Enhanced Motivation and Decision Making from Hybrid Creative Problem Solving

Abstract

Hybrid brainstorming is ecologically more valid than all-interactive or all-noninteractive brainstorming, yet understudied. Although ideational benefits of hybrid groups have been found, studies have rarely focused on its affective/motivational contributions or ability to select ideas. In a randomized experiment, noninteractive-then-interactive (hybrid) groups perceived (1) higher goal clarity, engagement, and task attractiveness, and (2) chose more quality ideas than all-noninteractive groups. Additionally, (3) given the instruction for both hybrid and all-noninteractive conditions to be critical in idea selection, participants individually selected ideas that were more useful, thus overall higher quality, than the nonselected.