The Impact of Culture on the Creative Potential of American, Russian, and Iranian College Students

Abstract

This study presents evidence for the impact of sociocultural environment on creative potential. The divergent thinking performance of American, Russian, and Iranian college students was compared on the Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults. The study revealed that, compared to the Iranians, Americans and Russians have superior abilities to consider a problem from different perspectives and to generate original solutions to a problem. The performance differences on the originality measure of the representatives of the Western and Eastern countries calls for the possible revisions of the traditional definition of creativity as a construct emphasizing originality in thinking. Although originality and innovation are inherent properties of creative behavior in the Western thought, it might have lesser value in the East.

Which Test of Divergent Thinking Is Best?

“…Khaleefa, Erdos, &Ashaia, 1996). This might also explain the findings of Kharkhurin and Motalleebi (2008). They studied creative potential in three different countries--the United…”

Assessing the Relationship Between Youth Sport Participation Settings and Creativity in Adulthood

“…In fact, the instrument has been shown to provide valid, reliable, and objective measures of verbal and figural creativity in adults that correlate with creative performance in the workplace (Althuizen, Wierenga, & Rossiter, 2010;Cramond, Matthews-Morgan, Bandalos, & Zuo, 2005). The instrument has also been employed in a number of different contexts involving adult college students (e.g., Kharkhurin & Samadpour Motalleebi, 2008) and has been shown to provide acceptable levels of reliability and validity with this population as well.…”

Aha! Voila! Eureka! Bilingualism and insightful problem solving

“…Research has also identified a role of multicultural experience in influencing creative cognition, both in terms of culture of origin influencing creative potential (e.g. Kaufman & Sternberg, 2006;Kharkhurin & Samadpour Motalleebi, 2008;Niu & Sternberg, 2001) and in cultural experience (Maddux & Galinsky, 2009) and cultural priming (Jia, Hirt, & Karpen, 2009) improving creative problem solving. As such, one might argue that the multilingual effects identified in this study may be in part due to differences in multicultural experience between the groups.…”