Taking Time to Incubate: The Moderating Role of ‘What You Do’ and ‘When You Do It’ on Creative Performance

Abstract

We explore how the choices available to individuals planning multi‐task work can facilitate the incubation of ideas and enhance creative performance. Using opportunistic assimilation theory, we hypothesize that two considerations can determine the effectiveness of incubation and creative performance. First, we argue that having the discretion to switch tasks when needed, as well as the timing of this discretionary switch between tasks (i.e., earlier versus later in the work process on the main task) is important. Second, the scope of the intervening task (i.e., in the same knowledge domain as the main task versus in a different domain) can lead to more effective incubation and creativity. Results of a laboratory study indicate that participants who made a discretionary switch to an intervening task later in their work process on the main task benefited significantly more in terms of creative performance than those who chose to switch earlier in their work process or chose not to switch tasks. Additionally, participants who worked on an in‐domain intervening task exhibited significantly higher creativity on the main task than those who worked on an out‐of‐domain intervening task. Furthermore, focus of attention on the main task partially mediated these results.

Charting the contributions of cognitive flexibility to creativity: Self-guided transitions as a process-based index of creativity-related adaptivity

“…For the AUT two-item task, both the shift count and dwell length SGT measures explained a significant proportion of variance in our composite measures of creative performance on three different (independently assessed) creativity tasks, including both Fluency3, and Originality3. Tentatively, the combined contribution of switch count and dwell length coheres with theoretical accounts that creative performance depends not only on flexibility or exploration, but also on persistence or exploitation, as well as the timing, duration, and contextual-appropriateness of each [1,41]. Cognitive science research has largely focused on the relative costs and benefits of switching between tasks.…”

“…Nonetheless, concurrent probes might help to adjudicate between different reasons that participants choose to switch from one item to another. For example, brief interludes away from a specific task may help an individual to "forget" fixation (move past a fixated idea), and/or offer the fortuitous opportunity for assimilation of new information that sparks fresh directions of thought, and/or allow time for "unconscious work" [24,41,45,46].…”

Conducting rigorous research on individual creativity

“…Shalley (1991) introduced a memo task that has the participants assume the role of a human resources (HR) manager who is tasked to deal with multiple management problems (Perry-Smith, 2014). Madjar et al (2019) asked participants to develop a creative solution for a newspaper that was faced with a number of strategic challenges. Goncalo et al (2015) used a task that asked subjects to generate ideas for a new business to fill a vacant space on campus.…”

“…Similarly, scholars have asked raters to assess ideas on up to four dimensions assessing both novelty and usefulness and averaging the scores (for example, novelty, originality, usefulness, and feasibility; Zhou et al, 2017). Other researchers, however, asked the raters to assess overall creativity (Madjar et al, 2019) or combined overall creativity, novelty, and usefulness into a composite measure (Koseoglu et al, 2017b). While some report that the definition of "novel and useful" was provided to the rater (Jung & Lee, 2015), others do not specify what, if any, direction was provided to the raters.…”

The incubation effect of creative thinking

“…经历 4 个时期： 准备期, 酝酿期, 明朗期和验证期 (Wallas, 1926) (Smith & Blankenship, 1991), 或称在酝 酿 后 被 试 对 问 题 有 了 崭 新 的 视 域 (Segal, 2004;Smith, 1995;Storm & Angello, 2010), 或称酝酿改 变了对问题的心理表征 (Brodt et al, 2018), 或称 在 酝 酿 期 发 生 了 有 利 于 问 题 解 决 的 激 活 扩 散 (Seifert et al, 1995;Yaniv & Meyer, 1987) (Smith & Blankenship, 1989)、注意撤回理论 (Segal, 2004)、间断性有意识工作理论 (Weisberg, 2006)、 疲劳恢复理论 (Smith & Dodds, 1999)、激活扩散理 论 (Yaniv & Meyer, 1987)、 线索同化理论 (Seifert et al, 1995)、无意识工作理论 (Ritter & Dijksterhuis, 2014) 等。绝大多数学者认可从无意识角度研究酝酿效应 的取向, 认为间断性有意识工作或从疲劳中恢复 并 非 酝 酿 效 应 之 来 源 (Gilhooly, 2016;Sio & Ormerod, 2009)。因此本文将评述本领域有代表性 (Segal, 2004) 酝酿期促进了对固着 的 遗 忘 (Smith et al, 1989) 酝酿效应来自外部线索提 示和内部激活扩散或问题 表 征 的 交 互 (Yaniv et al, 1987;Seifert et al, 1995) 在酝酿期存在无意识思维对问 题解决方案的持续联想性检索 酝酿期长度 酝酿效应来自错误假设 的突然消失, 因此酝酿 时间无影响 (Segal, 2004) 酝 酿 期 越 长 , 固 着 越 可 能 被 遗 忘 (Smith et al, 1989) 酝酿期长度需要适中, 其长度 和酝酿效应大小之间是倒 U 型 关系 (Yang et al, 2012) 准备期长度 对于视觉任务, 准备期 长则更能意识到形成新 的 问 题 表 征 的 必 要 性 (Sio et al, 2009) 在准备期达到僵局后开始 酝酿期 , 可以 最 大化线 索 提 示 的 作 用 (Moss et al, 2011;Madjar et al, 2019) Sio et al, 2009;Gilhooly et al, 2012;Strick et al, 2011) et al, 2015); Gilhooly et al, 2013;Al-Shorachi et al, 2015); 内插 任务需要有助于诱发远距离联 想 (Hao et al, 2014) 有益线索 酝酿期呈现答案相关线索 促进酝酿效应 (Yaniv et al, 1987;…”