Abstract:Divergent thinking tasks are a popular basis for research on group creative problem solving, or brainstorming. The brainstorming literature has been dominated by research that investigates group performance by measuring the total number of generated ideas using the original rules put forth by Osborn (1953). This review of empirical literature on brainstorming suggests that Osborn was right about many but not all of his intuitions. It discusses the potential advantages of cognitive stimulation, and potential disadvantages of conformity or fixation, due to exposure to others' ideas. Further, although Osborn recommended "withholding criticism, " the potential advantages of conflict in interacting problem-solving groups are also discussed. In addition, this review suggests that incorporating performance measures of idea quality, in addition to the ubiquitous measures of idea quantity, can provide useful and unique insights into group brainstorming.

One goal of this research is to test whether the kind of question that is used to prompt brainstorming differentially affects individual and group idea generation performance. More specifically, I examined if questions (prompts) that require groups to generate alternate uses for common objects (e.g., other uses for cars) foster more benefits from collaborative ideation than questions to improve an object, place, or process (e.g., ways to improve cars). It was also predicted that the amount of fixation and prior thought on the topic (idea pre-formation) would mediate the relationship between prompt and performance. These hypotheses were tested in a series of three experiments using electronic idea exchanges to minimize other obstacles to group productivity. Participants generated ideas using alternate uses or improvements prompts for the same topic (cars) (Experiment 1). In Experiment 2, timing of exposure to others' ideas (early, late, or none) was varied. In Experiment 3, participants brainstormed in response to one of the two prompts in either an interactive group setting (exchanging ideas with others) or individually (no idea sharing). The results of all three experiments showed that alternate uses and improvements prompts indeed differentially affect ideational performance in terms of both idea quantity and quality. The results were also consistent with the well documented "process loss" (Larson, 2010; Mullen, Johnson, & Salas, 1995) on the improvements prompt, but the gap between interacting and nominal groups was closed on the alternate uses prompt. However, the mediating roles of fixation and idea pre-formation were not supported.

This study examined the separate and joint impact of two standard, but seemingly conflicting brainstorming rules on idea generation in interacting and nominal groups: the free-wheeeling rule, which calls for the production of dissimilar ideas, and the build-on rule, which encourages idea combination and improvement. We also tested whether the superior performance of interacting groups found in several previous studies using a brainwriting technique may have been due to the different response formats employed by groups and individuals. Interacting groups and individuals generated ideas for improving their university under one of three sets of instructions. In one condition, participants were given the build-on rule, but not the freewheeling rule, and in another condition, the reverse was true. In the third condition, both rules were provided. When the two rules were presented separately, interacting and nominal groups responded similarly, generating ideas from more semantic categories in response to the free-wheeling rule, and generating more practical ideas in response to the build-on rule. But when those rules were presented simultaneously, interacting groups generated ideas from fewer semantic categories than did nominal groups. In addition, interacting groups produced more ideas overall than nominal groups, but only when the two used different response formats.

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