The liberating role of conflict in group creativity: A study in two countries

Abstract

Researchers of group creativity have noted problems such as social loafing, production blocking, and especially, evaluation apprehension. Thus, brainstorming techniques have specifically admonished people 'not to criticize' their own and others' ideas, a tenet that has gone unexamined. In contrast, there is research showing that dissent, debate and competing views have positive value, stimulating divergent and creative thought. Perhaps more importantly, we suggest that the permission to criticize and debate may encourage an atmosphere conducive to idea generation. In this experimental study, traditional brainstorming instructions, including the advice of not criticizing, were compared with instructions encouraging people to debate-even criticize. A third condition served as a control. This study was conducted both in the United States and in France. Results show the value of both types of instruction, but, in general, debate instructions were superior to traditional brainstorming instructions. Further, these findings hold across both cultures. Results are discussed in terms of the potential positive value of encouraging debate and controversy for idea generation.

The Personality Composition of Teams and Creativity: The Moderating Role of Team Creative Confidence

“…This work suggests that creativity in teams is likely to flourish when individuals honestly express, confront, and explore their differing viewpoints. For example, Nemeth, Personnaz, Personnaz, and Goncalo (2004) compared traditional brainstorming instructions, including the advice not to criticize, with instructions encouraging members to debate and criticize each others' contributions. Their results demonstrated the superiority of the debate instructions in terms of the number of ideas generated by groups.…”

The ‘Relay Ideation’ Technique: Moving from Problem Understanding to Problem Solving in the Design Process

“…Warr and O'Neill [1] have also referred to fear of criticism as an impeding factor. However, research has shown that criticism is actually also essential to move beyond predictability and enhance creativity in idea generation [14]. For that reason, we included a moment to present and discuss the concepts that were generated at the end of the workshop.…”

New future perspectives through constructive conflict: Exploring the future of gas in the Netherlands

“…First of all, we wanted the participants to become familiar with one of the six perspectives. Taking into consideration that learning seems to benefit more from authentic conflict than from artificial conflict (devil's advocates are less effective than true devils (Nemeth et al, 2001;Nemeth et al, 2004)) participants started off in small groups of like-minded individuals to reach a detailed understanding of the perspective that corresponded most with their own image of the future. To that end, we had the invitees fill in a questionnaire in which they divided 10 points over the six perspectives, providing most points to those perspectives that are "in line with their vision of the future".…”