The Research On The Role Of Peer Relationship In The Students’ Creativity

Individual creativity could be influenced by interpersonal relationship (Ambile, 1987; Jill E. Perry-Smith,2014). Peer relationship, as one of the most important interpersonal relationship for students (Harris,1995), has both positive effect (Coskun, 2011) and negative effect on students’creativity (Dow,2015). In this research, we investigated the role of peer relationship in students’creativity and tested the effect of knowledge experience on the relationship between peer relationship and individual creativity.There were three studies in this research. In study 1,141 participants, who were students from senior high school grade one, completed tests about peer relationship, knowledge experience and individual creativity. The purpose of the study was to identify the effect of peer relationship on individual creativity and test the role of knowledge experience in it.In study 2a, we used between-subject design and arranged 73 participants randomly into high/low interaction frequency group. It aimed to check the influence of peer interaction frequency in individual creativity. In study 2b,93 participants were assigned randomly to one topic/diverse topics group. The study adopted between-subject design and explored the effect of the number of topic domain on individual creativity.In study 3,94 participants were divided into high-level/low-level relevance group. The study employed between-subject design and focused on the effect of the relevance between interaction task and creative task in individual creativityThe results indicate that:(1) Popularity can predict convergent thinking ability positively;(2) The role of thinking interaction on everyday creativity is influenced by knowledge experience.(3) It enhances the fluency of individual creative thinking when the frequency of peer interaction is higher.(4) When the topic of peer interaction focuses on fewer domains, it can promote the fluency of creativity.(5) The originality can be enhanced when peer interaction has higher relevance to creative task.According to these results, we can conclude that:(1) In some condition, peer relationship could have positive effect on students’ creativity.(2) Knowledge experience plays a role in the positive effect of peer relationship on individual creativity.(3) Peer interaction could promote individual creativity when peer interaction is more frequent and the topic domain is more relevant to creative task.