Abstract
Previous studies have indicated that divergent idea integration is an effective way to foster extraordinary creativity in groups. This study posits that background music (BGM) may aid in eliciting this phenomenon. Here to describe the effectiveness of BGM on group creativity, we hypothesized and suggested different mechanisms that genre and valence attributes of BGM would lead to extraordinary creativity. The temporal co-ordination of head movement synchrony (HMS) was investigated as a non-verbal cue and we found significant HMS response levels to idea generation. While the HMS as response did not depend on the quality of the prior ideas; it led to higher divergence and originality in the successively generated ideas. Results of this study showed the dominant contribution of upbeat positive valence (UP) music, relative to other genres, in HMS leading to divergent ideas. Following this, the potential role of upbeat music in enhancing participant sociability and positive valence in enhancing cooperation level was discussed. Upbeat positive music may decrease judgmental behavior during creative group tasks and inspire participants to share divergent perspectives. The use of such music can encourage participants to share new perspectives and integrate ideas. It may also provide a potential explanation for the enhancing effect of upbeat positive music on creative outcomes in groups.
Highlights
Creativity is the development of influential original ideas (Paulus and Nijstad, 2003)
By comparing a non-verbal communication measure (HMS) of group communication process between the conditions, this study indicated that exposure to background music (BGM) enhances synchrony of head motions, which is in accordance with an observation made in a real-world situation (Ellamil et al, 2016)
The significant effect of positive valence tracks on head movement synchrony (HMS) enhancement leads us to discuss over the enhancing effect of positive mood on connection between dyads. With such kind of a consideration, we further investigated the relationship between HMS and idea generation during group creativity dynamics, and how the relationship was affected by the types of BGM
Summary
Creativity is the development of influential original ideas (Paulus and Nijstad, 2003). The use of such music can encourage participants to share new perspectives and integrate ideas It may provide a potential explanation for the enhancing effect of upbeat positive music on creative outcomes in groups. In the other part of our second hypothesis, we were interested in the potential effect of music type in enhancing this effect further As for this point, the differential contribution of successive divergent idea generation during upbeat genre BGM (relative to reflective music and a control condition) suggests the role of this genre in facilitating divergent idea sharing. The current findings provides mechanistic description of how the positive upbeat BGM enhanced interpersonally coordinated head motions, possibly reflecting increased expression of agreement, and in turn led to generation and sharing of more divergent ideas
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