The Effect Of Psychological Distance On Creative Idea Selection

Innovation is an inexhaustible driving force for national and social development.Creative activities not only depends on the generation of creative ideas,but also requires people to have the ability to choose the most creative ideas among various options and put them into practice.Unfortunately,lots of researches show that not only do people don’t have the ability to select the most creative ideas,but the quality of the ideas is not even better than the result of random selection.While people crave for creativity,they often reject highly creative.This implicit bias against creativity is detrimental to the development of creativity.Researchers have carried out studies on this issue and tried to explore the possible mechanism behind it.But at present,the factors that can effectively improve the performance of creative idea selection are limited,and most researches studied from the situation and individual two aspects.Based on Construal Level Theory,this study explores the relationship between individuals’ psychological distance and their creative idea selection performance,as well as whether construal level plays an mediation role in it,and tries to find ways to effectively improve individuals’ creative idea selection performance.This study consists of three parts:Study 1 aims to explore the relationship between psychological distance and creative idea selection.In study 1a,70 college students were recruited to complete self-assessment of psychological distance and creative idea selection tasks.The results showed that psychological distance was positively correlated with creative idea selection.In study 1b,400 college students were recruited.The psychological distance was manipulated by adjusting the task situation.We take 4(psychological distance dimension: probability,society,time,space)x2(psychological distance: near,far)factorial design.The results showed that,under the four dimensions of psychological distance,the creativity and novelty of the ideas and the number of the optimal ideas selected under the condition of far psychological distance were higher than those under the condition of near psychological distance,and the quality of the ideas selected was higher than the average of the ideas pool.In study 2,100 college students were recruited to explore the cognitive mechanism of psychological distance affecting creative idea selection.We take 2(psychological distance:far,near)x2(construal level: high,low)factorial design.The independent variable was psychological distance,the mediating variable was construal level,and the dependent variable was the individual’s creative idea selection performance.The results showed that,construal level mediated psychological distance and the creativity and novelty of ideas selected,as well as the number of optimal ideas.Study 3,based on the finding in Study 2,Study 3 aims to explore the influence of construal level mindset on creative idea selection.The independent variable was construal level,which was divided into high construal level priming group and low construal level priming group.The dependent variable was creative idea selection performance.The results showed that the creativity,novelty and number of optimal ideas in the high construal level priming group were higher than those in the low construal level priming group,and the quality of the high construal level priming group was higher than the average quality of the viewpoint pool.In general,the following conclusions can be drawn under the conditions of this study:(1)Psychological distance is related to the performance of individual creative idea selection.The greater the perceived psychological distance,the better the performance of creative idea selection.(2)Psychological distance affects the individual’s creative idea selection performance via influencing people’s construal level.(3)The individual’s construal level also affects the individual’s creative idea selection performance.The higher the individual’s construal level,the better the individual’s creative idea selection performance.Theoretically,the results of this study have found a strong antecedent variable for individuals’ creative idea selection,and at the same time,proved once again the applicability of construal level theory in the field of creativity.In practice,the results of this study also provide good guidance for individuals’ creative idea selection.Individuals can make decisions from a distance.Thinking at a higher level of abstraction or in terms of purpose helps them to choose a more creative idea.