Research On The Behavior And Neural Mechanism Of Risk Propensity Affecting The Creative Process

Exploring the effects of risk propensity on creative processing is an important approach to understand the relationships between different fields in creativity studies.It can also provide some insights about the mechanisms of sociopsychological basis of creativity and help us understand the influence of personality on human cognition.Risk propensity was considered to be one of the key characteristics of creative individuals.Researchers have done lots of studies in the field of risk propensity on human cognition,but the influence of risk propensity on creativity is still a relatively new topic that hasn’t caught much attention.The current study explored how risk propensity affect convergent and divergent creative thinking by using both behavioral and neuroscientific approaches.The whole study contains three experiments,all of which combined behavioral and electrophysiological methods.Behavioral results showed a positive effect of risk propensity on both the convergent and divergent creative thinking,and this effect did not operate through any intermediation.Electrophysiological results showed an interaction between risk propensity type and other factors in the time window of-600 to-500ms,and a marginal significant main effect(p≤.09)of risk propensity in an earlier time window of-800 to-700ms.When compared the mental preparation of solved and unsolved problems,we got an interaction between risk propensity and other factors at the time window of-400 to-300ms and the time window of-200 to-100ms.There was a marginal significant main effect of risk propensity at the time window of-700 to-500ms.At the first stage of problem solving,there was a significant main effect of risk propensity at the time window of 300 to 600ms.We also got an interaction between risk propensity type and other factors at a later time window of 600 to 2000ms.Compared to unsolved problems,solved problems were associated with only marginal significant main effect of risk propensity type;however,in the second stage of problem solving,there was a significant main effect of risk propensity 200 to 900ms after hint being presented.These means that at the stages of mental preparation,first stage of problem solving and second stage of problem solving,participants with high/low risk propensity elicited different EEG effects that were highly associated with key phases of convergent creative thinking.On the contrary,there were a significant interaction of risk propensity with electrodes position and a remarkable main effect of risk propensity type individually at the time window of-500～-400ms and-800～-700ms preceding the presentation of the divergent creative problems,a significant main effect of risk propensity type and a few marked interactions of risk propensity type with electrodes position individually at the early stage of 140～280ms and a late but wide timespan of 600～2000ms after the presentation of the divergent creative problems,in conjunction of a serials of significant effects including main effect of risk propensity type and interactions of risk propensity type with electrodes position or the novelty type of object uses that varied across different levels of significance in the whole time course of the presentation of object uses.This means that from the stage of preparation,the generative stage of creative thoughts,to the later evaluative stage of original uses,risk propensity elicited the same EEG effect on divergent creative process.Overall,we got the following conclusions:first,risk propensity as a characteristic of personality affected both convergent and divergent creative thinking directly without any intermediation.Second,risk propensity did not affect all stages of convergent creative thinking;it only had an effect on some key stages of convergent creative thinking,and this effect was approached through heuristic strategy.Last,risk propensity has an effect on all stages of divergent creative thinking,through preparation to evaluation,and the effect is positive in general.We also pointed out the innovativeness of the current study and some directions for future studies.