A Self‐Report Measure of Productive Thinking in Solving Insight Problems

There is broad agreement among executives on the importance of innovation and creativity in organizations. The paper aimed to provide information on the effectiveness of a new cognitive style inventory, the Productive‐Reproductive Thinking Inventory (P‐R), in identifying people with creative problem‐solving potential. Participants completed the P‐R Inventory, Kirton's Adaption‐Innovation Inventory (KAI), the Assimilator‐Explorer Inventory, self‐rating of insight problem‐solving, and a battery of insight problem‐solving tasks under controlled conditions. The P‐R scale was a significant predictor of problem‐solving performance and insight self‐ratings and correlated significantly with KAI and AE scores. In addition, the results supported distinguishing two types of reproductive thinking which are differentially associated with insight performance. The distinction was supported by confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation models. Using controlled conditions may limit the generality of the findings and further research should be carried out in applied settings. The P‐R inventory is short and easily administered and may provide HR professionals with a useful screening tool for assessing creative problem‐solving potential. The measure differs from the KAI in several ways that may offer advantages for creativity researchers in that it is non‐proprietary, based on well‐established psychological constructs, and is more particularly applicable to insight problem‐solving.     

Openness to Experience Enhances Creativity: The Mediating Role of Intrinsic Motivation and the Creative Process Engagement

Studies indicate that there is a positive relationship between openness to experience and creativity. However, relatively little attention has been given to the mechanism of this relationship. On the basis of previous findings, we hypothesized a conceptual model and tested the mediating role of intrinsic motivation and the creative process engagement in the relationship between openness to experience and creativity. One hundred and ninety‐eight undergraduates in Malaysia participated in the study and completed an online measure of openness to new experience, creativity, intrinsic motivation, and the creative process engagement. Consistent with the hypothesis, people who scored high on openness reported high intrinsic motivation. The high motivation enhanced engagement in creativity‐related activities, which in turn, improved self‐rated creativity. The findings not only shed light on mechanisms that underlie in the openness‐creativity linkage but they also highlight the importance of intrinsic motivation and creative process engagement in the linkage. Together, the study extends the effect of personality trait on creativity and offers a new direction for future studies.     

The Mediating Role of Creative Process Engagement in the Relationship between Shyness and Self‐Rated Creativity

Shyness has been found to have a negative impact on creativity. However, little attention has been given to the underlying process of the relationship between shyness and creativity. On the basis of literature, we hypothesize that shyness has an indirect impact on creativity through creative process engagement. Two studies were conducted on undergraduate students (Study 1) and working adults (Study 2) to test the hypothetical relationship. Analysis on participants self‐report showed that shyness was negatively associated with self‐reported creativity as well as creative process engagement. There was a positive relationship between creative process engagement and creativity. More importantly, mediation analysis supported that shyness was indirectly linked to creativity via creative process engagement. Specifically, shy people are found to be less involved in creativity‐relevant processes such as information searching and idea generation. The low level of creative process engagement, in turn, hinders their creativity. The findings not only lend support to the detrimental effect of shyness on creativity but also shed light on the underlying mechanism of the relationship.     

Teacher's Encouragement on Creativity,Intrinsic Motivation,and Creativity: The Mediating Role of Creative Process Engagement

Drawing on Dewey's pragmatic perspective on talent cultivation and previous research on promoting employee creativity in industry, this study investigates student creativity performance in relation to teacher's encouragement, intrinsic motivation, and creative process engagement. Based on survey data collected from 140 vocational high school students who participated in a nation‐wide contest in Taiwan, path analyses were performed using structure equation modeling techniques. The results indicate that both teacher's encouragement and intrinsic motivation have a significant, although indirect, effect on student creativity, and that creative process engagement, as opposed to teacher encouragement or intrinsic motivation, has a direct and significant mediating effect on student creativity. This finding is in partial agreement with prior research which reports student creativity is positively associated with teacher encouragement and intrinsic motivation, highlighting the mediating role of creative process engagement in facilitating student creative performance.     

Difficult Differences: A Socio‐cultural Analysis of How Diversity Can Enable and Inhibit Creativity

The relationship between diversity and creativity can be seen as paradoxical. A diversity of perspectives should be advantageous for collaborative creativity, yet its benefits are often offset by adverse social processes. One suggestion for overcoming these negative effects is perspective taking. We compared four dyads with low scores on trait perspective taking with four dyads who were high on trait perspective taking on a brainstorming task followed by reconstructive interviews. Trait‐based perspective taking was strongly associated with greater creativity. However, contrary with expectation, interactional perspective taking behaviors (including questioning, signaling understanding, repairing) were associated with lesser creativity. The dyads that generated the fewest ideas were most likely to get stuck within ideational domains, struggling to understand one‐another, having to elaborate and justify their ideas more. In contrast, the dyads that generated many ideas were more likely to recognize each other's ideas as valuable without extensive justification or negotiation. We suggest that perspective taking is crucially important for mediating diversity in the generation of new ideas not only because it enables understanding the perspective of the other, but because it entails an atmosphere of tolerance, playfulness, and mutual recognition.     

辱虐管理与员工创造力：心理契约破坏和中庸思维的不同作用

近年来, 辱虐管理与员工创造力的关系受到越来越多研究者的关注。在以往研究的基础上, 本研究构建了一个有调节的中介作用模型, 以探讨中国文化情境下辱虐管理影响员工创造力的中介心理机制及边界条件。采用多阶段-多来源的策略, 以93名主管和369名员工为对象, 通过多水平结构方程建模技术对三阶段主管-员工配对调查所获取的数据进行分析, 结果表明：主管的辱虐管理行为会通过心理契约破坏的中介作用, 对员工创造力产生间接的消极影响; 但该负向的间接关系的强度对高中庸思维者而言较弱。本研究有助于揭示辱虐管理影响员工创造力的心理机制及边界条件, 研究结果对企业员工创造力及创新行为的管理实践也有一定启示。     

Using Expressive Arts in Online Education to Identify Feelings

The authors of this article present two creative teaching activities to illustrate how online counselor education can use expressive arts to promote awareness of how one feels. Included is a discussion of this awareness of feelings, the downside of expressing feelings, creative arts in counselor education, and how counselor education can promote feeling experiences. Two examples of expressive arts are offered with a brief discussion.     

The contributions of convergent thinking,divergent thinking,and schizotypy to solving insight and non-insight problems

The ability to generate diverse ideas (divergent thinking) is valuable in solving creative problems (e.g., insight problems); yet, however advantageous, this ability is insufficient to solve the problem alone and requires the ability to logically deduce an assessment of correctness of each solution (convergent thinking). Positive schizotypy may help isolate the aspects of divergent thinking prevalent in insight problem solving. Participants were presented with a measure of schizotypy (Oxford-Liverpool Inventory of Feelings and Experiences), divergent and convergent thinking tasks, insight problems, and non-insight problems. We found no evidence for a relationship between schizotypy and insight problem solving. Relationships between divergent thinking and insight problem solving were also surprisingly weak; however, measures of convergent thinking had a stronger relationship with problem solving. These results suggest that convergent thinking is more important than divergent thinking in problem solving.     

Hiding behind a mask? Cultural intelligence,knowledge hiding,and individual and team creativity

Culturally diverse colleagues can be valuable sources for stimulating creativity at work, yet only if they decide to share their knowledge. Drawing on the social exchange theory, we propose that cross-cultural interactions among individuals from different national backgrounds can act as a salient contingency in the relationship between knowledge hiding and creativity (individual and team). We further suggest, based on the social categorization theory (e.g., the categorization process of “us” against “them” based on national differences), that cultural intelligence enhances the likelihood of high-quality social exchanges between culturally diverse individuals and, therefore, remedies the otherwise negative relationship between individual knowledge hiding and individual creativity. Two studies using field and experimental data offer consistent support for this argument. First, a field study of 621 employees nested among 70 teams revealed that individual knowledge hiding is negatively related to individual creativity and that cultural intelligence moderates the relationship between knowledge hiding and creativity at an individual level. A quasi-experimental study of 104 international students nested in 24 teams replicated and extended these findings by implying that individual knowledge hiding is also negatively related to team creativity. We discuss the implications for practice and future research.