Boosting creative ideation through improving self-regulation

• Main Author: LEE, Sean Teck Hao
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2020
• Subjects: creativity; creative idea generation; self-regulation; inhibitory control; self-regulatory resources; ego-depletion; mindfulness; mindfulness meditation; Industrial and Organizational Psychology; Personality and Social Contexts
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/etd_coll/263; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1263&context=etd_coll
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Although creative ideation requires deviating sufficiently from conventional thoughts, people tend to fixate on highly salient and accessible concepts when responding to idea generation tasks. Surmounting such a default tendency then, is crucial to generating creative ideas. Bridging creative cognition with self-regulation research, I hypothesized that inhibitory control over such a default response may require self-regulatory resources. This would suggest that interventions that increase people’s self-regulatory resources may also boost their creativity. However, results from Study 1 did not support this hypothesis. Specifically, there was no significant difference between ego-depleted versus non-depleted participants in terms of inhibitory control over salient concepts (assessed by the newly developed Concept Inhibition Task; CIT) or creative performance. Interestingly, post-hoc findings suggest a moderating relationship between ego-depletion status and inhibitory control, such that higher inhibitory control was associated with increased creativity only for non-depleted participants; the association was otherwise null for depleted participants. Study 2 replicated the null findings of Study 1 and did not support the utility of glucose consumption – an established ego-replenishing intervention – in increasing the creative performance of ego-depleted individuals. Study 3 examined the effectiveness of mindfulness meditation – an established self-regulation boosting intervention – in elevating people’s creativity. Results revealed no significant difference in inhibitory control and creativity between participants who meditated versus those who listened to music (a comparable control group) after a ten-day intervention period. Although improvements to both inhibitory control and creativity were found when comparing baseline to post-intervention levels, such improvements were not unique to those who meditated. Interestingly, Study 3 showed that inhibitory control was positively associated with creativity at both pre- and post-intervention assessments, whereas the association was null for Study 2 where most participants were subjected to ego-depletion. Together, these three studies suggest that self-regulatory resources may not exert a direct impact on inhibitory control over salient concepts and generating creative ideas. Instead, self-regulatory resource levels may modulate the relationship between inhibitory control and creativity, such that only non-depleted individuals may reap creative benefits from inhibiting salient concepts. For ego-depleted individuals, inhibitory control over salient concepts appear to be inconsequential towards their creative performance. This post-hoc finding is explained by considering the dual pathway theory of creative idea generation (Nijstad et al., 2010). Implications and future directions are discussed.