The Influence Of Children's Meta-stereotypes On Creativity: The Mediating Role Of Emotions

Meta-stereotype is defined as the belief that in-group members expect out-group members to hold towards them,which can be negative,neutral or positive(e.g.,thinking that an out-group holds a positive stereotype about the in-group).It's some20 years about meta-stereotype's research.However,most of these researches were done from an intergroup relations-centered perspective,the mechanism of the meta-stereotype on emotion and cognition remains unclear.With the development of urbanization in China,rural laborers migrate into cities,resulting in increased number of migrant children.Because of the change of urban and rural cultural background and the household registration system,migrant children become disadvantaged group in the city compared with urban children.Previous studies implied that meta-stereotypes of migrant children generate negative impact on their intergroup relations,mental health and so on.Yet there is few study has been done to explore the emotion and cognition effect caused by meta-stereotype,especially positive meta-stereotype.It's important to examine the emotion effect of meta-stereotype activation(negative and positive),its influences on the creativity of migrant children and its internal psychological mechanism.The research explores the emotional effect of meta-stereotype activation,the effect to the creativity by negative meta-stereotype,and the mechanism and the effect of the emotion and cognitive by the positive meta-stereotype.The following results were observed:(1)The level of anxiety,sadness,anger under the condition of negative and positive meta-stereotype activation were significantly higher than the control condition.But no significant differences were found in happiness level between three groups.(2)The scores of the Creativity and the flexibility and novelty dimension in negative meta-stereotype activation condition were significantly lower than the control condition.(3)The scores of the Creativity and the fluency dimension in positive meta-stereotype activation condition were significantly lower than the controlcondition.(4)The relationship between the negative meta-stereotype and the the creativity was partially mediated by the anxiety,sadness and anger.(5)The relationship between positive meta-stereotype and the creativity was partially mediated by the anxiety,whereas entirely mediated by the sadness.