Cognitive Neural Mechanisms By Which Acute Stress Affects Group Creativity

Since the Guilford era,the focus of creativity research has mostly been on individuals,with less focus on group creativity.Group creativity remains a marginal subject of psychology research.This leaves a gap for future creativity researchers:What is groups creativity in an interpersonal perspective?Group creativity is affected by many factors such as group characteristics,group interaction,internal and external environments,and so on.The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of acute stress on the creative performance and underlying cognitive neural mechanisms of different intimate relationships.Taking heart rate and salivary cortisol as biochemical indicators of acute stress,fNIRS-based hyperscanning technology was used to elucidate the mechanism of brain-interaction and the creative behavior of the group under stress.Experiment 1 examined the creativity of the non-intimate group and its interactive neural mechanisms under acute stress.Strangers were randomly divided into the stress group and the control group.The Trier Social Stress Test for Group(TSST-G)was used to induce stress and the use of Realistic Presented Problems(RPP)assessed participants' creative performance,while using Hyperscanning to record interpersonal brain synchronization(IBS)activities.Behavioral research found that the RPP originality score of the stress group was slightly higher than that of the control group,and the cooperation index was significantly higher than that of the control group.The cooperation index of the stress group was significantly related to the fluency of RPP.The results of the subjective questionnaire measurement indicated that the stress group was happier to cooperate with each other.This indicates that in the acute stress state,individuals in the non-intimate group adopted the "tend and friend" response mode and exhibited prosocial behavior.Near-infrared data revealed significant activation of IBS in the left orbitofrontal cortex(1OFC)and right superior temporal gyrus(rSTG).RPP fluency is positively correlated with IBS at rSTG.The IBS activities in these brain regions indicate that participants under acute stress stimulated and inspired each other's cognitive perspectives by actively interacting with their partners,which improved group creativity.Granger causality analysis(GCA)showed that IBS in the stress group was significantly different in rSTG,in which men affected women significantly more than women affected men.It shows that women are more willing to "follow" men when they think about the answer to a question.Experiment 2 examined the creativity of the lover group and its interactive neural mechanisms under acute stress.The behavior experiment results showed that the RPP fluency score of the stress group was significantly greater than that of the control group.The RPP originality of the control group was related to the cooperation index,and the RPP fluency performance of the stress group was related to the cooperation index.This shows that acute stress may have positive effect on the performance of lovers in creative task.And acute stress may affect the cooperative tendency of intimate groups and different dimensions of creative performance.Near-infrared data showed that the control group and stress group had increased IBS in the left frontopolar cortex(lFPC)and right temporo-parietal junction(rTPJ)areas.IBS in the region is related to the level of cooperation and creative achievements.It shows that when lovers complete RPP,effective cooperation promotes their performance.GCA found that the IBS direction of the stress group was significantly different on lFPC,in which the effect of men on women was significantly greater than that of women on men.It shows that men have a greater influence on women during RPP task.In summary,acute stress promotes creativity in different intimate relationships,but the improvement of acute stress on creative performance is not total and changes in different dimensions.At the same time,this study provides further explanation of the relationship between acute stress,group cooperation and creativity.Our results also extend the significance of IBS,which can be used as a neural indicator to measure social interaction between intimate relationships.