Situative Creativity: Larger Physical Spaces Facilitate Thinking of Novel Uses for Everyday Objects

Abstract

People often use spatial metaphors (e.g., think "laterally, " "outside the box") to describe exploration of the problem space during creative problem solving. In this paper, we probe the potential cognitive underpinnings of these spatial metaphors. Drawing on theories of situative cognition, semantic foraging theory, and environmental psychology, we formulate and test the hypothesis that larger physical spaces can facilitate divergent (but not convergent) processes in problem space exploration. Across two experiments, participants worked on a battery of problem solving tasks intended to represent divergent (alternative uses, shape invention) and convergent (remote associates, letter extrapolation) problem solving processes in either a large or a small room. In Experiment 1, participants in the larger room produced more novel alternative uses for everyday objects, and created more novel shape inventions, but generated less practical alternative uses, than participants in the smaller room. In Experiment 2, participants in the larger room (including a variant larger room) also produced more novel alternative uses for everyday objects, and less practical alternative uses, than participants in a small room, but did not create more novel shape inventions. These results suggest that spatial metaphors for problem space exploration may reflect meaningful cognitive phenomena: People may be able to search more broadly in a problem space if they are in an environment where broad physical search is a salient affordance; however, this effect appears to be relatively small and may depend on having sufficiently motivated participants. Correspondence:Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Joel Chan at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, 2504B Newell-Simon Hall, 5000 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, via email to joelchuc@cs.cmu.edu, or via telephone to (479) 647-0575. Keywords:situative cognition, creative problem solving, metaphor Acknowledgments:We thank Chris Wiltrout, Emily Schmidt, Courtney Stein, and Jeremy Addison for help with data collection and coding, and Efosa Osazuwa and Tina Liu for help with data coding. We also thank the editor and our two anonymous referees for very helpful comments on earlier drafts of the manuscript.

The Influence of Situational Cues on Children’s Creativity in an Alternative Uses Task and the Moderating Effect of Selective Attention

“…The size of the physical space is also deemed important. The study of Chan and Nokes-Malach ( 2016 ) showed that participants in a larger room produced more novel alternative uses for everyday objects than participants who were assigned to a smaller room. According to the authors, the open environment of the large room stimulated participants to explore alternative uses more broadly.…”

Effects of virtual reality’s viewing medium and the environment’s spatial openness on divergent thinking

“…I conducted a statistical power analysis for sample size estimation using G*Power 3.1. With reference to the effect sizes reported in previous studies examining the effects of different physical environments on divergent thinking [ 21 , 25 , 30 ], I assumed the effect size in the present study to be large ( f = .40) using Cohen’s [ 40 ] criterion. With alpha = .05 and power = .80, the projected sample size needed with this effect size was N = 66.…”

“…Previous research in real-world settings has shown that rooms that activate free concepts, such as broad rooms, high ceilings, or disorderly rooms, promote divergent thinking [ 21 , 25 , 29 ]. Similarly, in the present study, the VR environment of the visually open coast with no ceiling and an unobstructed view resulted in higher AUT scores because it activated the concept of freedom compared with the visually closed laboratory surrounded by ceiling and walls.…”

“…As for divergent thinking, Vohs et al [ 21 ] compared orderly and disorderly environments and revealed that disorderly rooms enhanced students’ divergent thinking. Chan and Nokes-Malach [ 25 ] tested the effects of space size on adults’ divergent thinking process and showed that larger rooms produce more novel ideas than smaller rooms. Meyers-Levy and Zhu [ 29 ] examined the effect of ceiling height on the type of information processing and found that higher ceilings promote students’ divergent thinking compared to lower ceilings.…”

Editor's Introduction

“…experience or positive affect might be responsible for part of the "generation effect, " where generation leads to better long-term memory for solutions. Finally, the paper by Chan and Nokes-Malach (2016), "Situative ceativity: Larger physical spaces facilitate thinking of novel uses for everyday objects, " discusses how problem solving contexts might affect problem solving performance across a variety of tasks, including alternative uses, novel shape invention, remote associates, and series completion.…”