Effects of Explicit Instruction to “Be Creative” Across Domains and Cultures

Abstract

To explore whether the facilitation effects of an explicit instruction to “be creative” vary across cultures and types of tasks, 248 U.S. and 278 Chinese college students were administered a battery of tests of verbal, artistic, and mathematical creativity. Half of the participants were tested under the standard condition, and the other half under the explicit instruction condition. Results showed that the facilitation effects of the explicit instruction varied by domains of the creativity tasks (greater for artistic and mathematical creativity than for verbal creativity), but not across cultural and ethnic groups. The explicit instruction had a small “detrimental” effect on the clarity and grammar of story writing, but not on any other aspects of the technical quality of creative products. Methodological and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.

When competency-based pay relates to creative performance: The moderating role of employee psychological need

“…Research in a new cultural setting can help to assess the generalizability of interactional and creativity theories developed in Western settings (Kim et al, 2009;Niu and Sternberg, 2002). In addition, many multinational companies such as those operating in the service sector are now relocating "knowledge-creating" jobs to East Asia (Chen et al, 2005;Farmer et al, 2003). Thus, another goal of the present study is the cross-validation of the linkage between CBP and employee creativity in an Asian setting.…”

Effects of hierarchical versus sequential structuring of teaching content on creativity in Chinese writing

“…Niu and Sternberg (2003) showed that the creativity of the Chinese students could be enhanced by providing them with explicit instructions to be creative, as it may break the conformity culture and encourage more self-expression. Chen et al (2005) similarly showed that explicit instruction was able to enhance verbal creativity among Chinese students. Zhang and Sternberg (2002) found that six teacher characteristics-gender, professional work experience outside school settings, degree of enjoyment in adopting new teaching materials, tendency of using group projects in assessing student achievement, perceived autonomy for determining teaching contents, and rating of student quality-were significantly correlated with teachers' creativity development.…”

Creativity in the training and practice of instructional designers: the Design/Creativity Loops model

“…Even the simple instruction to ''be creative'' may have a facilitative effect toward creative responses (Chen et al 2005).…”