Qian Xuesen's question I: Collectivism's influence on serial order effect in divergent thinking

Abstract

Westerners are better at divergent thinking than Easterners, and previous studies have found this difference relates to collectivism-individualism, however, the underlying mechanism remains unclear. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between individualism-collectivism and divergent thinking from the perspective of semantic networks. A total of 158 participants were measured with the scale of collectivism-individualism tendencies and divergent thinking. Results showed that collectivism and individualism were not significantly associated with the performance of divergent thinking in figural task. And collectivism, rather than individualism, exhibited a negative correlation with originality but a positive correlation with appropriateness in verbal task. Furthermore, collectivism moderated the serial order of originality and appropriateness in verbal task. This study provides preliminary insights into the impact of culture on creativity from semantic network perspectives.