Intercultural experience and creativity

• Main Authors: CHENG, Chi-ying, TAN, Yi Wen
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2017
• Subjects: bicultural integration; biculturalism; creative cognition; creativity; intercultural experience; intercultural relationship; Multicultural Psychology; Social Psychology
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3114; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/4371/viewcontent/ieicc0056_CYC_av.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Creativity, commonly defined as a production of novel and useful ideas, has long been considered as a type of individual difference that is highly associated with personality traits and intellectual intelligence, which cannot be changed easily. Recently, it has been demonstrated that creativity can occur as a result of cognitive, emotional, and motivational processes that are driven by intercultural experiences, which can be acquired. In line with the creative cognition approach, individuals with direct intercultural experiences exhibit higher individual creativity. Specifically, those who adopt biculturalism as their acculturation strategy and develop a high level of integration between their bicultural identities can reap the creative benefit of their intercultural experiences. Individuals with indirect intercultural experiences also exhibit higher creativity, and the underlying psychological mechanisms are the use of a comparison mindset and perceived cultural distance between the cultures. Advantageous features of intercultural experiences for enhancing individual creativity are discussed.