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🪵 The Threshold

Adaptation priming alone increases generative creativity in drawings.

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tagsja-picks, causal_relationships, singleton, xref, category/causal-relationships
aliases@roderick_m_kramer_social_2011, loc. 2227, @roderick_m_kramer_social_2011, loc. 2232, @roderick_m_kramer_social_2011, loc. 2233

4 min read

Adaptation priming alone increases generative creativity in drawings.

Evidence

In one study, we randomly assigned groups of undergraduate students at the Sorbonne in Paris (all of whom had been selected for the study because they had previously lived abroad) to recall and write about a time they had lived abroad; other groups were asked to write about having traveled abroad, being in their hometown, or going to the supermarket. We then asked them to complete the Remote Associates Task (RAT; Mednick, 1962), a test of creative associational thinking. In this task, examinees are presented with three words and asked to come up with an additional word that can logically associate the three words together. For example, for the triad of words “manners, round, tennis” the correct answer individuals need to come up with is “table,” which associates all three words together (i.e., table manners, round table, and table tennis). As predicted, we found that participants who had been primed to recall having lived abroad solved more RAT answers correctly than those who recalled and wrote about other types of experiences, including traveling abroad (Maddux & Galinsky, 2009, study 3). — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2227 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Replicating the finding from our first study with Kellogg MBAs, we again found a significant correlation between time lived abroad and creativity. But when we looked at the extent to which students said they adapted themselves to the host culture while abroad, we found that the degree of adaptation significantly mediated the link between living abroad and creativity (Maddux & Galinsky, 2009, study 4). — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2232 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

In order to test the causal role of adaptation, we ran a final study in which we randomly assigned groups of undergraduate students at the Sorbonne in Paris (all of whom had previously lived abroad) to recall and write about a time they had adapted to a foreign culture, while other groups were asked to write about observing a foreign culture (which we reasoned was analogous to traveling abroad), learning a new sport, or a control condition with no prime. We then asked participants to draw aliens they might encounter on a strange planet (e.g., Kray, Galinsky, & Wong, 2006), which is an unstructured test of generative creativity. After having three independent coders evaluate the creativity of the aliens, we found that those participants primed with the adaptation experience drew aliens that were more creative than the ones drawn by those primed with the other experiences (see Figure 16.1). — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2233 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

  • XREF: connects to: Priming living-abroad memory causally raises creative performance.; Merely recalling an adaptation experience boosts creative output — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2233; Merely experiencing foreign novelty without grasping its underlying reasons does not boost creativity — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2244 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

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