Group Creative Performance Research Articles

The role of argumentation on high- and low-creative performing groups: A structuration analysis of undergraduate students’ group discussion

Communication is essential for group creativity, and involves cognitive and social processes. However, research rarely investigates how these two processes unfold from a communication perspective, and its consequences on group creative performance. This study adopted the structuration theory as a framework that is capable of integrating both approaches in the study of in-group communication. In particular, we employed a structuration view to examine group argument; a social practice defined as both a system (argumentative patterns of interactive behaviors) and a structure (rules and resources undergirding the system). By applying the Conversational Argument Coding Scheme (CACS) and Lag Sequential Analysis (LSA) to analyze the argumentative behaviors of 17 groups of undergraduate students performing a creative task, we identified significant differences in the systems and structures exhibited by high and low-performing groups. Successful creative groups exhibit argumentative patterns characterized by conflict, which contributes to the generation of new ideas and the integration of diverse perspectives. In contrast, less successful groups revealed a system that focused on reaching consensus rather than challenging or evaluating ideas. This paper further discusses the first empirical evidence provided by LSA on unpacking the communication dynamics that involve social and cognitive processes in in-group creative discussions.

Task motivation enhances creative performance in online groups, but not interpersonal interaction

ABSTRACT This study aimed to understand the effect of task motivation on online group creative performance and interpersonal interaction. A total of 150 university students were recruited to collaborate online on creativity tasks in dyads. The Mmembers’ task motivation was manipulated, resulting in three groups that differed in their motivation composition. Ratings of creative performance (fluency and originality), hemodynamic inter-brain synchronization, and lag sequential analysis were compared among the three groups. The results showed that groups comprising two highly motivated members conducted an efficient communication mode and achieved the best creative performance. Contrastingly, groups composed of one high- and one low-motivation member demonstrated the closest interpersonal interaction among members. The findings of this study suggest that it is essential to ensure that every member is highly motivated to improve creative performance in online groups. However, this may result in reduced interpersonal interaction.

The hyper-brain neural couplings distinguishing high-creative group dynamics: an fNIRS hyperscanning study.

This hyperscanning study aimed to identify a neural coupling profile that distinguishes high-creative group dynamics through functional near infrared spectroscopy. A total of 123 dyads completed one creativity task (alternative uses task, AUT) and contrast task (objective characteristics task). A K-means clustering analysis on AUT performance grouped 31/29 dyads into high/low-creative group, respectively. In comparison with the low-creative group, the high-creative group showed: (i) higher collective flexibility and delayed perspective-taking behaviors, but lower immediate perspective-taking behaviors; (ii) enhanced interpersonal brain synchronization (IBS) between the left inferior frontal gyrus (lIFG) and right motor cortex, and nodal Eloc at the right superior temporal gyrus (rSTG); (iii) declined intrapersonal functional connectivity between the right angular gyrus (rAG) and rSTG, and IBS between the lIFG and rAG. The enhanced neural couplings positively correlated with group creative performance, whereas a reverse correlation pattern existed in the declined ones. A leave-one-out cross-validation analysis showed these neural couplings reliably predicted group creative performance within the sample. These indicate that high-creative group dynamics are characterized by utilizing partners' shared information when necessary (e.g. encountering idea exhaustion). A neural coupling profile consisting of sophisticated interplays between regions within frontal, temporal, and parietal lobes may underlie high-creative creative dynamics.

Praising or keeping silent on partner’s ideas: Leading brainstorming in particular ways

This study aimed to investigate how different feedback affect group creative performance, and reveal the underlying interpersonal neural correlates using the functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)-based hyperscanning technique. Participants solved one creativity task with two strangers in conditions with positive/negative/no feedback. Results revealed that performance in the negative condition was lower than in the other conditions. Moreover, results showed the highest ‘index of convergence’/collective flexibility in the positive/control condition respectively. The fNIRS results demonstrated IBS increment in the frontopolar and bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which was stronger in the positive and negative conditions. The IBS increment in the frontopolar and bilateral DLPFC covaried with group creative performance in the positive condition. The findings indicated that negative feedback suppressed the group creative performance; whereas no feedback facilitated collective flexibility and positive feedback promoted interpersonal interaction, these two feedback conditions both benefited group creative performance.

Cooperation Makes a Group be More Creative.

This study investigated how cooperative and competitive interaction modes affect the group creative performance. The participants were recruited as dyads to solve 2 problems either demanding divergent thinking (alternative uses task, AUT) or not (object characteristic task, OCT). The dyads solved 1 of the 2 problems in the cooperative mode and the other in the competitive mode. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)-based hyperscanning was used to record their neural activities in the prefrontal and right temporal-parietal junction (r-TPJ) regions. Results revealed the dyads showed higher AUT fluency, AUT originality, OCT fluency, and cooperation level in the cooperative mode than in the competitive mode. The fNIRS data revealed increased (task-baseline) interpersonal brain synchronization (IBS) in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (r-DLPFC) and r-TPJ, only for dyads in the AUT/cooperation condition. In both r-DLPFC and r-TPJ, the IBS of dyads in the AUT/cooperation condition was stronger than in the AUT/competition and OCT/cooperation. Moreover, a stronger IBS was evoked between the regions in prefrontal and posterior temporal regions in the AUT/cooperation condition, as compared with the competition mode. These findings suggest that enhanced IBS may underlie the positive effects of cooperation as compared with the competition in terms of group creativity.

Mood—Creativity Relationship in Groups: The Role of Equality in Idea Contribution in Temporal Mood Effects

AbstractAs people working in groups might fare better in solving complex problems than those working alone (e.g., Laughlin, Hatch, Silver, & Boh, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 2006 and 644), organizations have increasingly assigned creative projects to groups. Group members contribute their collective efforts over time until the creative project has come to fruition. Although mood is identified as an important antecedent to creativity, little is known about the temporal pattern of how group mood enhances or inhibits group creativity, as well as the underpinning group process that explains the mood—creativity link in groups. We set out to address these questions by taking a within‐group approach to study the temporal trends of how group mood precedes group creativity and to examine idea contribution equality (ICE) as a mediating group process. We conducted a three‐wave longitudinal study among student workgroups tasked to complete a creativity project over a 1‐month span. Evidence showed that positive mood is positively associated with concurrent ICE and negative mood is negatively associated with lagged ICE. Furthermore, a mediation model showed that negative mood eventually hampered expert‐rated group creative performance by reducing ICE over time. These findings add new knowledge to the temporal mood—creativity relation within the group context.

Cooperation makes two less-creative individuals turn into a highly-creative pair

This study aimed to investigate which type of group (e.g., consisting of less-creative or highly-creative individuals) would perform better in solving creativity problems, and explore the underlying inter-brain neural correlates between team members. A preliminary test (an alternative-uses task) was performed to rank individuals’ level of creativity, and divide participants into three types of dyads: high-high (two highly-creative individuals), low-low (two less-creative individuals), and high-low (one highly-creative and one less-creative individual). Dyads were then asked to solve a realistic presented problem (RPP; a typical creativity problem) during which a functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)-based hyperscanning device was used to record the variation of interpersonal brain synchronization (IBS). Results revealed that less-creative individuals, while working together, would perform as well as highly-creative individuals. The low-low dyads showed higher levels of cooperation behaviour than the other two types of dyads. The fNIRS results revealed increased IBS only for low-low dyads at PFC (prefrontal cortex) and rTPJ (right temporal-parietal junction) brain regions during RPP task performance. In the rDLPFC (right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex), the IBS in the low-low dyads was stronger than that of high-high and high-low dyads. In the rTPJ, the IBS in the low-low dyads was only stronger than that of the high-low dyads. Besides, the IBS at rDLPFC and rTPJ regions in the low-low dyads was positively correlated with their cooperation behaviour and group creative performance. These findings indicated when two less-creative individuals worked on a creativity problem together, they tended to cooperate with each other (indicated by both behaviour index and increased IBS at rDLPFC and rTPJ), which benefited their creative performance.

THE IMPACT OF LECTURERS’ THINKING STYLES ON STUDENTS’ CREATIVITY IN DISTANCE HIGHER EDUCATION

The purpose of this study was to investigate the group creativity on thinking styles in distance education based on collaborative learning. Sample included 120 students from three intact classes of the College of education were selected as the participants for the main study. The instruments of measurement were the thinking styles inventory and the creative product semantic scale. Using the factorial quasi-experimental design, impact of thinking styles in the group creativity was tested. The results of the present study showed that male students tended to prefer the legislative thinking style more than the female students. There was no significant difference between male and female students in the overall creative ability. In addition, this study found that there was no significant association between the average group member creative ability and the overall group creative performance. The findings also supported Sternberg’s argument that ability is different from style

Assessing the Effects of Organizational Culture, Rewards, and Individual Creativity on Technical Workgroup Performance

This study used an experimental approach to investigate the conditions under which creative outcomes should be expected from the interplay of individual creativity, the innovation orientation of the organizational culture, and the rewards distribution rules. The results of this study suggest that the individual creativity of technically educated people working in group settings constitutes a predominant factor in the creative performance of its members and in the overall group creative performance. Moreover, consistent with predictions derived from previous person-environment fit studies, the innovation orientation of the organizational culture enhanced the creative behavior of groups formed by more creative individuals, but it did not significantly increase the creative behavior of groups formed by low-creativity individuals. Finally, rewards distribution rules that generate intra-group competition seem not to directly improve or impair individual creative behavior or the final group creative outcome.

Individualism–collectivism and the quantity versus quality dimensions of individual and group creative performance

Using experiments, this research examines the effects of individualism–collectivism (I–C) on creative performance in solitary and group brainstorming contexts. Affirming the individualistic and collectivistic character of the Canadian and Taiwanese samples, the quantity of ideas generated was substantially higher for Canadians whereas the quality (originality) of ideas generated was higher for Taiwanese, within both independent/interdependent contexts. Canadians were more confident in their creative abilities (in both solitary/group settings), and had a greater propensity to voice disagreement (both quantity/intensity of negative verbalizations uttered) within group contexts.

Leading for creativity: The role of unconventional leader behavior

This paper examines the relationship between a leader's unconventional behavior and followers' creative performance at both the individual and group level in an experimental setting. Our results indicate that after transformational leadership and individual intrinsic motivation for creativity are controlled for, unconventional leader behavior (e.g., standing on furniture, hanging ideas on clotheslines) significantly interacts with follower perceptions of the leader as a role model for creativity to explain follower creativity. Results also suggest that unconventional behavior explains variance in group cohesion above and beyond transformational leadership, and that group cohesion interacts with group intrinsic motivation to explain group creative performance. Academic and practitioner implications are discussed, as are avenues for future research in this area.

Group Composition, Creative Synergy, and Group Performance

Organizations use groups to improve performance on tasks that require problem solving. Is this belief in the problem solving benefits of groups misplaced given the process‐losses often experienced by brainstorming groups? This study of 94 intact autonomous work groups performing multi‐part tasks revealed that group creative performance increased multiplicatively (exponentially) with the number of highly creative group members composing the group. However, this occurred only when Team Creativity‐Relevant Processes (TCRP) within the group were relatively high. When TCRP were relatively low, group creative performance decreased multiplicatively with the number of highly creative group members within it. When TCRP were about average for the sample, group performance increased only linearly with the number of highly creative members within a group.