No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Priming creativity as a strategy to increase creative performance by facilitating the activation and use of remote associations
Abstract
Attempts at idea generation often produce outputs that are marked by restricted creativity. This lack of originality is often due to responses being tethered to recently activated knowledge and salient examples. The current research tested the hypothesis that implicitly priming creativity results in more creativity (i.e., flexibility). Experiment 1 addressed the potential underlying mechanisms that might lead to such an effect and demonstrated that creativity priming leads to the activation of remote, as opposed to close, associations to a target item. Experiments 2a, 2b, 3, and 4 showed that priming creativity (using two different procedures) leads to more original ideas in a generative task as well as better performance in the remote association task (RAT). These effects occurred independently of the conscious intention to be creative as well as motivational and mood states. Across these studies, the activation of a creative mindset undermined the sources of inflexible and uncreative responding.
... In intervention and laboratory research, simple and operational creativity manipulation provides the possibility to explore the improvement of creativity (Nusbaum et al., 2014;Sassenberg et al., 2017). These creativity manipulation programs are designed to relax the mind and put it into a ow state by relieving stress, resulting in a exible mindset in a short time (Campion & Levita, 2014). ...
... Priming refers to the in uence of prior experiences or stimuli on subsequent behavior, cognition, or emotions (Lezama et al., 2023, Sassenberg et al., 2017Zhou et al., 2021). This in uence is often unconscious, meaning that individuals react to information previously encountered in a way that in uences subsequent actions or judgments. ...
... Priming creativity that activates memories of one's own past creative performance could lead to the priming of a creative mindset. This creativity priming has been demonstrated to facilitate the processing of remote rather than close associations, resulting in more original ideas in a generative task as well as better performance in the RAT (Chiu, 2015;Sassenberg et al., 2017). This e ect was found to occur independently of the conscious intention to be creative as well as motivational and mood states, indicating the implicit priming creativity e ect. ...
This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title was published online. For more information, please read the site FAQs.
... Research has shown that creative abilities are not fixed within a person but instead depend heavily on situational conditions that influence an individual's cognitive ability to associate freely (Haase, Hanel, & Gronau, 2023;Sassenberg, Moskowitz, Fetterman, & Kessler, 2017;Scott, Leritz, & Mumford, 2004). To improve work-related creative thinking, we need a more detailed understanding of these procedural situational factors influencing such thinking abilities. ...
... The creative mind-set is a mental state characterized by diverse and abstract thinking and is the underlying mechanism activated by manipulations to enhance creativity (Sassenberg, Moskowitz, Fetterman, & Kessler, 2017). A creative mind-set facilitates broad associations across cognitive categories, producing global and flexible information processing (Dreu, Nijstad, & Baas, 2010). ...
... Training methods involve a more deliberate learning process than manipulation methods, which often rely on subtle, indirect cues or primes (Haase, Hanel, & Gronau, 2023). Spillover effects, which describe how the cognitive processes from one task can influence subsequent tasks, can be linked to creative mind-sets that facilitate cognitive flexibility and promote global perception and enhanced working memory capacity (Dreu, Nijstad, & Baas, 2010;Sassenberg, Moskowitz, Fetterman, & Kessler, 2017. ...
As automation advances and markets transform, creative skills are becoming increasingly important. In the present study (N = 813), we therefore investigate how creative performance can be enhanced. Participants either participated in a fun recreational game, a fun-focused game, a math task, or none (control condition). This allowed us to analyze the impact of tasks that elicit positive emotions due to their fun nature and more stressful tasks, such as math, on later creative task performance. Contrary to our predictions, prior engagement in joyful or arithmetic tasks did not notably affect creativity, indicating a multifaceted relation among task categories, creativity metrics, and task-switching. Exploratory analyses revealed that fluency, but not originality and convergent thinking, was positively associated with creative self-efficacy and growth mind-set and negatively with fixed mind-set. The sequence in which divergent and convergent thinking tasks were presented affected originality but not fluency. In summary, our research underlines the intricacies of task categories, individual differences, and creative performance. Implications for creative enhancement methods across diverse contexts are discussed. ARTICLE HISTORY
... Creative thinking involves the ability to think in a way that prevents the copying of existing ideas and promotes seeing alternatives to typical associations (Sassenberg et al., 2017). Companies regularly involve consumers in tasks that require creative thinking by inviting them to actively participate in crowdsourcing new ideas or customizing products (Acar, 2018). ...
... As defined earlier, creative thinking involves the ability to think in a way that prevents the copying of existing ideas and promotes seeing alternatives to typical associations (Sassenberg et al., 2017). Although most research on consumer creativity focuses on how to increase creative thinking and enable consumers to develop more creative products and ideas, recent work has called for more research that looks at the downstream consequences of engaging consumers in creative thinking (Mehta & Dahl, 2019). ...
... When consumers engage in creative thinking, they become more flexible in their thinking, such that they can better imagine how seemingly unrelated things can go together in a new way (Goncalo & Katz, 2020;Sassenberg et al., 2017). As a result, creative thinking helps consumers to develop ideas that break away from convention and norms (Burroughs et al., 2008). ...
Consumer embarrassment occurs frequently and can negatively impact both consumers and marketers. The current work demonstrates that encouraging consumers to engage in creative thinking—whether generating new ideas (e.g., crowdsourcing) or through exposure to creativity-related words—is one way for marketers to address the challenges posed by consumer embarrassment. Three studies demonstrate that prompting creative thinking makes consumers feel less embarrassed in subsequent consumer contexts. Specifically, the findings suggest that when consumers are prompted to think creatively, they assess behaviors that violate social norms as more socially acceptable, lowering feelings of embarrassment across a variety of consumption contexts. This research contributes to our understanding of the many benefits of engaging consumers in creative thinking and the growing stream of work exploring tactics companies can employ to help mitigate consumer embarrassment. This research also offers practical implications for both marketers and consumers.
... Crucially, in some creativity studies, participants are explicitly asked to be creative in order to boost their creativity. Yet, it has been suggested that triggering the processes underlying creative performance (e.g., by employing an experimental procedure that primes creativity) might be more effective in enhancing divergent thinking mechanisms (Sassenberg et al., 2017). In line with this assumption, Sassenberg et al. (2017) demonstrated that priming creativity can enhance creative performance by activating remote associations in the semantic memory network. ...
... Yet, it has been suggested that triggering the processes underlying creative performance (e.g., by employing an experimental procedure that primes creativity) might be more effective in enhancing divergent thinking mechanisms (Sassenberg et al., 2017). In line with this assumption, Sassenberg et al. (2017) demonstrated that priming creativity can enhance creative performance by activating remote associations in the semantic memory network. In their study, unlike participants of the control condition, participants of the creativity condition filled in an additional questionnaire before the experiment proper. ...
... Such results would indicate a generally stronger interconnectivity within the semantic knowledge network in the AUT group, which results in wider associative search processes (Kenett & Faust, 2019), as reflected in an extended neural activation and consequently, a more robust LPC response. Altogether, such results would indicate that priming creativity is an effective way to stimulate divergent thinking and thus to enhance neural interconnectivity within the semantic memory system (Sassenberg et al., 2017). ...
Little is known on how a task promoting divergent thinking processes modulates brain responses to sentences of different semantic complexity (i.e., novel metaphoric, literal, and anomalous sentences). In the present ERP study, we examined the processing of the three sentence types in two groups of participants: one performing an alternate uses task (AUT) between individual experimental blocks (i.e., the AUT group), and the other one performing no such a task (i.e., the noAUT group). The results showed a graded N400 and LPC effects from literal, to novel meta-phoric, and to anomalous sentences in both groups of participants. Importantly, we found a general group effect across all the sentence types, reflected in more positive P200 and less negative N400 responses in the AUT compared to the noAUT group, indicating that while the AUT group engaged more attentional resources during early lexical access, they required less extended cognitive mechanisms at the stage of lexico-semantic processing. The group effect was further observed in the LPC time window, where more positive amplitudes were found in the AUT relative to the noAUT group, suggesting a stronger semantic interconnectivity at the meaning integration stage when primed with a task eliciting divergent thinking processes.
... Similarly, Müller and colleagues (2016) led participants to meditate for 20 minutes and assessed their associative ability afterward. We argue that the underlying mechanism behind such manipulations is activating a creative mindset, which is a mental state in which a person can associate and think diversely and abstractly (Sassenberg et al., 2017). In other words, "the major variable in creativity is simply a mindset toward thinking in the novel, surprising, and compelling ways" (Kaufman & Sternberg, 2019, p. 88). ...
... By activating a person's creative mindset, associations can flow more easily and be less restricted, increasing the chance of successfully tackling open-ended questions (Sassenberg et al., 2017). Especially during the incubation and illumination phase of the creative process, following the four-stage approach of creativity from Wallas (1926), such altered states of consciousness (e.g., a dream-like condition) can foster the emergence of great ideas and associations (Boynton, 2001). ...
... Papers including samples with fewer than 10 participants per condition were also excluded (applied to three studies) because small sample sizes include a very high risk of sample bias (Kahneman, 1971). Priming studies were included if creativity was directly primed (e.g., Sassenberg et al., 2017) but not if other content was primed, which in turn affected creativity, such as individualistic vs. collectivistic norms (Bechtoldt, Choi, & Nijstad, 2012), drug consumption (Hicks et al., 2011), or counter-stereotypes (Goclowska et al., 2013). ...
This meta-analysis synthesizes 332 effect sizes of various methods to enhance creativity. We clustered all studies into twelve methods to identify the most effective creativity enhancement methods. We found that, on average, creativity can be enhanced, Hedges’ g = 0.53, 95%-CI [0.44, 0.61], with 70.09% of the participants in the enhancement conditions being more creative than the average person in the control conditions. Complex training courses, meditation and cultural exposure were most effective (gs = 0.66), while the use of cognitive manipulation drugs was least and also non-effective, g = 0.10. The type of training material was also important. For instance, figural methods were more effective in enhancing creativity, and enhancing converging thinking was more effective than enhancing divergent thinking. Study effect sizes varied considerably across all studies and for many subgroup analyses, suggesting that researchers can plausibly expect to find reversed effects occasionally. We found no evidence of publication bias. We discuss theoretical implications and suggest future directions for best practice in enhancing creativity.
... Researchers further moved in a 'darker' direction and focused on the Dark Triad, which is a personality type characterized by self-centeredness, manipulation, and callousness (Jonason et al. 2017;Paulhus 2014). Both creativity and the Dark Triad were found to benefit from lower inhibition (Mednick 1962;Nijstad et al. 2010;Sassenberg et al. 2017;Włodarska et al. 2021), which allows individuals to connect remote concepts (i.e., concepts with loose associations) and then generate highly creative ideas (Mednick 1962;Nijstad et al. 2010;Sassenberg et al. 2017). Moreover, individuals with lower inhibition are more sensitive to reward and find it harder to learn from punishment, which fosters antisocial traits (Fournier et al. 2021). ...
... Researchers further moved in a 'darker' direction and focused on the Dark Triad, which is a personality type characterized by self-centeredness, manipulation, and callousness (Jonason et al. 2017;Paulhus 2014). Both creativity and the Dark Triad were found to benefit from lower inhibition (Mednick 1962;Nijstad et al. 2010;Sassenberg et al. 2017;Włodarska et al. 2021), which allows individuals to connect remote concepts (i.e., concepts with loose associations) and then generate highly creative ideas (Mednick 1962;Nijstad et al. 2010;Sassenberg et al. 2017). Moreover, individuals with lower inhibition are more sensitive to reward and find it harder to learn from punishment, which fosters antisocial traits (Fournier et al. 2021). ...
... The results showed that the Dark Triad was significantly correlated with general creativity and MC behavioral tendencies, which was consistent with the previous findings (Jia et al. 2020;Kapoor and Khan 2016;Sordia et al. 2022;Szabó et al. 2022). Both the Dark Triad and creativity involve disinhibition, allowing individuals to be more antisocial and to connect remote ideas (Fournier et al. 2021;Mednick 1962;Nijstad et al. 2010;Sassenberg et al. 2017). Additionally, the results revealed that the positive correlation between the Dark Triad and MC behavioral tendencies was significantly stronger than that between the Dark Triad and general creative behavioral tendencies. ...
The Dark Triad has been found to be associated with malevolent creativity (MC) in terms of trait level, and its underlying mechanism remains unclear. Based on the cognitive–affective processing system theory and the existing studies, the current study aimed to explore the internal mechanism between the Dark Triad and MC behavioral tendencies/performance. The results revealed that the Dark Triad is positively related to MC behavioral tendencies through trait aggression and general creativity behavioral tendencies. Regarding MC performance, the Dark Triad is positively related to the originality of malevolent ideas through MC behavioral tendencies, but this effect is only significant at low-to-medium levels of moral identity. In line with moral identity theory, a higher moral identity may prevent individuals from acting immorally due to their desire to maintain their moral image, which may further suppress malevolent idea generation. Therefore, cultivating moral identity may be an effective approach to weaken the Dark Triad–MC performance association.
... However, we do not have enough field studies to validate how creative thinking helps solve these social issues in real-life situations. (Gaither et al., 2015;Kharkhurin, 2011;Prior & MacWhinney, 2010;Sassenberg & Moskowitz, 2005;Sassenberg et al., 2017;Wen et al., 2019;Zuo et al., 2019). ...
... Recently, increasing evidence shows a negative association between divergent thinking and stereotypical thinking, especially for people who exhibits low personal need for structure . In other words, the creativity could be positively related to stereotype avoidance (Sassenberg et al., 2017) and promote diversity, equality, and inclusion. Therefore, we linked advertising stereotypes and creativity and examined how stereotype avoidance affects marketers' creative thinking and audiences' perceived creativity. ...
... In other words, creative thoughts may decrease stereotypes. The creative priming also facilitates remote associations when the experimenters employed primes and targets irrelevant to human beings ("sugar", "tea", "sweet") in the lexical decision task (Sassenberg et al., 2017). ...
Creative thinking is the psychological mechanism underlying the descriptive process that produces real-life creative outcomes. However, the connection between individual creative thinking and real-life creativity remains unclear. For example, the widely employed psychometric tools for creative thinking showed limited predictive power towards real-life creativity. In addition, empirical evidence for the social psychology of creativity is inconsistent. Also, the links between creative thinking and social cognitive process are rarely validated in the field. Besides, some domains that require creativity lack guiding theories and empirical evidence. Therefore, this research project aimed to advance the understanding of creative thinking and its role in real-life situations. To address the knowledge gap and fulfil the central purpose, we conducted four pilot and seven main studies using quantitative research methods. Accordingly, we created an integrative-thinking-based psychometric tool - Function Synthesis Task and validated its discriminate validity and predictive ability towards engineering students' creative product design. To understand the link between social comparison and creativity, we produced a new experimental paradigm that addressed existing methodological issues. We employed the paradigm and found that competition and star rating feedback altered speed or performance in creative thinking tasks. Besides, we produced a new product design task based on a hot topic at the time and found that ranking feedback benefited engineering students' creative performance in the task. Moreover, we designed a new un-stereotype intervention and found its effectiveness in improving marketers' divergent thinking. We also found that advertising stereotypes increased audiences' perceived creativity. Our research shows that integrative thinking and social cognition might play essential roles in developing the theory of creative thinking and offers novel research tools for future studies. We also form practical advice to guide educators, organisational leaders, and policymakers to promote creativity, diversity, and inclusion in real-life situations.
... In an effort to identify ways to reduce the limiting impact of spontaneously activated domain-specific knowledge on creative performance, we tested the effect of recalling one's own past creativity on creative performance and related measures (Sassenberg et al., 2017). To this end, we developed a priming procedure in which we asked participants to recall three situations in which they had acted or thought creatively according to their own standards (Sassenberg & Moskowitz, 2005). ...
... This same pattern was seen in comparisons between creativity priming and the no priming condition (see Table 1). Experiment 3 (Sassenberg et al., 2017) tested the effect of the creativity priming (vs. a preciseness priming) on the Remote Associates Test (RAT; Mednick, 1962) in a sample of N = 74 undergraduate students. In each trial of this task participants are requested to indicate what what three words have in common (e.g., belly, barrel, garden -correct response: beer). ...
... Thus, activating the creativity mindset not only reduces spontaneous stereotypic associations, but also dominant associations between semantically related concepts in general. It remains an open question for future research whether the effect described here and in the preceding section (i.e., Study 1, Sassenberg et al., 2017) results from changed activation or inhibition of one type of associations or other processes. ...
Spontaneous (i.e., heuristic, fast, effortless, and associative) processing has clear advantages for human cognition, but it can also elicit undesirable outcomes such as stereotyping and other biases. In the current article, we argue that biased judgements and behaviour that result from spontaneous processing can be reduced by activating various flexibility mindsets. These mindsets are characterised by the consideration of alternatives beyond one’s spontaneous thoughts and behaviours and could, thus, contribute to bias reduction. Research has demonstrated that eliciting flexibility mindsets via goal and cognitive conflicts, counterfactual thinking,, recalling own past flexible thoughts or behaviour, and adopting a promotion focus reduces biases in judgements and behaviour. We summarise evidence for the effectiveness of flexibility mindsets across a wide variety of important phenomena – including creative performance, stereotyping and prejudice, interpersonal behaviour, and decision-making. Finally, we discuss the underlying processes and potential boundary conditions.
... Our creativity priming task required participants to "briefly describe three situations in which they had behaved creatively" [74] in general in 5 min using English, Bahasa Malaysia, or Mandarin to minimize language barriers. Past studies have shown that the priming task is effective in stimulating a creative mindset [77] through the production of diverse, unique, and remotely associated ideas [74]. Such remembering and recalling creative activities involve transferring knowledge and information from long-term memory to working memory [78] and imaginatively reconstructing memories is related to creativity [79]. ...
... Future researchers are recommended to use an active control condition such as describing activities or ideas not related to creativity to further confirm that the found positive effect on subjective well-being is not merely because of recalling something. Note that, however, Sassenberg et al. [77] compared the creativity priming with preciseness priming (i.e., an active control) and no priming. They found that only creativity priming has a significant effect on creative performance and there was no significant difference between the preciseness priming and no priming conditions. ...
The impact of happiness on creativity is well-established. However, little is known about the effect of creativity on well-being. Two studies were thus conducted to examine the impact of creativity on subjective well-being. In the first study, 256 undergraduate students (Study 1a) and 291 working adults (Study 1b) self-reported their creativity, stress, and subjective well-being. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis showed a positive relationship between creativity and subjective well-being after controlling the effect of self-perceived stress and demographics in both samples. Study 2 then employed an experimental design to examine the causal relationship between creativity and subjective well-being. Half of the 68 undergraduates underwent a creativity priming task followed by a divergent thinking test as well as self-reported stress and subjective well-being. The priming task was found to boost creative performance in the pilot study (Study 2a) and the actual study (Study 2b). Moreover, after controlling the effect of self-perceived stress, ANCOVA analysis showed that participants receiving the priming reported higher subjective well-being scores than their counterparts in the control group. The overall findings not only shed light on the facilitative effect of creativity on subjective well-being but also highlight the necessity of considering the reciprocal relationship of the two constructs in future research.
... Notably, the second day's task focused on cultivating remote association abilities by requiring participants to associate a chair with a sphere. Sassenberg et al. (2017) noted that students' initial ideas often lack uniqueness. Ovando-Tellez et al. (2023) showed that remote associations can promote the generation of novel ideas. ...
Contemporary technological advancements offer new possibilities for enhancing user creativity. We aimed to explore how technology can boost student creativity to meet the twenty-first century’s demand for innovative talent. Based on the 4P model of creativity (person, process, product, and press) and constructivist theory, a virtual reality (VR) creative enhancement system was designed, developed, and evaluated. The study recruited 47 participants, randomly assigned to either the experimental group (23 participants) using a VR system with haptic vibration feedback via electroencephalography (EEG) or the control group (24 participants) using a standard VR system. Participants’ creative performance, attention level, motivation, and cognitive load were assessed. The data were analysed using analysis of variance (ANOVA) as the statistical approach. The findings revealed that participants in the experimental group exhibited superior outcomes compared with those in the control group in terms of creative performance, attention level, and cognitive load. However, no significant difference was observed in motivation, with the control group scoring slightly higher. Our findings suggest that changing the learning environment, improving attention, reducing cognitive load, and setting up activities involving invention can effectively enhance students’ creative performance. This study provides a new technologically supported approach to creativity education, with potential applications for cultivating innovative talent in higher education.
... The negative lyrics group had signi cantly higher malevolent creativity than the positive lyrics group, while malevolent creativity focused mainly on divergent thinking rather than the malevolent creativity task. Based on the priming effect (Jo & Berkowitz, 1994), the previous study revealed that words indirectly related to a task can improve creativity by activating semantic memory networks (Sassenberg et al., 2017). Violent words under negative lyrics acted as aggressive cues to initiate aggression schemas in the participants, allowing them to write more malevolent uses of pencils and bricks. ...
Music, composed of lyrics and melodies, has an important effect on human emotion, cognition, and behaviors. Researchers have conducted studies on music listening about creativity mainly from the two perspectives of music preference and music exposure, but the dark side of creativity - malevolent creativity - has not been addressed yet. Based on these studies, we focus on three aggression-related music: heavy metal music, rock music, and electronic music, whose relationship with malevolent creativity was verified in our studies. In Study 1, we intended to verify the relationship between aggression-related music preference and malevolent creativity by using questionnaires. In study 2, we further explore the causal relationship between aggression-related music exposure and malevolent creativity through behavioral experiments. Moreover, we also wonder about the internal mechanism. Our results found a strong correlation between aggression-related music (music preference & music exposure) and malevolent creativity, especially electronic music. Meanwhile, the mediation mechanism of negative emotions was not validated. Finally, the main effect of lyrics was confirmed. The negative lyrics group had significantly higher malevolent creativity than the positive lyrics group. The interaction between lyrics and melody on the induction of malevolent creativity showed that there was no significant difference in malevolent creativity across the four music genres under negative lyrics, but electronic music and heavy metal music stood out under positive lyrics. The study's implications extend to understanding the potential dark side of music and its influence on creativity.
... The probabilistic causal relations provide a basis for prediction, and the explanatory mediators offer a basis for explanation. The explanations that have been put forward for the 10 propositions are adopted from empirical studies, including mindset priming (Sassenberg et al., 2017) and focused and diffused attention (Oakley, 2014). They provide a basis for further research and hypothesis generation. ...
Workspaces can enhance the creativity of the designers that occupy them. Here, we review experimental studies of creative spaces to identify constructs that mediate (explain) the relationship between physical spaces and creative performance. Through a literature review of 8 journal articles comprising 13 experiments, we identify 14 constructs involving cognitive, affective and physiological components. Knowledge of these mediators can help researchers to formulate hypotheses, select control variables, and develop conceptual models and theories of creative spaces in design.
... Stephan (2017) therefore argues that FLU automatically moves individuals away from their routinised and conventional ways of thinking. Being creative generally requires breaking out of mental routines (Ritter et al., 2012;Sassenberg et al., 2017). In this regard, interviewees noted that working in a foreign language required them to take more 'linguistic detours' to be able to express themselves and to understand and interpret others' contributions. ...
... Creativity demands that individuals break out of their intuitive thought processes and mental routines and combine existing and new knowledge in order to derive creative ideas (Ritter et al., 2012;Sassenberg et al., 2017;Stephan, 2017). Recent literature proposes that creativity relies on a combination of spontaneous and controlled cognitive processes (Beaty et al., 2015;Heinonen et al., 2016;Sowden et al., 2015). ...
Creative self-evaluations are important determinants of future creativity. Despite extensive research that identifies antecedents of individual creativity, little is known about what determines individuals’ biases in self-assessing their own creative per-formance. In particular, we do not know how contextual factors may influence individual creative self-evaluations. As workplaces become increasingly multilingual in the wake of globalisation, the language in which work is being performed has become one of these factors. In an experiment with working professionals (N = 86), we assessed actual creative performance using established creativity (specifically, idea generation) tasks. Participants worked on these tasks in either their native or a foreign language and were asked to self-evaluate their creative performance afterwards. Results show that creative self-evaluations generally deviate from actual performance, such that high (low) performers tend to underestimate (overestimate) their creative performance. While actual creative performance is lower when using a foreign language, the creative self-evaluation bias tends to be higher in a foreign compared to a native language setting. Further, we find tentative evidence that individuals who work in a foreign language and who are highly proficient in this language may be less biased in their creative self-evaluations. Unlike proficiency, foreign language anxiety does not appear to affect this bias.
... Priming is described as the secondary activation of knowledge structures by the current context which triggers cognition and behavior (Bargh et al. 1996). In the domain of creativity, primed elements are used to provide examples for creative tasks that follow (Marsh et al. 1999) and enhance the flexibility of creative performance, as well as impacting convergent thinking process because the priming effect activates remote associations (Sassenberg et al. 2017). However, creative performance influenced by the priming effect is restricted as the generated ideas show homogeneity with the provided example in the priming stage (Rubin et al. 1991). ...
As an artificial space extended from the physical environment, the virtual environment (VE) provides more possibilities for humans to work and be entertained with less physical restrictions. Benefiting from anonymity, one of the important features of VEs, users are able to receive visual stimuli that might differ from the physical environment through digital representations presented in VEs. Avatars and contextual cues in VEs can be considered as digital representations of users and contexts. In this article, we analyzed 21 articles that examined the creativity-boosting effects of different digital user and contextual representations. We summarized the main effects induced by these two digital representations, notably the effect induced by the self-similar avatar, Proteus effect, avatar with Social Identity Cues, priming effect induced by contextual representation, and embodied metaphorical effect. In addition, we examined the influence of immersion on creativity by comparing non-immersive and immersive VEs (i.e., desktop VE and headset VE, respectively). Last, we discussed the roles of embodiment and presence in the creativity in VEs, which were overlooked in the past research.
... In particular, there are several priming-based methods that have been shown to improve participant's scores on some of the creativity tests discussed above. Sassenberg et al. (2017) showed, for example, that when participants performed a pretask of generating creative ideas, they performed better on the RAT. The authors' explanation for this is that participants were better able to prime the related remote associates due to the pretest. ...
Anticipatory thinking is the act of identifying problems that may arise in the future, and preparing for them in order to mitigate the risk of (or opportunity for) positive or negative impacts occurring. In this paper, we argue that a critical underlying process of anticipatory thinking is cognitive priming, where one's current thoughts influence the next without conscious intention. We make this argument in terms of two aspects of human cognition that are related to anticipatory thinking: context and creativity. We then use the parallels between context, creativity, and anticipatory thinking to support our belief that cognitive priming plays a key role in various aspects of anticipatory thinking. As part of this analysis, we also discuss its broader implications, including how it can be used to improve computational systems that do anticipatory thinking, as well as how it can be leveraged to improve anticipatory thinking in people.
... ). Such situational influences have been less studied(Sassenberg, Moskowitz, Fetterman, & Kessler, 2017;Sassenberg et al., 2022), compared to the extensive studies on training methods (e.g. Ma 2009; Rose and Lin 1984; Scott et al. 2004a). ...
Creativity – developing something new and useful – is a constant challenge in the working world. Work processes, services, or products must be sensibly adapted to changing times. To be able to analyze and, if necessary, adapt creativity in work processes, a precise understanding of these creative activities is necessary. Process modeling techniques are often used to capture business processes, represent them graphically and analyze them for adaptation possibilities. This has been very limited for creative work. An accurate understanding of creative work is subject to the challenge that, on the one hand, it is usually very complex and iterative. On the other hand, it is at least partially unpredictable as new things emerge. How can the complexity of creative business processes be adequately addressed and simultaneously manageable? This dissertation attempts to answer this question by first developing a precise process understanding of creative work. In an interdisciplinary approach, the literature on the process description of creativity-intensive work is analyzed from the perspective of psychology, organizational studies, and business informatics. In addition, a digital ethnographic study in the context of software development is used to analyze creative work. A model is developed based on which four elementary process components can be analyzed: Intention of the creative activity, Creation to develop the new, Evaluation to assess its meaningfulness, and Planning of the activities arising in the process – in short, the ICEP model. These four process elements are then translated into the Knockledge Modeling Description Language (KMDL), which was developed to capture and represent knowledge-intensive business processes. The modeling extension based on the ICEP model enables creative business processes to be identified and specified without the need for extensive modeling of all process details. The modeling extension proposed here was developed using ethnographic data and then applied to other organizational process contexts. The modeling method was applied to other business contexts and evaluated by external parties as part of two expert studies. The developed ICEP model provides an analytical framework for complex creative work processes. It can be comprehensively integrated into process models by transforming it into a modeling method, thus expanding the understanding of existing creative work in as-is process analyses.
... Another factor that may play a vital role in how fixed and growth mindsets shape creative performance is related to people's existing domain-relevant knowledge and skills (e.g., Sassenberg, Moskowitz, Fetterman, & Kessler, 2017;Xu et al., 2021). While a growing number of studies have investigated the association between creative mindsets and creative performance, researchers tend to rely on generic creativity tasks, such as divergent thinking tasks involving ideation about the uses of everyday objects (e.g., O'Connor et al., 2013), everyday creative problem-solving activities (e.g., Katz-Buonincontro et al., 2017), or general insight problems (e.g., Karwowski, 2014), which do not require specialized domain-relevant knowledge and skills, nor do they necessarily translate into real-life creative behavior and performance in academic or professional domains (Beaty, Nusbaum, & Silvia, 2014;Hass, Reiter-Palmon, & Katz-Buonincontro, 2017;McCrae, 1987). ...
In the past decade, creativity researchers have attempted to explore how creative fixed and growth mindsets shape creative outcomes and effort. Previous studies found a strong association between creative mindsets and self‐perceptions. However, research on the relationship between creative mindsets and performance led to mixed results. In an attempt to explain these confusing findings, many advocated the idea that creative mindsets may influence how learners utilize their domain knowledge and skills in creative performance. To empirically test this assumption, we investigated the influence of domain knowledge and skills on the relationship between creative mindsets and performance among college students (n = 125) in the context of ESL/EAL writing. Our results show that a fixed creative mindset, but not growth, together with ESL/EAL writing proficiency contribute to ESL/EAL creative writing performance. We also found that domain‐specific knowledge and skills play a role in how creative mindsets translate to creative performance: while endorsing a fixed mindset was detrimental for students at all ESL/EAL writing proficiency levels, a growth mindset was beneficial at high proficiency levels only. These findings contradict the assumption that cultivating a growth creative mindset will lead to positive creative outcomes for all. Practical implications, limitations, and future research directions are discussed.
... We used a 15-item RAT measure adopted from [72] for member creativity. The RAT is an established measure of creativity [73][74][75]. The number of questions participants answered correctly served as the dependent variable. ...
The existing literature on emojis offers limited insights on the effects of using emojis in organizational settings, especially in the context of leader–member relationships. The current research examines how a leader’s use of positive emojis can influence members’ creative performance, a critical determinant of an organization’s success and productivity. We find that a leader’s use of positive emojis enhances members’ creativity and that this effect is mediated by a decrease in members’ perception of objectification by the leader. We further find that this impact of a leader’s use of positive emojis on members’ creativity is stronger when members have a higher level of relationship orientation. Contrary to the popular belief that the use of emojis in a work setting is inappropriate, our findings reveal that leaders’ use of emojis has positive impacts on important workplace outcomes. These findings provide important guidelines on how to apply emojis to computer-mediated communications at work by demonstrating the circumstances in which positive consequences of using emojis occur.
... Characteristics that are less salient in everyday life can become more salient in an art context. Studies have found that priming creativity (e.g., via mindset manipulation: describing situations where one has behaved creatively) increases remote associations between objects (the word "sea" is more likely to activate "quiet," "window" is more likely to activate "bright") and decreases close associations ("silence" is less likely to activate "quiet"; "light" is less likely to activate "bright" (Sassenberg, Moskowitz, Fetterman, & Kessler, 2017). It is possible that within an art context (e.g., a gallery or museum), people would be more inclined to detect less salient characteristics of everyday objects and to expect them more. ...
Everyday objects have often been used in contemporary art since Marcel Duchamp introduced the concept of the ready-made. However, it is not clear how everyday objects are perceived in art contexts in comparison to everyday contexts. We investigated how individuals interpret pairings of images of everyday objects as artworks and as objects in everyday life. In Study 1, we found that participants evaluated pairings of unrelated images of objects as fitting together more under the art condition compared to the everyday condition. In Study 2, using the thought-listing technique, we found that participants ascribed symbolic meanings to everyday objects more often under the art condition. In Study 3, we found that associating unrelated images of objects under the art condition primes cognitive access to symbolic meanings of visual scenes. Overall, the studies show that everyday objects are interpreted differently in an art context as compared to an everyday context.
... Once triggered, this specific information processing style remains activated, which means that it can influence subsequent information processing through acting as a procedural prime. As with other mindsets, what carries over to the next situation is not the content of the initial conflict experience, but merely the cognitive procedure of considering alternatives (e.g., Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000;Sassenberg et al., 2017). Typical manipulations that evoke a conflict mindset ask participants to remember and write down a past situation in which two important goals were in conflict (Alquist et al., 2018;Stern & Kleiman, 2015), or activate the conflicting goals (e.g., study vs. party goal) by means of priming (Kleiman & Hassin, 2013;Savary et al., 2015). ...
People experience conflicts between goals, thoughts, and actions on a regular basis. Those conflict experiences can trigger a conflict mindset, a unique information processing style characterized by the activation and consideration of conflicting alternatives. This processing style has been associated with a reduced reliance on dominant or default response tendencies. It could, therefore, affect self-control decisions, in which in order to receive a larger delayed reward (e.g., good health) people need to forego a smaller immediate reward (e.g., tasty pizza). Importantly, the tendency to choose the delayed over the immediate reward varies between individuals, with people scoring low on trait impulsivity (or high on trait self-control) showing an overall stronger tendency to forgo the immediate reward. In three studies (Ntotal = 480) we tested the effect of a conflict (vs. neutral) mindset on people's repeated choices for smaller immediate over larger delayed rewards in a delay discounting task. A fully powered analysis across all three studies supported the notion that a conflict mindset reduced the influence of dispositional “default” response tendencies on self-control decisions: participants’ trait impulsivity and self-control scores predicted delay discounting only in the neutral mindset condition. In the conflict mindset condition, those dispositional tendencies and delay discounting were unrelated. This finding extends previous work on conflict mindsets by showing that they can reduce the association between individual differences and behavior.
... Studies must involve an experimental manipulation in which participants were randomly assigned to priming or control conditions. An example would be a study in which participants were randomly assigned to a creativity priming condition (through a creativity task) or a control condition (i.e., no creativity task; Sassenberg et al., 2017). ...
Past meta-analyses of the effects of priming on overt behavior have not examined whether the effects and processes of priming behavioral or nonbehavioral concepts (e.g., priming action through the word go and priming religion through the word church) differ, even though these possibilities are important to our understanding of concept accessibility and behavior. Hence, we meta-analyzed 359 studies (230 reports and 867 effect sizes) involving incidental presentation of behavioral or nonbehavioral primes, a neutral control group, and at least one behavioral outcome. Our random-effects analyses, which used the CHE (Correlated and Hierarchical Effects) Model with robust variance estimation (Pustejovsky & Tipton, 2021; Tanner-Smith et al., 2016), revealed a moderate priming effect (d = 0.38) that remained stable across behavioral and nonbehavioral primes and across different methodological procedures and adjustments for possible inclusion/publication biases (e.g., sensitivity analyses from Mathur and VanderWeele [2020] and sensitivity analyses from Vevea and Wood [2005]). Although the findings suggest that associative processes explain both the effects of behavioral and nonbehavioral primes, lowering the value of a behavior weakened the effect only when the primes were behavioral. These findings support the possibility that even though both types of primes activate associations that promote behavior, behavioral (vs. nonbehavioral) primes may provide a greater opportunity for goals to control the effect of the primes.
... Studies must involve an experimental manipulation in which participants were randomly assigned to priming or control conditions. An example would be a study in which participants were randomly assigned to a creativity priming condition (through a creativity task) or a control condition (i.e., no creativity task; Sassenberg et al., 2017) Presence of a non-opposite control group. To assess the effect of the prime relative to a neutral baseline, studies must include a control prime that is not the semantical opposite of the experimental prime. ...
Past meta-analyses of the effects of priming on overt behavior have not examined whether the effects and processes of priming behavioral or nonbehavioral concepts (e.g., priming action through the word go and priming religion through the word church) differ, even though these possibilities are important to our understanding of concept accessibility and behavior. Hence, we meta-analyzed 359 studies (230 reports and 867 effect sizes) involving incidental presentation of behavioral or nonbehavioral primes, a neutral control group, and at least one behavioral outcome. Our random-effects analyses, which used the CHE (Correlated and Hierarchical Effects Model) with robust variance estimation (Pustejovsky & Tipton, 2021; Tanner-Smith et al., 2016), revealed a moderate priming effect (d = 0.38) that remained stable across behavioral and nonbehavioral primes and across different methodological procedures and adjustments for possible inclusion/publication biases (e.g., sensitivity analyses from Mathur and VanderWeele [2020] and sensitivity analyses from Vevea and Wood [2005]). Although the findings suggest that associative processes explain both the effects of behavioral and nonbehavioral primes, lowering the value of a behavior weakened the effect only when the primes were behavioral. These findings support the possibility that even though both types of primes activate associations that promote behavior, behavioral (vs. nonbehavioral) primes may provide a greater opportunity for goals to control the effect of the primes.
... Cognitive flexibility enables people to overcome well-learned associations and consider alternatives beyond the dominant one (Braem & Egner, 2018;Sassenberg et al., 2017). A lack of cognitive flexibility has recently been linked to extreme political ideology (Zmigrod et al., 2020). ...
Public discourse on immigration has seemed to polarize over recent years—with some people strongly trusting, but others strongly distrusting immigrants. We examined whether a cognitive strategy could mitigate these biased outgroup judgments. Given that subtractive counterfactual thoughts (“If only I had not done X. . .”) facilitate cognitive flexibility and especially a relational processing style, we hypothesized that these thoughts (vs. additive counterfactuals “If only I had done X. . .” and no counterfactuals) would weaken the relationship between people’s political orientation and the perceived trustworthiness of immigrants. In five experiments (two preregistered; total N = 1,189), we found that inducing subtractive (but not additive) counterfactuals—either via rhetorical questions in a political speech or via mindset priming—had the predicted debiasing effect. Taken together, subtle means such as using subtractive counterfactual questions in political communication seem to be a promising way to reduce biased outgroup judgments in heated public debates.
... That is, creative problem solving is a strategy or method that attempts to approach a correct solution or a challenge in an innovative way. Another line of studies is improving individuals' creativity performance through priming a creative mindset [e.g., (41)] or instructing them to think differently [e.g., (42)]. Accordingly, creativity is a level of flexibility in certain situations and can vary according to whether it is treated as a strategy. ...
The theory of the mad genius, a popular cultural fixture for centuries, has received widespread attention in the behavioral sciences. Focusing on a longstanding debate over whether creativity and mental health are positively or negatively correlated, this study first summarized recent relevant studies and meta-analyses and then provided an updated evaluation of this correlation by describing a new and useful perspective for considering the relationship between creativity and mental health. Here, a modified version of the dual-pathway model of creativity was developed to explain the seemingly paradoxical relationship between creativity and mental health. This model can greatly enrich the scientific understanding of the so-called mad genius controversy and further promote the scientific exploration of the link between creativity and mental health or psychopathology.
... Creativity has long been thought to be principally associated with certain personality traits (Eysenck, 1993;Furnham and Crump, 2014;Zhang et al., 2018), but it is henceforward known to depend largely on contextual factors (Parlebas, 1999;Memmert et al., 2013;Santos et al., 2016). For example, several studies using the sequential priming paradigm have shown that creativity in a situation increases with the previous environmental stimulations to which the subject has been exposed (Cai et al., 2009;Sassenberg et al., 2017). Bargh (2014) describes priming as part of the process by which sensation is turned into perception. ...
05 Editorial: Traditional Sporting Games and Play: Enhancing Cultural
Diversity, Emotional Well-Being, Interpersonal Relationships and
Intelligent Decisions
Pere Lavega-Burgués, Marco Antonio Coelho Bortoleto and Miguel Pic
10 Book Review: The Story of Catch: The Story of Lancashire
Catch-as-Catch-Can Wrestling
Kazimierz Waluch
12 Book Review: La Aventura Praxiológica. Ciencia, Acción y Educación Física
Maria Pilar Founaud and Asier Oiarbide
15 Book Review: Éléments de Sociologie du Sport
Bordes Pascal
17 Book Review: Recreios Collegiaes
Mário Duarte Maia Rodrigues
19 Sports Teaching, Traditional Games, and Understanding in Physical
Education: A Tale of Two Stories
Raúl Martínez-Santos, María Pilar Founaud, Astrid Aracama and
Asier Oiarbide
31 The Universals of Games and Sports
Pierre Parlebas
43 The Blows and Capoeira Movements From the Caricatures of Calixto
Cordeiro
Paulo Coêlho Araújo and Ana Rosa Jaqueira
51 Book Review: Games and Society in Europa
Bartosz Prabucki
53 Joy in Movement: Traditional Sporting Games and Emotional Experience
in Elementary Physical Education
Verónica Alcaraz-Muñoz, María Isabel Cifo Izquierdo,
Gemma Maria Gea García, José Ignacio Alonso Roque and
Juan Luis Yuste Lucas
64 Book Review: Contribution à un Lexique Commenté en Science de
l’Action Motrice
Zhaïra Ben Chaâbane
66 Book Review: Els jocs i els esports Tradicionals. Tradicionari. [The
Traditional Games and Sports. Traditionari]
Gabriel Pubill
69 Book Review: La paradoja de jugar en tríada. El juego motor en tríada
Raúl Martínez-Santos
71 The Commemoration of Independence Day: Recalling Indonesian
Traditional Games
Mustika Fitri, Hana Astria Nur and Wulandari Putri
79 The Game of Skittles on the Northern Route of the Camino de Santiago
José E. Rodríguez-Fernández, Mar Lorenzo-Moledo, Jesús García-Álvarez
and Gabriela Míguez-Salina
93 Influence of Traditional Sporting Games on the Development of Creative
Skills in Team Sports. The Case of Football
Alexandre Oboeuf, Sylvain Hanneton, Joséphine Buffet, Corinne Fantoni
and Lazhar Labiadh
105 Student Moods Before and After Body Expression and Dance
Assessments. Gender Perspective
Mercè Mateu, Silvia Garcías, Luciana Spadafora, Ana Andrés and
Eulàlia Febrer
118 Playing Ludomotor Activities in Lleida During the Spanish Civil War: An
Ethnomotor Approach
Enric Ormo-Ribes, Pere Lavega-Burgués, Rosa Rodríguez-Arregi,
Rafael Luchoro-Parrilla, Aaron Rillo-Albert and Miguel Pic
128 Traditional Sporting Games as Emotional Communities: The Case of
Alcover and Moll’s Catalan–Valencian–Balearic Dictionary
Antoni Costes, Jaume March-Llanes, Verónica Muñoz-Arroyave,
Sabrine Damian-Silva, Rafael Luchoro-Parrilla, Cristòfol Salas-Santandreu,
Miguel Pic and Pere Lavega-Burgués
137 Traditional Sports and Games: Intercultural Dialog, Sustainability, and
Empowerment
Soraia Chung Saura and Ana Cristina Zimmermann
148 The Effect of Traditional Opposition Games on University Students’ Mood
States: The Score and Group Type as Key Aspects
María Isabel Cifo Izquierdo, Verónica Alcaraz-Muñoz,
Gemma Maria Gea-García, Juan Luis Yuste-Lucas and
José Ignacio Alonso Roque
159 Traditional Games as Cultural Heritage: The Case of Canary Islands (Spain)
From an Ethnomotor Perspective
Rafael Luchoro-Parrilla, Pere Lavega-Burgués, Sabrine Damian-Silva,
Queralt Prat, Unai Sáez de Ocáriz, Enric Ormo-Ribes and Miguel Pic
170 The Emotional States Elicited in a Human Tower Performance: Case Study
Sabrine Damian-Silva, Carles Feixa, Queralt Prat, Rafael Luchoro-Parrilla,
Miguel Pic, Aaron Rillo-Albert, Unai Sáez de Ocáriz, Antoni Costes and
Pere Lavega-Burgués
181 New Images for Old Symbols: Meanings That Children Give to a
Traditional Game
Alfonso García-Monge, Henar Rodríguez-Navarro and Daniel Bores-García
191 Emotional Well-Being and Traditional Cypriot Easter Games: A Qualitative
Analysis
Christiana Koundourou, Markella Ioannou, Chara Stephanou,
Maria Paparistodemou, Theodora Katsigari, Georgios Tsitsas and
Kyriaki Sotiropoulou
... show that creativity needs contemplative thinking processes as well as spontaneous ones (Pennycook, 2018, p. 94). Sassenberg et al. (2017) consider Type 1 thinking to be too cursory, and point out: "In order for ideas to be new and original, they must go beyond the usual associations activated through prior knowledge" (p. 128). ...
This thesis documents a research endeavour into the cognitive processes in Design Thinking. The goal was to identify the optimal way to think in the various phases of a Design Thinking project.
The research draws on the findings in design, positive psychology, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience to analyse the Design Thinking process and to map and match thinking modes with the phases of the process.
The fundamental literature review covers three topics:
The research into Design Thinking provides a comprehensive insight into the method and its scientific fundament. Then, creativity as a social product and the cognitive processes relevant to creativity are documented. Thirdly, emotion and its relation to creativity and the Limbic® Map approach are presented. Finally, automatic emotion recognition with deep learning based artificial intelligence algorithms are introduced.
The first stages of empirical research revealed that emotions and other affective states are unworkable for reliable research results. Similarly, it could be shown that “mindset” has no scientifically approved definition, making the concept unsuitable for robust research.
Further research identified five pairs of cognitive functions needed in Design Thinking. Three pairs address information processing (Acquisition of Data, Alignment of Perception, and Assessment of Information and Ideas), and two address flow control of cognition (Attention to a specific task and Awareness of the Cognitive Process). The research further investigated methods to activate and guide the cognitive functions in a project.
Moreover, the importance of including creative professionals in a Design Thinking process was revealed. Research in neuroscience indicates specific abilities of creative people identifiable in the very brain network connections.
The research also discovered new insights into the “Groan Zone”. The findings indicate that a change in the attitude and approach to the “Groan Zone” could considerably change the outcome of a Design Thinking project.
... For instance, being in a cognitive flexibility mindset reduces stereotype activation and prejudice towards outgroups (Crisp & Turner, 2011;Sassenberg & Moskowitz, 2005;Vasiljevic & Crisp, 2013;Winter, Scholl, & Sassenberg, 2020). Once this mindset is activated, cognitive flexibility establishes a generalized (i.e., context-free) way of processing that is applied to subsequent unrelated settings (Crisp & Turner, 2011;Kleiman & Enisman, 2018;Sassenberg & Moskowitz, 2005;Sassenberg, Moskowitz, Fetterman, & Kessler, 2017). In light of this evidence, it seems plausible that the increased openmindedness that was associated with the paradoxical intervention is a reflection of cognitive flexibility and not only the result of a motivational process. ...
Since the increase in numbers of refugees worldwide, the acceptance of refugees in host countries is a highly contested topic. Negative attitudes towards refugees pose a challenge to both integration efforts and social cohesion. So-called paradoxical interventions help mitigating such extreme attitudes, but little is known about the cognitive processes elicited by these interventions. This research investigated whether a paradoxical leading-questions intervention targeting anti-refugee attitudes increases cognitive flexibility, especially among those with anti-refugee attitudes. Results of two preregistered experiments with general-population samples (N= 306) provide evidence that participants with anti-refugee attitudes showed higher cognitive flexibility in the paradoxical condition compared to control conditions. Thereby, this research proposes a cognitive foundation for the benefits of paradoxical interventions in intergroup contexts and suggests novel indications as to why these interventions are effective. We discuss the potential of paradoxical interventions for other important socially contested contexts, such as vaccination and climate change.
... Creativity Support Systems CSS are information systems that help individuals or groups being creative (Seidel et al., 2010). The discussion about this group of systems in IS research has both a long history (Elam and Mead, 1990;MacCrimmon and Wagner, 1991;Couger, Higgins and McIntyre, 1993;Nevo, Nevo and Ein-Dor, 2009) and is under current debate (Althuizen and Reichel, 2016;Sassenberg, Moskowitz, Fetterman and Kessler, 2017;Minas and Dennis, 2019). Considering current studies, we see that there are three ways to support creativity with technology which are well understood (Müller-Wienbergen, Müller, Seidel and Becker, 2011;Müller and Ulrich, 2013). ...
... Creativity has long been thought to be principally associated with certain personality traits (Eysenck, 1993;Furnham and Crump, 2014;Zhang et al., 2018), but it is henceforward known to depend largely on contextual factors (Parlebas, 1999;Memmert et al., 2013;Santos et al., 2016). For example, several studies using the sequential priming paradigm have shown that creativity in a situation increases with the previous environmental stimulations to which the subject has been exposed (Cai et al., 2009;Sassenberg et al., 2017). Bargh (2014) describes priming as part of the process by which sensation is turned into perception. ...
The aim of this present study is to investigate the influence of three learning contexts on the development of motor creativity of young footballers (8–9 years old). In team sport, creativity is a fundamental issue because it allows players to adapt in an environment of high social uncertainty. To carry out this work, we suggest a method for assessing motor creativity into ecological situations based on the analysis of praxical communications. Creativity originates from an interaction between divergence and convergence. In our case, the number of communications (fluidity) and the diversity of updated communications (flexibility) are our divergence indicators. Convergence, understood as the ability to make good decisions, is assessed by two expert judges (R > 0.90). Sixty boys’ football players (M = 8.67; SD = 0.3) coming from three football clubs participated in this research. The study lasted 2 years. Each year, a team of 10 players from each club participated in the research twice a week for 32 weeks (8 months), these groups attended different training sessions: (a) the control group (n = 20) followed a classical learning; (b) the decoding group (n = 20) attended training focused on learning the praxemes of football; (c) the traditional sporting games group (n = 20) followed a training session that was jointly focused on praxemes and the practice of traditional sporting games. The motor creativity of players and groups was assessed both at the beginning and at the end of the year during football matches. Compared to the control group, in the post-test, the group with the highest fluidity is the decoding group (p < 0.001) and the one with the highest fluidity is the traditional sporting games group. The latter group is also the one with the best convergence (p < 0.001). The results showed that traditional games can help develop players’ creative abilities. This research invites us to investigate the complementarity between the different offered training.
... These studies mainly focused on how memory affects remote association, such as semantic search, memory retrieval, and prior knowledge (Davelaar, 2015;Klein and Badia, 2015;Kajić et al., 2017), and on aspects of the brain mechanisms underlying the formation of remote associations, such as brain networks, brain structure, brain function, and brain waves Bendetowicz et al., 2017Bendetowicz et al., , 2018Di et al., 2018;Pick and Lavidor, 2019;Zhou et al., 2019). In addition, some studies examined the effects of priming on remote association (Sassenberg et al., 2017). Compared with the general creative thinking process or insight problem solving process, the RAT has been rarely used to explore individuals' remote associative ability in recent years. ...
The study examines how the remote associates test (RAT) has been used to examine theories of creativity through a review of recent studies on creativity. Creativity-related studies published between 2000 and 2019 were retrieved from the SCOPUS database. A total of 172 papers were chosen for further analysis. Content analysis shows that research on creativity using RAT mainly concerns remote association, insight problem-solving, general creative process, test development, individual difference, effect of treatment, clinical case, social interaction effect, and predictor or criterion. The study constructs a theoretical framework based on the 4P (Product–Person–Process–Place) model and demonstrates how empirical studies using the RAT explore the individual differences, internal processes, and external influences of creative thinking. In addition, the most commonly used version of the RAT is the Compound Remote Associates Problems (Bowden and Jung-Beeman, 2003a). Current research shows a trend whereby the creative thinking process has been receiving greater attention. In particular, a growing number of studies in this field have been carried out using cognitive neuroscience technologies. These findings suggest that the RAT provides researchers with a way to deepen their understanding of different levels of creativity.
... For instance, being in a cognitive flexibility mindset reduces stereotype activation and prejudice towards outgroups (Crisp & Turner, 2011;Sassenberg & Moskowitz, 2005;Vasiljevic & Crisp, 2013;Winter, Scholl, & Sassenberg, 2020). Once this mindset is activated, cognitive flexibility establishes a generalized (i.e., context-free) way of processing that is applied to subsequent unrelated settings (Crisp & Turner, 2011;Kleiman & Enisman, 2018;Sassenberg & Moskowitz, 2005;Sassenberg, Moskowitz, Fetterman, & Kessler, 2017). In light of this evidence, it seems plausible that the increased openmindedness that was associated with the paradoxical intervention is a reflection of cognitive flexibility and not only the result of a motivational process. ...
Since the increase in numbers of refugees worldwide, the acceptance of refugees in host countries is a highly contested topic. Negative attitudes towards refugees pose a challenge to both integration efforts and social cohesion. So-called paradoxical interventions help mitigating such extreme attitudes, but little is known about the cognitive processes elicited by these interventions. This research investigated if a paradoxical leading questions intervention targeting anti-refugee attitudes increases cognitive flexibility, especially among those with anti-refugee attitudes. Results of two preregistered experiments with general-population samples (N= 306) provide evidence that participants with anti-refugee attitudes showed higher cognitive flexibility in the paradoxical condition (compared to control conditions). Thereby, this research proposes a cognitive foundation for the benefits of paradoxical interventions in intergroup contexts and suggests novel indications as to why these interventions are effective. We discuss the potential of paradoxical interventions for other important socially contested contexts such as vaccination and climate change.
... Not only long term creativity training, but also creative thinking stimulated experimentally (e.g. Sassenberg, Moskowitz, Fetterman, & Kessler, 2017) could potentially transfer to other aspects of social cognition and intergroup relations. As such, conducting laboratory and field experiments that focus solely on stimulating creativity may allow to isolate the effect of creative thinking on intercultural competencies and create an arena for exploring specific mechanisms underlying these effects. ...
This study investigates the relationship between organizational rumors and employee turnover intentions, with a specific focus on employees exhibiting individual entrepreneurial orientation (IEO). Employees with IEO are crucial for capturing innovation opportunities and enhancing organizational value creation, as they help mitigate market risks and strengthen competitiveness. Understanding the turnover intentions of IEO employees holds significant importance. Drawing on social contagion theory, this research explores how the dissemination of rumors within organizations influences employee attitudes and behaviors related to turnover. Using Fuzzy-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), we analyzed data from 528 employees in China and 405 employees in the United States to explore the configurations between organizational rumors and four distinct types of turnover intentions: self-focused, development-focused, trade-off balanced, and emotional exhaustion-based. This study addresses a critical gap in the literature by examining how organizational rumors specifically affect turnover intentions among IEO employees, offering new insights into how informal communication shapes employee behavior and decision-making in collectivism and individualism cultural contexts.
Creativity is a cornerstone of human evolution and is typically defined as the multifaceted ability to produce novel and useful artifacts. Although much research has focused on divergent thinking, growing evidence underscores the importance of perceptual processing in fostering creativity, particularly through perceptual flexibility. The present work aims to offer a framework that relates creativity to perception, showing how sensory affordances, especially in ambiguous stimuli, can contribute to the generation of novel ideas. In doing so, we contextualize the phenomenon of pareidolia, which involves seeing familiar patterns in noisy or ambiguous stimuli, as a key perceptual mechanism of idea generation—one of the central stages of the creative process. We introduce “divergent perception” to describe the process by which individuals actively engage with the perceptual affordances provided by ambiguous sensory information, and illustrate how this concept could account for the heightened creativity observed in psychedelic and psychotic states. Moreover, we explore how divergent perception relates to cognitive mechanisms crucial in creative thinking, particularly focusing on the role of attention. Finally, we discuss future paths for the exploration of divergent perception, including targeted manipulation of stimulus characteristics and the investigation of the intricate interplay between bottom‐up and top‐down cognitive processes.
Poetry, being a distinct literary art form, fosters meaningful literacy, but few studies focus on enhancing its writing quality. Using a 2×2 between-subject design, this study explored the effects of prior knowledge and peer assessment on the quality of EFL poetry writing. 81 English majors participated in a 7-week online poetry writing task, generating 567 poems on seven themes. Literary experts evaluated the poems across seven aspects. Results revealed that peer assessment enhanced general writing quality, specifically for participants with high prior knowledge. Prior knowledge negatively influenced personal voice and organization, with the low prior knowledge group showing a stronger focus on personal expressions and the flow of the poem. Peer assessment positively influenced the use of poetry schemes, with the assessed group demonstrating better utilization compared to the non-assessed group. The findings guide teaching poetic knowledge, encourage communication among students, and ultimately improve the quality of L2 poetry writing.
Overimitation — the copying of another’s unnecessary or irrelevant actions toward a goal — is largely considered to be uniquely human. Recent studies, however, have found evidence of this behavior in dogs. Humans seem to overimitate more or less depending on social factors, such as the cultural origin of the demonstrator. Like humans, dogs may have social motivations behind their overimitation, since they have been shown to copy irrelevant actions more from their caregivers than from strangers. By using priming methodology, this study aimed to investigate whether dogs’ overimitation can be facilitated via the experimental manipulation of their attachment-based motivations. To test this, we invited caregivers to demonstrate goal-irrelevant and relevant actions to their dog, following either a dog-caregiver relationship prime, a dog-caregiver attention prime, or no prime. Our results showed no significant main effect of priming on copying behavior for either relevant or irrelevant actions, but we found a trend that unprimed dogs copied the least actions overall. Additionally, dogs copied their caregiver’s relevant actions more often and more faithfully as the number of trials increased. Our final finding was that dogs were much more likely to copy irrelevant actions after (rather than before) already achieving the goal. This study discusses the social motivations behind dog imitative behavior, and has potential methodological implications regarding the influence of priming on dog behavioral studies.
Creative thinking is an indispensable cognitive skill that is becoming increasingly important. In the present research, we tested the impact of games on creativity and emotions in a between-subject online experiment with four conditions (N = 658). (1) participants played a simple puzzle game that allowed many solutions (priming divergent thinking); (2) participants played a short game that required one fitting solution (priming convergent thinking); (3) participants performed mental arithmetic; (4) passive control condition. Results show that divergent and convergent creativity were higher after playing games and lower after mental arithmetic. Positive emotions did not function as a mediator, even though they were also heightened after playing the games and lower after mental arithmetic. However, contrary to previous research, we found no direct effect of emotions, creative self-efficacy, and growth-vs. fixed on creative performance. We discuss practical implications for digital learning and application settings.
Building on perspectives highlighting the social nature of workplace creativity, we argue that being in a creative mindset will highlight the value that co-workers provide to the creative process. This heightened awareness of co-workers as being integral to the creative process increases social closeness with these co-workers, subsequently reducing instigated rudeness towards, as well as perceived rudeness from, those co-workers. In four studies (both in the field as well as in the lab), we find support for these theoretical predictions. Our work also identifies when and for whom these effects are likely to be strongest, indicating that the effect of being in a creative mindset on social closeness is stronger in contexts characterized by high (vs. low) psychological safety, and weaker for employees high (vs. low) in dispositional creativity. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings.
Purpose
Consumers seldom consider end-use consumption (reuse or upcycling) when products reach the end of their lifecycle. This study shows that end-use consumption can be encouraged if individuals are primed to think creatively, engage in end-use ideation (imagine end-use) and become inspired by more original ideas.
Design/methodology/approach
Three studies were carried out. Study 1 tested if creativity priming resulted in more effective end-use ideation (greater number of ideas and more original ideas) compared to environmental appeals and no intervention. Study 2 tested the effectiveness of creativity priming in a longitudinal setting. Study 3 demonstrated how creativity priming and end-use ideation could be practically executed using product packaging.
Findings
Creativity priming represents an effective intervention to stimulate end-use consumption with particularly positive results amongst less creative consumers. However, it was not the number of generated ideas, but their originality during end-use ideation that triggered inspiration.
Research limitations/implications
This study demonstrates which interventions are more effective in changing consumer behaviour in favour of more sustainable practices.
Practical implications
Increasing environmental degradation requires consumers to change their behaviour by re-consuming products. This study shows that consumers can adopt end-use if they are primed to think creatively, imagine end-use consumption and generate more original ideas.
Originality/value
Creative thinking has been leveraged at product development stages, but not at the end of products’ lifecycle. This study integrated creativity priming, consumer imagination and inspiration theories to explain the underlying mechanism behind end-use consumption to scale up its adoption by consumers.
Becoming aware of bias is essential for prejudice-regulation. However, attempts to make people aware of bias through feedback often elicits defensive reactions that undermine mitigation efforts. In the present article, we introduce state emotional ambivalence—the simultaneous experience of positive and negative emotions “in the present moment”–as a buffer against defensive responding to implicit bias feedback. Two studies (N = 507) demonstrate that implicit bias feedback (vs. no feedback) increases defensiveness (rating the test as less valid, credible, and objective). However, high (vs. low) state emotional ambivalence, which was independent of bias feedback, attenuates this relationship between bias feedback and defensiveness, accounting for a larger share of the variance than negative emotions alone. In turn, this reduced defensiveness among individuals high (vs. low) in emotional ambivalence was associated with increased awareness of bias in the self and others. Results suggest that state emotional ambivalence is associated with increased bias awareness by creating a mindset in which individuals are less defensive to potentially threatening information about their own implicit racial bias. These results have important implications for research on stereotyping and prejudice, emotional ambivalence and psychological conflict, and defensiveness.
This paper discusses the effects of cloud-based learning and creative self-efficacy on creativity in engineering design. A nonequivalent pretest–posttest quasi-experimental design was used to recruit 97 students from a university in Taipei City in northern Taiwan. This study revealed two main conclusions. First, cloud-based learning exerted a moderate influence on the steps of problem identification, preparation, and response validation and communication in the creative process; creative self-efficacy positively influenced the steps of response generation, validation, and communication. Second, cloud-based learning had positive effects on novelty and functionality in the assessment of product creativity and significant positive effects on sophistication in the assessment of participants with low creative self-efficacy.
The acute effects of moderate-intensity treadmill exercise during anagram problem solving on subsequent creativity performance has yet to be empirically investigated, which was this study’s purpose. A two-visit (counterbalanced order), within-subject experiment was conducted among individuals aged 18–35. For the acute exercise visit, participants engaged in a 15-minute bout of moderate-intensity treadmill exercise while solving anagram problems. For the anagram only visit, participants engaged in 15 minutes of seated rest while solving anagram problems. Average RAT performance was higher for the exercise + anagram problem-solving visit ( M = 10.51, SD = 3.25) compared to anagram-solving + seated rest ( M = 9.29, SD = 4.12). The difference between conditions was statistically significant, t(44) = 2.385, p = .021, Cohen’s d = 0.36. These findings demonstrate that acute exercise coupled with anagram problem-solving, prior to RAT completion, is a potential strategy for enhancing verbal convergent creative thinking.
Attitudes toward outgroups are an important determinant of peaceful coexistence in diverse societies, but it is difficult to improve them. The current research studies the impact of messages with negations on outgroup attitudes, more specifically on outgroup trust. All studies were preregistered. Using different target groups, Studies 1 and 2 provide evidence for the prediction that communicating negations (e.g., "they are not deceptive") enhances outgroup trust (more so than affirmations, such as "they are reliable," and no messages) among people who are initially low in outgroup trust. Three additional studies (Studies 3a, 3b, and 4), using both a causal chain approach and (moderated) mediation analysis, demonstrate that negations promote cognitive flexibility which in turn enhances outgroup trust among those initially low in outgroup trust. One final study suggests that these findings generalize to outgroup attitude change per se by showing that communicating negations also results in more moderate attitudes when the dominant initial attitude is positive (Study 5: high warmth) rather than negative (Studies 1-4: low trustworthiness). As such, communication that negates people's initial outgroup attitudes could be an effective (previously discounted) intervention to reduce prejudice in intergroup settings. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
Diffusion models for simple two-choice decision-making have achieved prominence in psychology and neuroscience. The standard model views decision-making as a process in which noisy evidence is accumulated until one of the two response criteria is reached, at which point the associated response is made. The criteria represent the amount of evidence needed to make a decision and they reflect the decision maker's response biases and speed-accuracy trade-off settings. In this article, we review the regularities in experimental data that a model must explain. These include the relation between accuracy and mean response times, the shapes of response time distributions for correct and error responses and how they change with experimental variables, and individual differences in response time and accuracy. These relations are sometimes overlooked by researchers, but, taken together, they provide extremely strong tests of models.
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.
Three experiments tested whether counterfactual events can serve as primes. The evidence supports the hypothesis that counterfactuals prime a mental simulation mind-set that leads people to consider alternatives. Exposure to counterfactual scenarios affected person perception judgments in a later, unrelated task and this effect was distinct from semantic construct priming. Moreover, these effects were dependent on the availability of salient possible outcomes in the person perception task. Direction of the counterfactual comparison, upward or downward, did not moderate any of the effects, providing evidence that the process of thinking counterfactually, and not the content of the counterfactuals, was responsible for the priming effects. These experiments also provide evidence that the effects of mind-set accessibility, similar to semantic construct accessibility, are limited by the applicability of the primes to the later judgments. Implications for the nature of priming effects are discussed.
Stereotypes are typically conceived of as controlled through conscious willing. We propose that goals can lead to stereotype control even when the goals are not consciously noted. This is called proactive control since goal pursuit occurs not as a reaction to a stereotype having been activated and having exerted influence, but as an act of goal shielding that inhibits stereotypes instead of activating them. In two experiments proactive control over stereotypes toward African Americans was illustrated using a lexical decision task. In Experiment 1, participants with egalitarian goals showed slower responses to stereotypic words when following an African American male face (relative to following a White face). Experiment 2 illustrated African American faces facilitated responses to stimuli relevant to egalitarian goals; White faces did not. Together, these studies indicate that, without consciously trying, participants with egalitarian goals’ implicit reaction to African Americans included triggering fairness goals and inhibiting stereotypes.
How does man know anything and, in particular, how can we account for creative thought? Campbell posits 2 major conditions: mechanisms which produce wide and frequent variation (an inductive, trial and error, fluency of ideas) and criteria for the selection of the inductive given (the critical function). The ramifications of this perspective are explored in terms of organic evolution and human history, and in terms of psychology and epistemology. This exposition is offered as a pretheoretical model.
Cryptomnesia, or inadvertent plagiarism, was experimentally examined in three investigations. Subjects were required to generate category exemplars, alternating with 3 other subjects in Experiments 1 and 2 or with a standardized, written list in Experiment 3. After this generation stage, subjects attempted to recall those items which they had just generated and an equal number of completely new items from each category. Plagiarism of others' generated responses occurred in all three tasks (generation, recall own, and recall new) in each experiment, despite instructions to avoid such intrusions. The amount of plagiarism was greater under more complex generation sequences and for items produced from orthorgraphic relative to semantic categories. The most likely source of plagiarized responses was the person who had responded just before the subject in the generation sequence. Directions for future research are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Develops a theory of memory retrieval and shows that it applies over a range of experimental paradigms. Access to memory traces is viewed in terms of a resonance metaphor. The probe item evokes the search set on the basis of probe–memory item relatedness, just as a ringing tuning fork evokes sympathetic vibrations in other tuning forks. Evidence is accumulated in parallel from each probe–memory item comparison, and each comparison is modeled by a continuous random walk process. In item recognition, the decision process is self-terminating on matching comparisons and exhaustive on nonmatching comparisons. The mathematical model produces predictions about accuracy, mean reaction time, error latency, and reaction time distributions that are in good accord with data from 2 experiments conducted with 6 undergraduates. The theory is applied to 4 item recognition paradigms (Sternberg, prememorized list, study–test, and continuous) and to speed–accuracy paradigms; results are found to provide a basis for comparison of these paradigms. It is noted that neural network models can be interfaced to the retrieval theory with little difficulty and that semantic memory models may benefit from such a retrieval scheme. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
J. A. Gray (1981, 1982) holds that 2 general motivational systems underlie behavior and affect: a behavioral inhibition system (BIS) and a behavioral activation system (BAS). Self-report scales to assess dispositional BIS and BAS sensitivities were created. Scale development (Study 1) and convergent and discriminant validity in the form of correlations with alternative measures are reported (Study 2). In Study 3, a situation in which Ss anticipated a punishment was created. Controlling for initial nervousness, Ss high in BIS sensitivity (assessed earlier) were more nervous than those low in BIS sensitivity. In Study 4, a situation in which Ss anticipated a reward was created. Controlling for initial happiness, Ss high in BAS sensitivity (Reward Responsiveness and Drive scales) were happier than those low in BAS sensitivity. In each case the new scales predicted better than an alternative measure. Discussion is focused on conceptual implications. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Participants engaged in a creative idea-generation task that required them to monitor source to devise ideas not offered previously by others. In Experiment 1, inadvertent plagiarism (cryptomnesia) occurred more often when participants were generating ideas than when they were taking a recognition test. In Experiment 2, focusing participants on the origin of their ideas during generation resembled the focusing that occurs in recognition performance and reduced plagiarism. In Experiment 3, a speeded-response condition increased inadvertent plagiarism by mimicking conditions in which people cannot or do not adequately monitor source. In Experiment 4, plagiarism was reduced both when participants offered their new ideas in a one-on-one context as compared with a more anonymous group setting and when participants were specifically instructed to avoid plagiarism. The results are discussed in terms of source-monitoring decision criteria and the conscious and unconscious processes that support that monitoring. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
In four experiments with 332 participants, participants were asked to generate novel nonwords for English categories. When
participants were shown examples embedded with regular orthographic structures, participants’ nonwords tended to conform orthographically
to the examples, despite instructions to avoid using features of the examples. The effect was found with immediate testing
(Experiment 1) and delayed testing (Experiment 2). The effect was also found with arbitrary features (Experiments 1–4), as
well as with naturally occurring orthographic regularities (Experiment 4). Participants had difficulty avoiding the use of
this prior knowledge, despite being able to list the features they were asked to avoid (Experiment 3). The results are discussed
in terms of the inadvertent use of prior knowledge in generative cognitive tasks.
Three experiments were performed to test Smith, Ward, and Schumacher’s (1993) conformity hypothesis— that people’s ideas will
conform to examples they are shown in a creative generation task. Conformity was observed in all three experiments; participants
tended to incorporate critical features of experimenter-provided examples. However, examination of total output, elaborateness
of design, and the noncritical features did not confirm that the conformity effect constrained creative output in any of the
three experiments. Increasing the number of examples increased the conformity effect (Experiment 1). Examples that covaried
features that are naturally uncorrelated in the real world led to a greater subjective rating of creativity (Experiment 2).
A delay between presentation and test increased conformity (Experiment 3), just as models of inadvertent plagiarism would
predict. The explanatory power of theoretical accounts such as activation, retrieval blocking, structured imagination, and
category abstraction are evaluated.
Stereotype activation is often described as beyond control, unable to be prevented by willing it or engaging the self-regulatory system. Four experiments illustrate that this initial stage of the stereotyping process is controllable. Stereotypes are shown to be implicitly inhibited as part of a goal shielding process. In each experiment, egalitarian goals are triggered through a task in which participants contemplate a past failure at being egalitarian to African American men. This is followed in each experiment by a task that measures stereotype activation/inhibition using reaction times to words (either control words or stereotype-relevant words) that follow the presentation of either faces of Black or White men. The first two experiments examine participants with egalitarian goals versus those with a control goal, whereas the last two experiments examine people with egalitarian goals versus those whose egalitarian strivings have been satisfied (by contemplating success at being egalitarian). Only participants with egalitarian goals exhibit stereotype inhibition, and this occurs despite the fact that they lack awareness of the inhibition and lack the conscious intent to inhibit stereotypes at the time the response is made.
Study 1 established either deliberative mind-set by having Ss contemplate personal change decision or implemental mind-set by having Ss plan execution of intended personal project. Ss were subsequently requested to continue beginnings of 3 fairy tales, each describing a main character with a decisional conflict. Analysis revealed that deliberative mind-set Ss ascribed more deliberative and less implementational efforts to main characters than implemental mind-set Ss. In Study 2, Ss were asked to choose between different test materials. Either before or after making their decision, Ss were given information on deliberative and implementational thoughts unrelated to their task at hand. When asked to recall these thoughts, predecisional Ss recalled more deliberative and less implementational thoughts, whereas for postdecisional Ss the reverse was true. These findings suggest that deliberative and implemental mind-sets tune thought production and information processing.
Experienced ease of recall was found to qualify the implications of recalled content. Ss who had to recall 12 examples of assertive (unassertive) behaviors, which was difficult, rated themselves as less assertive (less unassertive) than subjects who had to recall 6 examples, which was easy. In fact, Ss reported higher assertiveness after recalling 12 unassertive rather than 12 assertive behaviors. Thus, self-assessments only reflected the implications of recalled content if recall was easy. The impact of ease of recall was eliminated when its informational value was discredited by a misattribution manipulation. The informative functions of subjective experiences are discussed.
This research shows stereotype activation is controlled by chronic egalitarian goals. In the first 2 studies it was found that the stereotype of women is equally available to individuals with and without chronic goals, and the discriminant validity of the concept of egalitarian goals was established. In the next 2 experiments, differences in stereotype activation as a function of this individual difference were found. In Study 3, participants read attributes following stereotypical primes. Facilitated response times to stereotypical attributes were found for nonchronics but not for chronics. This lack of facilitation occurred at stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) where effortful correction processes could not operate, demonstrating preconscious control of stereotype activation due to chronic goals. In Study 4, inhibition of the stereotype was found at an SOA where effortful processes of stereotype suppression could not operate. The data reveal that goals are activated and used preconsciously to prevent stereotype activation, demonstrating both the controllability of stereotype activation and the implicit role of goals in cognitive control.
The development and validation of measures to assess multiple dimensions of consumer self-confidence are described in this article. Scale-development procedures resulted in a six-factor correlated model made up of the following dimensions: information acquisition, consideration-set formation, personal outcomes, social outcomes, persuasion knowledge, and marketplace interfaces. A series of studies demonstrate the psychometric properties of the measures, their discriminant validity with respect to related constructs, their construct validity, and their ability to moderate relationships among other important consumer behavior variables. Copyright 2001 by the University of Chicago.
Extra work on unsolved problems may lead to more improvement if the new work is delayed rather than undertaken immediately after initial solution attempts. Such a result constitutes incubation in problem solving. "Unconscious work" on a problem, commonly assumed to be responsible for incubation effects, may not be necessary to observe the phenomenon. We hypothesize that fixation, a block to successful problem solving, may develop during initial solution attempts and persist, interfering with immediate extra work more than with delayed extra work. Five experiments are reported in which fixation was induced to prevent optimal performance on the initial test of Remote Associates Test (RAT) problems (e.g., Mednick, 1962). After the fixation manipulation in three of the experiments, the effects of incubation intervals were examined by retesting the fixated problems. Both fixation (poorer initial problem-solving performance) and incubation (more improvement after a delayed retest than an immediate retest) were found in all the experiments which tested for the effects. In Experiments 1, 2, and 3, misleading distractors were presented alongside the RAT problems during the initial test of the problems to cause fixation. In Experiment 4, a block of paired associates--pairing the RAT words with the misleading distractors prior to problem solving--successfully induced fixation, indicating that the distractors affected memory retrieval. In Experiment 5, a trial-by-trial technique allowed fixation and incubation to be induced and tested separately for each item. All of our findings of incubation effects appear to have depended upon the initial induction of fixation. Although the experiments may not be representative of all naturally occurring cases of incubation, they provide a methodology for the study of fixation and incubation effects in problem solving in the laboratory.
Models of Person X Situation influences on social behavior and judgement have invoked two distinct mechanisms: a personality disposition and a situational press. In this study we conceptualized both influences in terms of a single underlying mechanism, construct accessibility. We pitted the characteristic ways that individuals perceive others against situational influences on accessibility (i.e., contextual priming) and tracked over time the relative power of these competing influences on the outcome of an impression-formation task. Subjects possessed either a chronically accessible (chronics) or an inaccessible (nonchronics) construct for either outgoing or inconsiderate behavior. As predicted, as the delay since the priming event lengthened (from 15 to 180 s), chronics were progressively more likely to use the chronically accessible construct instead of the primed alternative construct to categorize an ambiguous target behavior, whereas nonchronics' relative use of the primed and alternative constructs did not change as a function of postpriming delay.
We present a theory of priming that is designed to account for phenomena usually attributed to the action of a spreading activation process. The theory assumes that a prime and target are combined at retrieval into a compound cue that is used to access memory. If the representations of the prime and target are associated in memory, the match is greater than if they are not associated, and this greater match facilitates the response to the target. The compound cue mechanism can be implemented within the framework of several memory models; descriptions of these implementations are presented. We summarize empirical results that have been taken as evidence for a spreading activation process and show that the retrieval theory can also account for these phenomena and that, in some cases, the retrieval theory provides predictions that are more constrained than those provided by spreading activation theories. Also, two experiments are reported that address predictions about the range of priming (in terms of number of connected concepts) and the decay rate of priming (in terms of intervening items). In both cases, the retrieval theory provides a better account of the data than spreading activation. Finally, contrasts between the compound cue theory and long-term priming phenomena are presented.
In three experiments we tested the conformity hypothesis--that subjects' ideas would conform to examples they had been shown--by using a creative generation paradigm in which subjects imagined and sketched new exemplars of experimenter-defined categories. Designs made by subjects who had first seen three examples of ideas were compared with those of control subjects, who received no examples. In all three experiments, the designs of subjects who had seen the examples were more likely to contain features of the examples. This conformity effect did not significantly decrease in Experiment 2, when a 23-min task was interpolated between viewing the examples and generating related ideas. The hypothesis that the observed conformity effects may have been caused by subjects' assumptions that they should try to generate ideas similar to the examples was refuted in Experiment 3; explicitly instructing subjects to create ideas that were very different from the examples did not decrease conformity to the examples, and instructing them to conform to the examples significantly increased conformity. The results show that recent experience can lead to unintentional conformity, constraining the generation of creative ideas.
This study tested whether cues associated with promotion and prevention regulatory foci influence creativity. The authors predicted that the "risky," explorative processing style elicited by promotion cues, relative to the risk-averse, perseverant processing style elicited by prevention cues, would facilitate creative thought. These predictions were supported by two experiments in which promotion cues bolstered both creative insight (Experiment 1) and creative generation (Experiment 2) relative to prevention cues. Experiments 3 and 4 provided evidence for the process account of these findings. suggesting that promotion cues, relative to prevention cues, produce a riskier response bias (Experiment 3) and bolster memory search for novel responses (Experiment 4). A final experiment provided evidence that individual differences in regulatory focus influence creative problem solving in a manner analogous to that of incidental promotion and prevention cues.
In the context of an associative theory of creativity, the effect of specific associative priming upon incubation of creative performance was studied. 2 experiments were conducted. In Experiment I, using 30 Ss, it was demonstrated that performance on a remote-associate task was enhanced by specific priming. In a 2nd study, using the same method and materials, high scores (HC) and low scorers (LC) on the Remote Associate Test (a measure of creative potential) were compared in a 2 X 2 X 3 factorial design also included 2 levels of priming (some and none) and 3 time relationships (immediate, pre-24 hr. and post-24 hr.) HC Ss performed significantly better than LC Ss, and the effect of specific priming was significantly greater than no priming. The time relationship had no effect. These data lend support to an associative interpretation of the phenomenon of incubation.
The intent of this paper is the presentation of an associative interpretation of the process of creative thinking. The explanation is not directed to any specific field of application such as art or science but attempts to delineate processes that underlie all creative thought. The discussion will take the following form, (a) First, we will define creative thinking in associative terms and indicate three ways in which creative solutions may be achieved—serendipity, similarity, and mediation, (b) This definition will allow us to deduce those individual difference variables which will facilitate creative performance, (c) Consideration of the definition of the creative process has suggested an operational statement of the definition in the form of a test. The test will be briefly described along with some preliminary research results. (d) The paper will conclude with a discussion of predictions regarding the influence of certain experimentally manipulable variables upon the creative process. Creative individuals and the processes by which they manifest their creativity have excited a good deal of
In 4 experiments, participants were led to focus on either the prospect of positive outcomes (approach anticipation) or the prospect of negative outcomes (avoidance anticipation) and were subsequently administered behavioral measures of relative hemispheric activation. It was found that approach, relative to avoidance-related anticipatory states, produced greater relative right (diminished relative left) hemispheric activation. Experiment 3 additionally demonstrated that this pattern of activation was reversed when approach and avoidance states were not merely anticipatory but were also emotionally arousing. Finally, Experiment 4 replicated earlier findings demonstrating an influence of approach and avoidance anticipatory states on creativity and analytical problem solving (R. S. Friedman & J. Forster, 2001, 2003) and provided evidence that such effects are mediated by differences in relative hemispheric activation.
By comparing reality to what might have been, counterfactuals promote a relational processing style characterized by a tendency to consider relationships and associations among a set of stimuli. As such, counterfactual mind-sets were expected to improve performance on tasks involving the consideration of relationships and associations but to impair performance on tasks requiring novel ideas that are uninfluenced by salient associations. The authors conducted several experiments to test this hypothesis. In Experiments 1a and 1b, the authors determined that counterfactual mind-sets increase mental states and preferences for thinking styles consistent with relational thought. Experiment 2 demonstrated a facilitative effect of counterfactual mind-sets on an analytic task involving logical relationships; Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrated that counterfactual mind-sets structure thought and imagination around salient associations and therefore impaired performance on creative generation tasks. In Experiment 5, the authors demonstrated that the detrimental effect of counterfactual mind-sets is limited to creative tasks involving novel idea generation; in a creative association task involving the consideration of relationships between task stimuli, counterfactual mind-sets improved performance.
Cryptomnesia, or inadvertent plagiarism, was experimentally examined in three investigations. Subjects were required to generate category exemplars, alternating with 3 other subjects in Experiments 1 and 2 or with a standardized, written list in Experiment 3. After this generation stage, subjects attempted to recall those items which they had just generated and an equal number of completely new items from each category. Plagiarism of others' generated responses occurred in all three tasks (generation, recall own, and recall new) in each experiment, despite instructions to avoid such intrusions. The amount of plagiarism was greater under more complex generation sequences and for items produced from orthorgraphic relative to semantic categories. The most likely source of plagiarized responses was the person who had responded just before the subject in the generation sequence. Directions for future research are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Gray (1981, 1982) holds that 2 general motivational systems underlie behavior and affect: a behavioral inhibition system (BIS) and a behavioral activation system (BAS). Self-report scales to assess dispositional BIS and BAS sensitivities were created. Scale development (Study 1) and convergent and discriminant validity in the form of correlations with alternative measures are reported (Study 2). In Study 3, a situation in which Ss anticipated a punishment was created. Controlling for initial nervousness, Ss high in BIS sensitivity (assessed earlier) were more nervous than those low. In Study 4, a situation in which Ss anticipated a reward was created. Controlling for initial happiness, Ss high in BAS sensitivity (Reward Responsiveness and Drive scales) were happier than those low. In each case the new scales predicted better than an alternative measure. Discussion is focused on conceptual implications.
To study productive thinking where it is most conspicuous in great achievements is certainly a temptation, and without a doubt, important information about the genesis of productive thought could be found in biographical material. A problem arises when a living creature has a goal but does not know how this goal is to be reached. Whenever one cannot go from the given situation to the desired situation simply by action, then there has to be recourse to thinking. The subjects ( S s), who were mostly students of universities or of colleges, were given various thinking problems, with the request that they think aloud. This instruction, "Think aloud", is not identical with the instruction to introspect which has been common in experiments on thought-processes. While the introspecter makes himself as thinking the object of his attention, the subject who is thinking aloud remains immediately directed to the problem, so to speak allowing his activity to become verbal. It is the shift of function of the components of a complex mathematical pattern—a shift which must so often occur if a certain structure is to be recognized in a given pattern—it is this restructuration, more precisely: this transformation of function within a system, which causes more or less difficulty for thinking, as one individual or another tries to find a mathematical proof.
G*Power (Erdfelder, Faul, & Buchner, 1996) was designed as a general stand-alone power analysis program for statistical tests commonly used in social and behavioral research. G*Power 3 is a major extension of, and improvement over, the previous versions. It runs on widely used computer platforms (i.e., Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Mac OS X 10.4) and covers many different statistical tests of the t, F, and chi2 test families. In addition, it includes power analyses for z tests and some exact tests. G*Power 3 provides improved effect size calculators and graphic options, supports both distribution-based and design-based input modes, and offers all types of power analyses in which users might be interested. Like its predecessors, G*Power 3 is free.
Within GLOMO (the GLObal versus LOcal processing MOdel, a systems account) we examine the functionalities of two processing systems that process information either globally or locally (looking at the forest vs. the trees). GLOMO suggests that (a) global versus local perceptual processing carries over to other tasks; (b) perceptual processing is related to conceptual processing (e.g., creative/analytic tasks; face/verbal recognition; similarity/dissimilarity generation; abstract/concrete construals, distance estimates, inclusive/exclusive categorization; assimilation/contrast in social judgments); (c) perceptual and conceptual processing is elicited by real-world variables (e.g., mood, exteroceptive and interoceptive cues of approach/avoidance, promotion/prevention focus, high/low power, distance, obstacles, novelty/familiarity, love/sex, interdependent/independent selves); (d) regulatory focus, psychological distance, and novelty are driving effects; and (e) the global system (glo-sys) processes novelty and the local system (lo-sys) processes familiarity. We discuss whether glo-sys is responsible for understanding meaning, relate the systems to physiological research, and discuss new research questions.
College students imagined animals that might live on a planet somewhere else in the galaxy. In the first experiment, they provided drawings and descriptions of their initial imagined animal, another member of the same species, and a member of a different species. The majority of imagined creatures were structured by properties that are typical of animals on earth: bilateral symmetry, sensory receptors, and appendages. Subjects also allowed shape, appendages and sense receptors to vary often across species but rarely within species. In Experiment 2, subjects′ creations were influenced by correlated attributes; those told that the animal was feathered were more likely to produce creatures with wings and beaks, and those told it lived in water and had scales were more likely to produce creatures with fins and gills relative to subjects who were told the animal was furry or who were given no specific features. Experiments 3 and 4 revealed that many subjects approach the task by retrieving exemplars of known earth animals, but that instructions and task constraints can lead to greater use of broader knowledge frameworks. Experiment 5 revealed that the structuring found in college students′ imagined animals also holds for extraterrestrials developed by science fiction writers. The results are consistent with the idea that similar structures and processes underlie creative and noncreative aspects of cognition, and are discussed in terms of the concept of structured imagination. That is, when subjects create a new member of a known category for an imaginary setting, their imagination is structured by a particular set of properties that are characteristic of that category.
Neurobiological research with animals strongly suggests that the brain systems which mediate emotion overlap with those that mediate cognition to such a degree that it is difficult, if not impossible, to maintain any clear distinction between them. Possible reasons for this overlap are discussed; and a model of brain systems that simultaneously subserve emotion and cognition is presented. The model postulates the existence of three fundamental systems of this kind in the mammalian brain: a behavioural approach system, a fight/flight system, and a behavioural inhibition system. The neuropsychology of each of these systems is briefly presented.
Previous work suggests that trait behavioral activation may link to creativity, a possibility the authors empirically examine in this article. This research is grounded in the dual pathway to creativity model and experiments on approach orientation, and the authors propose that behavioral activation potentiates creativity when and because it facilitates global and flexible processing. Four experiments support this hypothesis and also reveal that when external cues sustain or facilitate local and bottom-up processing, trait behavioral activation negatively relates to creativity. Possible explanations and avenues for new research are discussed.
Individuals with varying levels of chronic accessibility for the construct "conceited" read about a target person and gave their spontaneous impressions of the target′s behaviors. The construct "conceited" was either contextually primed or not, and the priming-to-stimulus delay was either short or long. The stimulus behaviors also varied in applicability to the construct "conceited," with three different types of non-"unambiguous" stimuli being examined. The stimulus behaviors were either only weakly related to "conceited" (vague), strongly and equally related to both "conceited" and "self-confident" (ambiguous), or more strongly related to self-confident than to "conceited" (contrary). We found that the extremely vague target behaviors yielded conceited-related spontaneous impressions when the accessibility of the construct conceited was maximized - contextual priming [without awareness], short priming-to-stimulus delay, and relatively high levels of chronic accessibility. This result supports the "activation rule" that strong accessibility can compensate for weak applicability. Two other activation rules were suggested by the results for the ambiguous and the contrary stimuli, respectively: (a) higher accessibility can yield stronger judgments even when perceivers are aware of contextual priming events if the additional contribution to activation from applicability and chronic accessibility is sufficiently great, and (b) the relation between higher accessibility and stronger judgments is constrained when the applicability of a competing alternative construct is both strong and stronger than the target construct′s applicability.
Automatic stereotype activation can be overcome intentionally and after an extensive training. However, intentions have to be tailored to a certain social category. It is hypothesized that activating the mindset “think different” by priming creativity prevents stereotypes and associations in general from becoming automatically activated. In two experiments a creative, a thoughtful or no mindset was activated. Afterwards, the activation of associations was measured using a lexical decision task with semantic priming. As predicted, the automatic activation of stereotypes (Study 1) and other associations (Study 2) was found in the control conditions but not in a creative mindset. These results suggest that people possess a mindset that allows for overcoming automatic stereotype activation without being tailored to a specific category.
Following realistic group-conflict theory, negative interdependence between groups (e.g., competition) leads to prejudice towards the opposing outgroup. Based on research on mindset priming, it is hypothesized that competition increases prejudice, regardless of whether the derogated outgroup is involved in the competition or not. In Experiment 1, participants remembered an event involving either competition or cooperation; in Experiments 2 and 3 they participated in a competitive, cooperative, or individual assessment of their knowledge. Subsequent measures indicated that competition results in higher levels of prejudice, even when it is not related to the intergroup context. Additional evidence suggests that this effect is not driven by the transfer of negative affect or ego-depletion. Possible underlying cognitive processes are discussed.
An abstract is not available.
Darwinism provides not only a theory of biological evolution but also supplies a more generic process applicable to many phenomena in the behavioral sciences. Among these applications is the blind-variation and selective-retention model of creativity proposed by Campbell (1960). Research over the past 4 decades lends even more support to Campbell's model. This support is indicated by reviewing the experimental, psychometric, and historiometric literature on creativity. Then 4 major objections to the Darwinian model are examined (sociocultural determinism, individual volition, human rationality, and domain expertise). The article concludes by speculating whether the Darwinian model may actually subsume all alternative theories of creativity as special cases of the larger framework.
Two experiments examine nonconscious processes that facilitate pursuing egalitarian goals. It was hypothesized that when working on a task not known to be relevant to egalitarian goals there is heightened ability to detect opportunities to goal pursuit (goal-relevant people) embedded in the task, even when they are best ignored for optimal performance. Further, this selective attention should cease when the goal is sated, despite increased semantic accessibility of these opportunities that results from satiation. Experiment one introduced egalitarian goals via writing an essay about failing to be egalitarian to Black men. Next, an ostensibly unrelated task presented Black and White men in an array of faces as distracters to a focal task. Task performance was disrupted only by arrays containing Black men, and only among participants primed with egalitarian goals. This was not due to increased semantic accessibility of the concept “Black men.” Experiment two had all participants write failure essays and then write second essays. Half wrote affirming essays about egalitarianism and Black men. Despite this increased semantic accessibility of the group “Black men,” distracted attention was not evidenced. Instead, the goal had been satisfied and goal pursuit shut down. In contrast, the remaining participants wrote affirming essays in an irrelevant domain. Despite the decreased semantic accessibility, goal accessibility remained and was evidenced by selective attention to Black men. These findings reveal Black men are associated not with stereotypes, but egalitarian goals. They also point to the role goal completion versus self affirmation play in goal pursuit.
Two studies examined the heuristic and systematic processing of accuracy-versus impression-moti-vated individuals expecting a discussion with a partner believed to hold either a favorable or unfa-vorable opinion on the discussion issue. Given the goal of having a pleasant interaction, impression-motivated (versus accuracy-motivated) participants in both studies were particularly likely to ex-press attitudes that were evaluatively consistent with the partner's opinion, reflecting their selective use of a "go along to get along" heuristic. Study 2 yielded stronger evidence for the distinct nature of heuristic and systematic processing in the service of accuracy versus impression goals. In this study, the evaluative implication of impression-motivated participants' low-effort application of a "go along to get along" heuristic biased their more effortful, systematic processing, leading to attitudes consis-tent with the partner's views. In contrast, given the goal of determining an accurate issue opinion, accuracy-motivated participants exhibited relatively evenhanded systematic processing, resulting in attitudes unbiased by the partner's opinion. The results underscore the utility of a dual-process approach to understanding motivated cognition. Intuition and experience suggest that various motives can in-fluence the way in which people process information and the judgments that result. That is, the motivated perceiver's cogni-tive processes will be a direct reflection of the goals that they are intended to satisfy. Using the heuristic-systematic model (Chaiken, 1980, 1987; Chaiken, Liberman, & Eagly, 1989) as a theoretical framework, the present research aims to elucidate the distinct ways in which accuracy versus impression motives are served by both heuristic and systematic processes.
The present studies tested the applicability of current notions concerning the determinants and consequences of construct accessibility to a situation involving interrelational constructs and the creative use of physical objects. In all three studies, subjects were shown a series of objects to remember that were described with either an undifferentiated linguistic construction (e.g., “tray of tomatoes”) or a differentiated linguistic construction (e.g., “tray and tomatoes”). Subjects were then given K. Duncker's (Psychological Monographs 1945, 58, 5, Whole No. 270) candle problem, ostensibly to examine the effects of an interfering task on long-term memory. Solution of the candle problem requires recognizing that a box filled with tacks can be used as a platform for the candle rather than just being a container for the tacks. Previous exposure to memory items described with the differentiated “and” construction increased the likelihood that subjects later differentiated the box from the tacks in their descriptions, and this differentiation, in turn, facilitated solving the candle problem. The implications of these results for extending the emerging theory of construct accessibility to interpersonal and organizational aspects of social behavior, as well as to creativity and the linguistic relativity hypothesis, are discussed.
We investigated effects of emotional states on the ability to make intuitive judgments about the semantic coherence of word triads. Participants were presented word triads, consisting of three clue words that either were weakly associated with a common fourth concept (coherent triads) or had no common associate (incoherent triads). In Experiment 1, participants in a neutral mood discriminated coherent and incoherent triads reliably better than chance level even if they did not consciously retrieve the solution word. In Experiment 2, the induction of a positive mood reliably improved intuitive coherence judgments, whereas participants in a negative mood performed at chance level. We conclude that positive mood potentiates spread of activation to weak or remote associates in memory, thereby improving intuitive coherence judgments. By contrast, negative mood appears to restrict spread of activation to close associates and dominant word meanings, thus impairing intuitive coherence judgments.
Spreading activation theories and compound cue theories have both been proposed as accounts of priming phenomena. According to spreading activation theories, the amount of activation that spreads between a prime and a target should be a function of the number of mediating links between the prime and target in a semantic network and the strengths of those links. The amount of activation should determine the amount of facilitation given by a prime to a target in lexical decision. To predict the amount of facilitation, it is necessary to measure the associative links between prime and target in memory. Free-association production probability has been the variable chosen in previous research for this measurement. However, in 3 experiments, the authors show priming effects that free-association production probabilities cannot easily predict. Instead, they argue that amount of priming depends on the familiarity of the prime and target as a compound, where the compound is formed by the simultaneous presence of the prime and target in short-term memory as a test item.
Undergraduates were asked to generate a name for a hypothetical new exemplar of a category. They produced names that had the same numbers of syllables, the same endings, and the same types of word stems as existing exemplars of that category. In addition, novel exemplars, each consisting of a nonsense syllable root and a prototypical ending, were accurately assigned to categories. The data demonstrate the abstraction and use of surface properties of words.
Three experiments explored how participants solved a very open-ended generative problem-solving task. Previous research has shown that when participants are shown examples, novel creations will tend to conform to features shared across those examples (Smith, Ward, & Schumacher, 1993). We made the shared features of the examples conceptually related to one another. We found that when the features were related to the concept of hostility, participants' creations contained hostile features that were not part of any of the examples. These results suggest that participants will design novel entities to be consistent with emergent properties of examples shown to them. We also found that a mild hostility prime from unscrambling sentences had a similar conceptual effect. Together, the two effects suggest that conceptual priming of generative cognitive tasks will influence the cognitive aspects of the creative process.
Although thought suppression is a popular form of mental control, research has indicated that it can be counterproductive, helping assure the very state of mind one had hoped to avoid. This chapter reviews the research on suppression, which spans a wide range of domains, including emotions, memory, interpersonal processes, psychophysiological reactions, and psychopathology. The chapter considers the relevant methodological and theoretical issues and suggests directions for future research.