Merely experiencing foreign novelty without grasping its underlying reasons does not boost creativity

Evidence

Because in these two initial experiments we held learning constant while varying the cultural context, in a third experiment we held the multicultural context constant and varied learning. In one condition, we asked participants to recall and write about a time in which they learned something novel about a foreign culture and were able to learn about the underlying reasons for it. In a second condition, we asked a different group of participants to recall and write about an experience in which they learned something novel about a foreign culture but were not able to learn about the underlying reasons for it. If functional learning is particularly critical for creative enhancement, creativity should be facilitated in the former compared to the latter condition. — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 2244

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Novelty is only produced from the familiar and well known — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 1268; Successful craft choices can be nonintuitive, favoring blind copying over reasoning — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 351