Do field-dependent individuals tend to have lower creativity than field-independent ones? The role of informational cues in electronic brainstorming

The Relationships between Cognitive Styles and Creativity: The Role of Field Dependence-Independence on Visual Creative Production

“…This result was also confirmed by the ANOVA, showing that FIs provided significantly higher scores in originality and appropriateness than FDs, meaning that the faster participants were in identifying the simple shape embedded in the complex figure (field independence), the more creative (original and appropriate) were their inventions. Results confirmed H2 and align with previous studies on real-world creative production [ 29 , 39 ] as well as research on both divergent thinking [ 17 , 19 , 32 ] and convergent thinking [ 36 , 37 ]. Two main explanations can explain the better performance of FIs in the VCST than FDs.…”

“…Regarding DT, some studies revealed that FIs outperformed FDs [ 31 , 32 ] in generating ideas, whereas others found non-significant results [ 33 , 34 ]. For instance, Li and colleagues [ 19 ] revealed that FIs outperformed FDs in scientific and social brainstorming tasks in terms of fluency and novelty, confirming previous research [ 32 , 35 ]. In addition, Lei and colleagues [ 17 ] found that field independence was related to fluency and originality but not to flexibility, whereas Niaz and colleagues [ 34 ] found no significant effect of FDI.…”

“…Therefore, the nature of the VCST used in this study and the better predisposition of FIs than FDs in mentally manipulating spatial shapes could represent a possible explanation of our results during the inventive phase. Second, it has been found that the better predisposition of FIs in using their own knowledge and in extracting it from memory, especially in complex tasks in which the solution is unclear, positively affects creative performance [ 19 ]. This assumption is consistent with the two-step form of the VCST used in this research.…”

“…Although the key role of cognitive styles in human cognition and behavior has been extensively acknowledged, their universal explanatory power has not consistently been demonstrated. However, amongst all cognitive styles, the universal explanatory power of the field dependent-independent cognitive style (FDI) has been widely recognized [ 19 ]. In their seminal work, Witkin and colleagues defined FDI as “the extent to which the person perceives part of a field as discrete from the surrounding field as a whole, rather than embedded in the field” [ 20 ] (pp.…”

Field Dependent–independent Cognitive Style and Creativity From the Process and Product-Oriented Approaches: A Systematic Review

“…All the eight articles selected for this systematic review hypothesized a relation between FDI and creativity, and they were published from 1967 to 2020. Of the eight articles, four employed a between study design (Lei et al, 2021;Li et al, 2020;Miller, 2007;Saracho, 1992), three a correlational study design (Baranovská et al, 2017;Fergusson, 1992Fergusson, , 1993Saurenman & Michael, 1980), and one used both between and correlational research designs (Noppe & Gallagher, 1977).…”