Initiate The Influence Of Individualism-collectivism On The Creative Problem-solving Process

In many creative research,scholars are committed to exploring how to generate more and creative ideas.The importance of creative idea generation in research is due to the fact that it's easy to quantify and is closely related to divergent thinking.However,as creativity research becomes more important to practice,scholars are beginning to notice whether people can select creative ideas,whether people can effectively implement creative ideas,and whether people can communicate their creative ideas.Thus,the exploration of the complete process of creativity has become one of the trends in current research on creativity.This study focuses on the process of creative problem solving from the perspective of individualism-collectivism.Individualism-collectivism,as a common cultural variable,has been studied by many researches.Scholars who are currently concerned with individualism-collectivism tend to regard this cultural variable as a "cultural mindset" and suggest exploring it in a priming manner,which is more conducive to a reliable conclusion of causality.In summary,this study will examine the impact of individualism-collectivism on creative problem solving processes,namely creative idea generation,creative idea selection,creative idea implementation,and creative idea communication,and exploring the role of contextual factors,openness to experience,regulatory focus in the relationship.The study sampled 132 people,including 67 in the collectivist group and 65 in the individualist group.The two priming groups are respectively divided into two groups,one completed experiment solely and another one completed it in group.During the experiment,after the reading the priming materials,two priming group completed the individualism-collectivism questionnaire and the self-construal scale to examine the priming effect,and then completed the four tasks of generation,selection,implementation and communication of creative problem solving.Finally,they would complete the openness to experience scale and the regulatory focus scale.The results show that:(1)In the creative idea generation task,the ideas generated by the collectivism priming group are more effective than the individualism group,while the ideas generated by the latter one is more original than the previous one.(2)In the creative idea selection task,the novelty of the idea chosen by the individualism and collectivism priming group is higher than the average level of the generated idea respectively,and the feasibility is lower than the average level of the generated idea respectively,and the validity is not significantly different;the selected ideas of the collectivism priming group are more feasible than the individualist priming group.(3)In the creative idea implementation task,the collectivism priming group scored higher on the program details and program overall creativity;in the creative idea communication task,the individualism priming group scored higher on the originality of the picture.(4)Under the group situation,the individualism priming group is more novel in generating ideas;in the individual context,the individualism-collectivism priming group has no significant difference in the novelty of generating ideas.(5)Under the group situation,the individualism priming group scored higher on the adventurousness;in the individual context,the individualism-collectivism priming group did not significantly differ in the scores.(6)Under the group situation,priming the individualism-collectivism will influence program details and novelty of generated ideas through intellect;under the individual context,the mediating role of intellect does not exist.Main conclusions:(1)priming individualism-collectivism will influence the generation of creative ideas.(2)The collectivism priming group and the individualism priming group are not good at selecting creative ideas,and the former pays more attention to feasibility.(3)The collectivism priming group is better at implementation tasks,and the individualist priming group is better at idea communication tasks.(4)The contextual factor "group" plays a role in the relationship between priming individualism-collectivism and novelty of generated ideas and adventurousness.(5)Contextual factors "group" influences the mediating role of intellect in individualism-collectivism and ideas generation and implementation.