Exploring The Relationship Of Unconscious Thought And Incubation Effect

Incubation is very important to the creative problem-solving and it plays a key role of promotion in the process. So far, there are three main interpretations of the effect of incubation. The first theory supposes that participants are misguided by the instruction at the beginning of the experiment. Distracter task results in forgetting of the wrong information so that it promotes the problem-solving. The second assumes that distracter task brings about the set-shifting. That is to say, it may enhance or decrease the original set, and then participants try other news solutions. The third interpretation emphasizes that unconscious thought takes part in the problem-solving and improves creative products.The serial of researches included three experiments which explored the function of conscious thought and unconscious thought and the relationships of them to confirm that unconscious thought improves creative problem-solving. The research assumed that conscious and unconscious thought both work in the incubation. However, the former brings convergent product and the latter leads to divergent. Due to unconscious thought, people get more creative ideas. Furthermore, the research tested how hint or time and different distracter task or problem works in the incubation. It was ignored by others that distinguishing the unconscious thought from hint.Some new findings were gotten in the research as following:1. Experiment 1 set three conditions including direct hint (condition I), indirect hint (condition II) and naught hint (condition III), and two types of product including convergent (type I) and divergent (type II).(1) In the condition of direct hint(condition I), more products of type I were gotten in conscious thought then unconscious thought. The difference was significant (p<.01) .It indicated unconscious thought in the incubation led to divergent. (2) In the condition of indirect hint (condition II) and naught hint (condition III), alike products of two types (p=.441/. 449), conscious thought did not lead to more convergent and unconscious thought did not lead to more divergent. There were not significant improvement of unconscious thought to incubation.(3) More products of type I were gotten in condition I and more products of type II were gotten in condition Hand III. The difference was significant (p<.001/p <.01) . It indicated direct hint led to convergent products but indirect hint and naught hint led to divergent products.2. The unusual test to make a small box was used in Experiment 2 and all the answer were ranked by two psychological postgraduates according to their fluency, flexibility and originality, in different time condition(3min and 5min). Conscious thought got significantly higher rank in the three aspects mentioned above (p<.001) . Between long and short thought time, there was very difference in fluency and flexibility (p<.01/.05), but different distracter time was no difference in the three results. All thought time challenge to the theory of unconscious thought improves divergent.3. Experiment 3 account two conditions of conscious thought and unconscious thought. Compared to conscious thought , participants in unconscious thought got significantly higher rank in a creative way and veracity above (p<.05) .May be excessive unconscious thought led to incubation effect lower.In conclusion, the research confirmed that unconscious thought play an important role in the incubation of creative problem-solving on occasion. It usually led to initial and divergent products compared to conscious thought so the effect of incubation come from it. However, unconscious thought does never improve all problem-solving. Either of types of hints, problems and thought time can influence incubation effect.