The Influence Of Threat Distance And Interpersonal Interaction Type On Creativity In Threatening Situations

For a long time,people have thought that threats weaken creativity,and the focus was on the inhibiting effect of threat rigidity on creativity.So far,there has been many studies to examine the impact of creativity on threats through the directionality of threats,and they found that threats are related to creative tasks,and threats could promote individual creativity when threats were self-related.Based on the previous studies,this study explores the influence of the distance of the threat on the creativity level of individual response strategies,and what types of interpersonal interactions can improve the generation of creativity strategies in threatening situations,thereby helping individuals avoid terrible consequences.In experiment 1,28 college students were taken as subjects and asked to complete the problem solving task of threatening situation by manipulating the threat distance from the animal threatening pictures in the natural situation.The effects of the distal and proximal threats on the generation of creative responses were discussed.The results showed that for the unavoidable distal and proximal threat,individuals were more inclined to the usefulness of the response.In addition,compared with the distal threat,individuals in the proximal threatening situation experienced a higher degree of threat,had more original responses,and had more creative responses strategies.In experiment 2,we controlled the background information,manipulated the distance between the proximal and distal threats and the subjects,and provided the situation in which the partner was present,then taken 33 college students as subjects to complete the problem solving task of threatening situation,and discussed the influence of the threat on the generation of response strategy in the situation with the partner present.The results showed that individuals were still more likely to generate useful response strategies in the presence of their peers.And the response strategies of the proximal threat were more original than those of the distal threat.In addition,the presence of peers promoted individuals to actively cooperate with others,and the cooperation strategies were more original.In experiment 3,63 college students were randomly recruited to explore the creativity of individual response strategies to threatening situations when initiating two different types of interpersonal interaction: competition and cooperation.It was found that compared with the cooperation status,the competition status improves the usefulness of the response.Compared to the control group(no-startup status),the response of distal threats under the cooperation status improved the original score;while the response of proximal threats under the competition status reduced the original score.Moreover,the competitive strategies had a higher original score than the cooperative strategies.In a competitive status,individual creativity in dealing with tasks entirely related to competition could perform better.In summary,through three experiments,this study found that the response strategies of proximal threats are more original than those of distal threats.Threatening information activated individuals to focus on cognitive resources to deal with the threatening situations,thereby helping individuals generate original ideas;Compare to cooperation status,initiating the status of competition to solve problems in related fields can improve the performance of creativity in tasks.