Creativity as an antidote to research becoming too predictable.

In this commentary, Sonne-Hansen and colleagues argue that research leaders and organizations should encourage more "theory-guessing" by budding young scientists, rather than incentivizing safe mainstream research.

A recipe for success? Sustaining creativity among first-time creative producers.

Sustaining creativity is difficult. We identify the conditions that determine repeat production of novelty among first-time producers, and the psychological mechanism transmitting their effects. Our theoretical model highlights that the novelty of a first production can lower the probability of creating a second production, particularly when the first production is bestowed with an award or recognition. This effect occurs primarily because individuals who win an award for a prior novel production experience a greater threat to their creative identity when anticipating having to produce follow-up novel work. We test our theoretical model in three studies: an archival study of first-time cookbook authors in the United Kingdom and two experiments. Our results provide some support for our theoretical model-award-winning producers of novel cookbooks (or ideas for them) are less likely to follow-up their initial production with a second one, largely because of the potential erosion to a person's creative identity that doing so may cause. Our findings highlight the intricacies of sustaining creativity over time and offer insights into why some producers abandon their creative efforts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The curvilinear relation between experienced creative time pressure and creativity: moderating effects of openness to experience and support for creativity.

This study examined the possibility of a curvilinear relation between the creative time pressure employees experience at work and their creativity. The authors also examined whether this curvilinear relation was moderated by employees' scores on the openness to experience personality dimension and by the support for creativity employees received from supervisors and coworkers. Data were obtained from 170 employees and 10 supervisors of a manufacturing organization. Results showed an inverted U-shaped creative time pressure-creativity relation for employees who scored high on openness to experience while simultaneously receiving support for creativity. The authors discussed the implications of these results for future research and practice.

Organizational error management culture and its impact on performance: a two-study replication.

The authors argue that a high-organizational error management culture, conceptualized to include norms and common practices in organizations (e.g., communicating about errors, detecting, analyzing, and correcting errors quickly), is pivotal to the reduction of negative and the promotion of positive error consequences. Organizational error management culture was positively related to firm performance across 2 studies conducted in 2 different European countries. On the basis of quantitative and qualitative cross-sectional data from 65 Dutch organizations, Study 1 revealed that organizational error management culture was significantly correlated with both organizational goal achievement and an objective indicator of economic performance. This finding was confirmed in Study 2, using change-of-profitability data from 47 German organizations. The results suggest that organizations may want to introduce organizational error management as a way to boost firm performance.

Protecting the turf: The effect of territorial marking on others' creativity.

Territorial marking allows people to communicate that a territory has been claimed. Across 2 studies, we examine the impact of territorial marking of one's ideas on others' invited creativity when asked to provide feedback. Integrating research on territoriality and self-construal, we examine the effect of control-oriented marking on invited creativity (Study 1), and the extent to which an independent versus interdependent self-construal moderates this effect (Study 2). Results of Study 1 demonstrate that the use of control-oriented marking to communicate a territorial claim over one's ideas inhibits invited creativity, and this effect is mediated by intrinsic motivation. Also consistent with our hypotheses, the results of Study 2 show that self-construal moderates the effect of control-oriented marking on others' intrinsic motivation and creativity. Marking diminishes invited creativity among people with an independent self-construal but serves to enhance the creativity of those with an interdependent self-construal. Consistent with Study 1, intrinsic motivation mediates this moderated effect. Our results highlight the important but heretofore understudied role of territoriality in affecting others' creativity as well as the role of independent versus interdependent self-construal in shaping this effect.

A wandering mind does not stray far from home: the value of metacognition in distant search.

When faced with a problem, how do individuals search for potential solutions? In this article, we explore the cognitive processes that lead to local search (i.e., identifying options closest to existing solutions) and distant search (i.e., identifying options of a qualitatively different nature than existing solutions). We suggest that mind wandering is likely to lead to local search because it operates by spreading activation from initial ideas to closely associated ideas. This reduces the likelihood of accessing a qualitatively different solution. However, instead of getting lost in thought, individuals can also step back and monitor their thoughts from a detached perspective. Such mindful metacognition, we suggest, is likely to lead to distant search because it redistributes activation away from initial ideas to other, less strongly associated, ideas. This hypothesis was confirmed across two studies. Thus, getting lost in thoughts is helpful when one is on the right track and needs only a local search whereas stepping back from thoughts is helpful when one needs distant search to produce a change in perspective.

Creative self-efficacy and individual creativity in team contexts: cross-level interactions with team informational resources.

We propose a cross-level perspective on the relation between creative self-efficacy and individual creativity in which team informational resources, comprising both shared "knowledge of who knows what" (KWKW) and functional background diversity, benefit the creativity of individuals more with higher creative self-efficacy. To test our hypotheses, we conducted a multi-level study with 176 employees working in 34 research and development teams of a multinational company in 4 countries. In support of our hypotheses, the link between creative self-efficacy and individual creativity was more positive with greater shared KWKW, and this interactive effect was pronounced for teams of high rather than low functional background diversity. We discuss implications for the study of creative self-efficacy in team contexts.

The strength-of-weak-ties perspective on creativity: a comprehensive examination and extension.

Disentangling the effects of weak ties on creativity, the present study separated, both theoretically and empirically, the effects of the size and strength of actors' idea networks and examined their joint impact while simultaneously considering the separate, moderating role of network diversity. I hypothesized that idea networks of optimal size and weak strength were more likely to boost creativity when they afforded actors access to a wide range of different social circles. In addition, I examined whether the joint effects of network size, strength, and diversity on creativity were further qualified by the openness to experience personality dimension. As expected, results indicated that actors were most creative when they maintained idea networks of optimal size, weak strength, and high diversity and when they scored high on the openness dimension. The implications of these results are discussed.