A time for creativity: How future-oriented schemas facilitate creativity

Abstract

According to the creative cognition approach, extraordinarily creative ideas are rare because people often generate ideas by retrieving and incrementally modifying concepts from accessible schemas. Grounded in social schema research, we hypothesize that a future-orientation is a means to broaden thinking through activating change and progress schemas, which in turn facilitates creativity. We first offered qualitative evidence that people generally hold a schema that the future is inundated with change and progress. In three experimental studies, we established the creative benefit of future-oriented (vs. present-oriented) thinking in divergent thinking tasks. Further, we offered support that schemas of change and progress mediate the link between future-oriented (vs. present-oriented) thinking and creativity (Study 2) and demonstrated the causal role of schema activation by manipulating accessibility of change and progress schemas under a future-orientation (Study 3). We discuss the implications of how the study of schematic future projections contributes to creative cognition.