The Role of Aloneness in Social Facilitation

Griffin, Murray; Kent, M. Valerie

doi:10.1080/00224549809600423

Cited by 6 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…One might also take into account findings from research on social facilitation, which investigates the effects of the presence of others on performance. In this realm, it has been shown that conditions of true privacy, i.e., situations free from evaluation apprehension, can only be established in tasks that participants perceive as outside the scope of the experiment (Griffin, 2001;Griffin & Kent, 1998;Schmitt, Gilovich, Goore, & Joseph, 1986). One can speculate that the effects of distrust on creativity may be more pronounced in general if a stronger sense of privacy could be established than that realized in the studies presented here.…”

Section: The Distrust-creativity Link-limitations and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 77%

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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Section: The Distrust-creativity Link-limitations and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 77%

Suspicious spirits, flexible minds: When distrust enhances creativity.

Mayer¹,

Mussweiler²

2011

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Larson (1990) has conducted extensive research on the time adolescents spend alone, and sees aloneness as a time of reflection, rest, and self-renewal. Along with Larson's work, there is a growing body of literature on aloneness that focuses on the positive effects of solitude (Griffin, 2001;Griffin & Kent, 1998;Moustakas, 1989;Storr, 1988). Buchholz and colleagues have explored aloneness as a developmental need, essential for all phases of personal growth (Buchholz & Chinlund, 1994;Buchholz & Tomasi, 1994;Galanaki, 2005).…”

Section: Desire For Alonenessmentioning

confidence: 96%