Cognitive Complexity and Creativity

Charlton, Steve; Bakan, Paul

doi:10.2190/c21k-gm0l-av83-3p4h

Cited by 26 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…In the current research, we propose that biculturals' greater levels of integrative complexity will lead them to have greater success in both creative and professional domains. Specifically, because the act or process of producing something creative has been suggested to involve a number of different mechanisms including the generation of novel ideas, the flexible framing of the same problem in multiple ways, and the recombining of different existing ideas to make novel connections between concepts (e.g., Guilford, 1950;Hargadon & Sutton, 1997;Ward, Smith, & Finke, 1999), it is likely that most if not all of these creative processes depend on people's ability to view things from multiple perspectives and integrate them into a coherent whole (e.g., Charlton & Bakan, 1989;Feist, 1994;Simonton, 1988). Thus, we predicted that relative to either assimilated or separated individuals, biculturals' greater levels of integrative complexity would lead to enhanced general creative abilities both when creativity is measured in the lab and when it is measured in terms of real-world innovations; that is, we hypothesized that the effects of biculturalism on creativity will be mediated by integrative complexity.…”

Section: Biculturalism and Integratively Complex Cognitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Getting the most out of living abroad: Biculturalism and integrative complexity as key drivers of creative and professional success.

Tadmor¹,

Galinsky²,

Maddux³

2012

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

296

300

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The current research investigated how patterns of home and host cultural identification can explain which individuals who have lived abroad achieve the greatest creative and professional success. We hypothesized that individuals who identified with both their home and host cultures (i.e., biculturals) would show enhanced creativity and professional success compared with individuals who identified with only a single culture (i.e., assimilated and separated individuals). Further, we expected that these effects would be driven by biculturals' greater levels of integrative complexity, an information processing capacity that involves considering and combining multiple perspectives. Two studies demonstrated that biculturals exhibited more fluency, flexibility, and novelty on a creative uses task (Study 1) and produced more innovations at work (Study 2) than did assimilated or separated individuals. Study 3 extended these findings to general professional outcomes: Bicultural professionals achieved higher promotion rates and more positive reputations compared with assimilated or separated individuals. Importantly, in all 3 studies, integrative complexity mediated the relationship between home/host identification and performance. Overall, the current results demonstrate who is most likely to achieve professional and creative success following experiences abroad and why.

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Section: Biculturalism and Integratively Complex Cognitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Getting the most out of living abroad: Biculturalism and integrative complexity as key drivers of creative and professional success.

Tadmor¹,

Galinsky²,

Maddux³

2012

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

296

300

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Cognitive complexity refers to the number of perceptual categories available for encoding information and also to the number of rules available for combining this information (cf., Schroder, Driver, & Streufert, 1975)-characteristics that should benefit creative performance. And indeed, cognitive or integrative complexity is positively related to complex problem solving (Karlins, 1967;Karlins & Lamm, 1967), cognitive flexibility (Scott, 1962), and actual measures of creativity itself (e.g., Charlton & Bakan, 1988;Lennon & Davis, 1987;Quinn, 1980;Tetlock, Peterson, & Berry, 1993;Tuckman, 1966). Integrative complexity has even been considered a necessary prerequisite for creativity (Schroder et al, 1975).…”

Section: The Creative Mind Of Suspicious Spiritsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Suspicious spirits, flexible minds: When distrust enhances creativity.

Mayer¹,

Mussweiler²

2011

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

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Intuitively, as well as in light of prior research, distrust and creativity appear incompatible. The social consequences of distrust include reluctance to share information, a quality detrimental to creativity in social settings. At the same time, the cognitive concomitants of distrust bear resemblance to creative cognition: Distrust seems to foster thinking about nonobvious alternatives to potentially deceptive appearances. These cognitive underpinnings of distrust hold the provocative implication that distrust may foster creativity. Mirroring these contradictory findings, we suggest that the social versus cognitive consequences of distrust have diverging implications for creativity. We address this question in Study 1 by introducing private/public as a moderating variable for effects of distrust on creativity. Consistent with distrust's social consequences, subliminal distrust (vs. trust) priming had detrimental effects on creative generation presumed to be public. Consistent with distrust's cognitive consequences, though, an opposite tendency emerged in private. Study 2 confirmed a beneficial effect of distrust on private creative generation with a different priming method and pointed to cognitive flexibility as the mediating process. Studies 3 and 4 showed increased category inclusiveness versus increased remote semantic spread after distrust priming, consistent with enhanced cognitive flexibility as a consequence of distrust. Taken together, these results provide evidence for the creativity-enhancing potential of distrust and suggest cognitive flexibility as its underlying mechanism.

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“…Research regarding the relationship between cognitive complexity and creativity are scarce and have focused solely on the individual level where a positive association has been reported (Charlton & Bakan, 1989;Quinn, 1981). Switching to the team level, we argue that group cognitive complexity might also be beneficial for team creativity.…”

Section: Theory and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ups and downs on the roller coaster of task conflict: the role of group cognitive complexity, collective emotional intelligence and team creativity

Gheorghe

Fodor

Pavelea

2020

PRU

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This study explores the association between task conflict and team creativity and the role of group cognitive complexity (GCC) as a potential explanatory mechanism in a sample of 159 students organized in 49 groups. Moreover, we analyzed the moderating effect of collective emotional intelligence (CEI)in the relationship between task conflict and GCC.As hypothesized, we found that task conflict has a nonlinear relationship with GCC, but contrary to our expectations, it follows a U-shaped association, not an inversed U-shape. In addition,the moderating role of CEI was significant only at low levels. Contrary to our expectation, the mediating role of GCC did not receive empirical support. Theoretical and practical contributions are discussed.

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Cognitive Complexity and Creativity

Cited by 26 publications

References 28 publications

Getting the most out of living abroad: Biculturalism and integrative complexity as key drivers of creative and professional success.

Getting the most out of living abroad: Biculturalism and integrative complexity as key drivers of creative and professional success.

Suspicious spirits, flexible minds: When distrust enhances creativity.

Ups and downs on the roller coaster of task conflict: the role of group cognitive complexity, collective emotional intelligence and team creativity

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