Opening the Creative Mind of High Need for Cognitive Closure Individuals through Activation of Uncreative Ideas

• Main Authors: ONG, Lay See, LEUNG, Angela K. Y.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2013
• Subjects: Cognition and Perception; School Psychology
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/1336; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/2592/viewcontent/Opening_Creative_Mind_Uncreative_Ideas_2013.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Drawing on the integrative system theory of creativity combining the person, process, and press perspectives, this research offers the first evidence of how high-need-for-cognitive-closure (NFC) individuals’ creative mind can be opened up, by making them become more cognizant of uncreative ideas as consensually invalid solutions to creative problems. A validation study was conducted to first establish the utility of a newly developed chocolate design task. In the second study, half of the participants were made aware of conventional chocolate designs by drawing these designs before generating a revolutionized design of chocolate; the other half did not have to draw out the conventional designs first. Results confirmed that, given the opportunity to cognize uncreative solutions, high-NFC participants who had a higher creative ideation potential became the most creative. Their low-NFC counterparts, however, did not seem to benefit from the trigger of uncreative solutions. The implication that holding onto a chronic motive to attain cognitive closure or epistemic certainty is not necessarily detrimental to creative performance was discussed.