Does Cognitive Style Moderate Expected Evaluation and Adolescents' Creative Performance: An Empirical Study

Abstract

Two studies investigated the effects of cognitive and school environmental factors on adolescents' creative performance. The first study tested the effects of expected evaluation and cognitive style on creativity among 89 high school students. The second study tested the effects of evaluation type and cognitive style on creativity among 92 high school students. Study 1 found main effects of expected evaluation and cognitive style on creativity. The interaction between expected evaluation and cognitive style was statistically significant. Under an experimental condition of expected evaluation, field‐dependent adolescents performed more creatively (i.e., higher originality) than those without expected evaluation. Study 2 uncovered main effects of expected evaluation type and cognitive style on creativity but no interactions between expected evaluation type and cognitive style. Adolescents performed better on the dimension of flexibility in a controlling evaluation condition, compared with adolescents in informational evaluation condition, and field‐independent adolescents showed more fluency and originality than field‐dependent adolescents. Together, this research provides a better understanding of the effects of expected evaluation and cognitive style on adolescents' creative performance. Implications for further research are discussed.

The Relationships between Cognitive Styles and Creativity: The Role of Field Dependence-Independence on Visual Creative Production

“…This result was also confirmed by the ANOVA, showing that FIs provided significantly higher scores in originality and appropriateness than FDs, meaning that the faster participants were in identifying the simple shape embedded in the complex figure (field independence), the more creative (original and appropriate) were their inventions. Results confirmed H2 and align with previous studies on real-world creative production [ 29 , 39 ] as well as research on both divergent thinking [ 17 , 19 , 32 ] and convergent thinking [ 36 , 37 ]. Two main explanations can explain the better performance of FIs in the VCST than FDs.…”

“…Given the multifaceted nature of creativity, the impact of cognitive factors on creative accomplishment has been long discussed in the past [ 16 ]. Cognitive style, also known as thinking style, represents a pivotal factor unquestionably related to creativity [ 17 ]. The expression cognitive style refers to how people acquire, organize, and use information [ 18 ].…”

“…For instance, Li and colleagues [ 19 ] revealed that FIs outperformed FDs in scientific and social brainstorming tasks in terms of fluency and novelty, confirming previous research [ 32 , 35 ]. In addition, Lei and colleagues [ 17 ] found that field independence was related to fluency and originality but not to flexibility, whereas Niaz and colleagues [ 34 ] found no significant effect of FDI. Regarding CT, some authors stressed that FIs attained significantly higher scores than FDs in convergent measures [ 36 , 37 ], others found no significant effect of FDI [ 38 ].…”

Field Dependent–independent Cognitive Style and Creativity From the Process and Product-Oriented Approaches: A Systematic Review

“…All the eight articles selected for this systematic review hypothesized a relation between FDI and creativity, and they were published from 1967 to 2020. Of the eight articles, four employed a between study design (Lei et al, 2021;Li et al, 2020;Miller, 2007;Saracho, 1992), three a correlational study design (Baranovská et al, 2017;Fergusson, 1992Fergusson, , 1993Saurenman & Michael, 1980), and one used both between and correlational research designs (Noppe & Gallagher, 1977).…”

“…One study (Spotts & Mackler, 1967) indicated that the sample was composed of undergraduate students and one study (Noppe & Gallagher, 1977) of education majors. In addition, one study reported only the percentage of gender (Lei et al, 2021). Only one study involved children (Saracho, 1992), one pre-adolescent (Saurenman & Michael, 1980), two adolescents (Baranovská et al, 2017;Lei et al, 2021), three young adults (Miller, 2007;Noppe & Gallagher, 1977;Spotts & Mackler, 1967), whereas one study focused on both adolescents and young adults (Li et al, 2020).…”