When prevention facilitates group creativity: The effect of regulatory focus and regulatory fit on interpersonal neural couplings of creative communications

Abstract

Despite numerous studies demonstrating connections between regulatory focus, regulatory fit, and group creativity, their impact on the inter-brain mechanism of creative communication is still unclear. Under the regulatory focus theory, Experiment 1 required dyads to complete creative tasks in three conditions (promotion focus, prevention focus, control) while monitoring hemodynamic inter-brain synchronization. In comparison to the other two conditions, dyads with a promotion focus showed higher levels of creative performance. This was also supported by increased inter-brain neural synchronization (IBS) in two ROI pairs (i.e., r-DLPFC_m-FPC; r-DLPFC_l-SMA), which signifies a positive shift towards prioritizing team members' opinions and improved alignment of body movements. Considering the lower creative performance of the prevention-focused dyad in Experiment 1, Experiment 2 referred to the regulatory fit theory and attempted to explore whether fit priming of prevention-focused dyads would facilitate their creative performance more than the misfit dyad. Both the fit and misfit dyads were induced with a prevention focus first. Results illustrated that prevention-focused dyads with fit priming accompanied by higher creative performance and enhanced inter-brain neural synchronization in four ROI pairs (i.e., l-DLPFC_l-FPC; r-FPC_r-FPC; l-FPC_r-FPC; l-FPC_ l-FPC), which potentially signifies a move towards more goal-oriented behavior to prevent team innovation from failing. Furthermore, there is a division that occurs when neural synchronization predicts diverse indicators of creativity across different regulatory focus/fit conditions. Therefore, promotion focus and regulatory fit of the prevention focus might be positive social cues to align and optimize inter-brain information transfer, thus facilitating group creativity.