The psychology of science typically lacks integration between cognitive and social variables. We present a new framework of team innovation in multidisciplinary science and engineering groups that ties factors from both literatures together. We focus on the effects of a particularly challenging social factor, knowledge diversity, which has a history of mixed effects on creativity, most likely because those effects are mediated and moderated by cognitive and additional social variables. In addition, we highlight the distinction between team innovative processes that are primarily divergent versus convergent; we propose that the social and cognitive implications are different for each, providing a possible explanation for knowledge diversity's mixed results on team outcomes. Social variables mapped out include formal roles, communication norms, sufficient participation and information sharing, and task conflict; cognitive variables include analogy, information search, and evaluation. This framework provides a roadmap for research that aims to harness the power of multidisciplinary teams.

How do ordinary citizens react to new policy-relevant findings that they learn about from media mentions or word of mouth? We conducted an experiment embedded in a randomdigit-dial (RDD) telephone survey of 1,050 California adults. Respondents heard a description of a hypothetical study on one of four politicized topics or a politically neutral topic (nutrition) and were asked to describe their reactions to the study's main finding. As in prior research, citizens were more skeptical when the findings contradicted their prior beliefs about the topic. But, we also found effects of partisanship and ideology even after controlling for specific issue attitudes. Citizens, especially those holding conservative beliefs, tended to attribute studies with liberal findings to the liberalism of the researcher, but citizens were less likely to attribute conservative findings to the conservatism of the researcher.

This research examined the association between naive dialectical thinking and creativity, measured as originality in problem construction and reframing (types of problem finding). Ethnic identity (Caucasian vs. Asian=Asian American) was examined as a moderator. Two correlational studies and one experimental study revealed a complex pattern of results: For problems with low inherent contradiction, naive dialectical thinking decreased originality on problem finding tasks, whereas for tasks with higher contradiction, there was no or even a slight positive effect. Furthermore, these relationships were found for Caucasian participants but not for Asian or Asian American participants. This research built upon the long-standing notion that dialectical thinking is positively associated with creativity, but suggests the relationship might be culture-, task-, and process-specific. The nature of dialectical thinking as involving the acceptance of contradiction or necessitating the resolution of tension should be explored.

One potential problem for creativity theory is whether both novelty and appropriateness are equally valid dimensions across cultures. Taking an implicit theory approach, the authors surveyed more than 400 students from Japan, China, and the United States. Using repeated measures scenarios of cooking and textbook products, novelty was found to be important across the three countries for evaluations of creativity. However, the Chinese were more swayed than were the Americans by the novelty manipulation in terms of how much they desired the products. Appropriateness was more important for Americans and Japanese for evaluations of creativity and desire for products. Both novelty and appropriateness had large effects. Rather than relying on assumed country variations, the authors argue that cross-cultural research be used to understand the nature of creativity.

Complex problem solving in naturalistic environments is fraught with uncertainty, which has significant impacts on problem-solving behavior. Thus, theories of human problem solving should include accounts of the cognitive strategies people bring to bear to deal with uncertainty during problem solving. In this article, we present evidence that analogy is one such strategy. Using statistical analyses of the temporal dynamics between analogy and expressed uncertainty in the naturalistic problem-solving conversations among scientists on the Mars Rover Mission, we show that spikes in expressed uncertainty reliably predict analogy use (Study 1) and that expressed uncertainty reduces to baseline levels following analogy use (Study 2). In addition, in Study 3, we show with qualitative analyses that this relationship between uncertainty and analogy is not due to miscommunication-related uncertainty but, rather, is primarily concentrated on substantive problem-solving issues. Finally, we discuss a hypothesis about how analogy might serve as an uncertainty reduction strategy in naturalistic complex problem solving.