects. One hundred and sixty participants were exposed to either a high or low number of common or unique ideas. The participants’ likelihood of engaging in social comparison processes (high or low) was also manipulated through instructional sets. The results indicated both cognitive stimulation and social comparison effects. Exposure to a high number of ideas and to common ideas enhanced the generation of additional ideas. The effects of exposure to a high number of ideas was greater under high than under low social comparison conditions. Finally, recall of exposed ideas was related to enhanced idea generation. These results are consistent with the social/cognitive influence model of group brainstorming (Paulus, Dugosh, Dzindolet, Putman, & Coskun, 2002).
Creativity often leads to the development of original ideas that are useful or influential, and maintaining creativity is crucial for the continued development of organizations in particular, and society in general. Most research and writing has focused on individual creativity, yet in recent years, there has been an increasing acknowledgment of the importance of the social and contextual factors in creativity. Even with the information explosion and the growing necessity for specialization, the development of innovations still requires group interaction at various stages in the creative process. Most organizations increasingly rely on the work of creative teams where each individual is an expert in a particular area. This book summarizes the exciting new research developments on the processes involved in group creativity and innovation, and explores the relationship between group processes, group context and creativity. It draws from a broad range of research perspectives, including those investigating cognition, groups, creativity, information systems and organizational psychology. The first section in this book focuses on how group decision making is affected by factors such as cognitive fixation and flexibility, group diversity, minority dissent, group decision-making, brainstorming and group support systems. Special attention is devoted to the various processes and conditions which can inhibit or facilitate group creativity. The second section explores how various contextual and environmental factors affect the creative processes of groups. The chapters explore issues of group autonomy, group socialization, mentoring, team innovation, knowledge transfer and creativity, at the level of cultures, and societies.
Although a number of factors condition the success of creative efforts, most investigators recognize the fundamental importance of novel problem solutions. As a result, a number of systems intending to describe the processes contributing to the generation of innovative problem solutions have been proposed. In the present article, earlier models describing the processes contributing to creative problem solutions are reviewed. The common themes appearing in these models are then considered in relation to the use of extant information structures. Certain implications of cognitive information processing for understanding the nature and ontogeny of the creative act are then discussed, along with their potential contributions to the identification and development of creative potential.
This article reports the results of a meta-analytic integration of previous research on productivity loss in brainstorming groups. The following patterns were observed: Generally, brainstorming groups are significantly less productive than nominal groups, in terms of both quantity and quality. Stronger productivity Toss was demonstrated in the context of (a) larger groups, (b) experimenter presence, (c) tape-recorded vocalization of contributions (vs. writing of contributions), and (d) in comparison to a nominal group of truly Alone individuals (vs. a nominal group of Together individuals). These patterns are (a) highly consistent with predictions derived from social psychological explanatory mechanisms, and (b) only marginally consistent with procedural explanatory mechanisms, and (c) highly inconsistent with economic explanatory mechanisms. This article considers the implications of these patterns for the use of, and for future research on, brainstorming.
This article assesses and extends Campbell's (1960) classic theory that creativity and discovery depend on blind variation and selective retention (BVSR), with special attention given to blind variations (BVs). The treatment begins by defining creativity and discovery, variant blindness versus sightedness, variant utility and selection, and ideational variants versus creative products. These definitions lead to BV identification criteria: (a) intended BV, which entails both systematic and stochastic combinatorial procedures; and (b) implied BV, which involves both variations with properties of blindness (variation superfluity and backtracking) and processes that should yield variant blindness (associative richness, defocused attention, behavioral tinkering, and heuristic search). These conceptual definitions and identification criteria then have implications for four persistent issues, namely, domain expertise, ideational randomness, analogical equivalence, and personal volition. Once BV is suitably conceptualized, Camp-bell's theory continues to provide a fruitful approach to the understanding of both creativity and discovery.
Many cognitive processes contribute to the generation of novel problem solutions. One important process involves the combination and reorganization of extant knowledge structures. The present study provided empirical evidence for the significance of this process. Subjects were presented with exemplars drawn from multiple a priori categories. They were asked to (a) combine these a priori categories to generate a new category, (b) provide exemplars of the elements included in this category, and (c) write a story involving this category. The quality and originality of these products was evaluated under conditions where the relatedness of the a priori categories was varied along with exemplar typicality and instructional set. It was found that category relationships and instructional set influenced solution quality and originality. The implications of these findings for understanding creative problem solving and the category combination process were considered
There is pervasive evidence that people produce more ideas and more good ideas when working alone rather than in groups. This chapter will first review the evidence for the productivity loss in brainstorming groups and then evaluate the various theoretical explanations which have been offered to account for these findings in the light of empirical research. This evidence suggests that the productivity loss in idea-generating groups is caused mainly by mutual production blocking due to the constraint on groups that members can talk only in turn. We then discuss various strategies that have been developed to overcome the disruptive effects of production blocking. However, since so far even the most successful strategies have raised the productivity of group members only to the level they would have achieved if they had worked individually, our final section discusses an ‘illusion of group effectivity’ as a reason for the persistence of the belief that group discussions are an effective means of generating ideas.
Problems were presented for brainstorming to 48 research scientists and 48 advertising personnel employed with the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Co. Within a counterbalanced experimental design, each S brainstormed certain problems individually and other equated problems as a member of a 4-man team. Individuals produced not only more ideas than groups, but they accomplished this without sacrificing quality. The net superiority of individual performance over group participation is highlighted by the fact that 23 of 24 groups produced a larger number of different ideas under the individual condition. The superiority of individual brainstorming over group brainstorming was relatively greater when it was preceded by group participation. Apparently, group participation is accompanied by certain inhibitory influences even under conditions (e.g., brainstorming) which place a moratorium on all criticism. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
history of social facilitation research / drive theory / psychophysiological evidence / behavioral evidence / antecedents of socially induced drive
directive influences in social facilitation / self-awareness / self-presentation / inhibition of undesirable behavior
attentional effects of presence of others (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This book is designed to be a text, and aims to present the principles and procedures of creative thinking. The author claims that study of the general principles of creation and the methods used by famous creators can help a person do his own creating. There are 26 chapters, covering a wide variety of topics, such as "imagination in marital relations," "the age factor in creativity," "ways by which creativity can be developed," "factors that tend to cramp creativity," "the element of luck in creative conquests," "the value of thinking up plenty of hypotheses," "the effect of emotional drives on ideation," "creative collaboration by teams," and many others. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Brainstorming instruction is an effective method for increasing the production of good ideas in a particular type of creative thinking problems, and is even more effective if preceded by extensive training in its use. (5 tables) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The Ss learned, on a single trial, lists of words belonging to explicitly designated conceptual categories. Lists varied in terms of length (12, 24, and 48 words) and number of words per category (1, 2, and 4). Immediate recall was tested either in presence or absence of category names as retrieval cues. Cued recall was higher than noncued recall, the difference varying directly with list length and inversely with number of items per category. This finding was interpreted as indicating that sufficiently intact memory traces of many words not recalled under the noncued recall conditions were available in the memory storage, but not accessible for retrieval. Further analysis of the data in terms of recall of categories and recall of words within recalled categories suggested two independent retrieval processes, one concerned with the accessibility of higher-order memory units, the other with accessibility of items within higher-order units.