Living abroad improves making creative associations between unrelated concepts

Evidence

Although this model will need to be more rigorously tested going forward, theoretically it stands to reason that living abroad facilitates creativity because it fundamentally alters the structure of individuals’ cognition, making it more flexible, adaptable, and complex, allowing connections to form between disparate and sometimes conflicting ideas, and facilitating the chronic ability to examine issues from multiple perspectives. — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2269 (#expands, via linked claim)

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)

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)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Priming living-abroad memory causally raises creative performance.; Adaptation priming alone increases generative creativity in drawings.; Living abroad increases insight into using objects for unintended purposes (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Living abroad boosts creativity by restructuring cognition toward flexible complexity. #expands (0.95) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2269
• Priming a prior living-abroad experience causally boosts creative association. #corroborates (0.93) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2227
• Reactivating living-abroad memories raises creative associational thinking. #corroborates (0.92) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2227