Being a Misfit Doesn’t Bother Everybody

Most people assume that being a misfit makes people unhappy, if not miserable. The tales of The Ugly Duckling and Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer illustrate how deeply this belief is ingrained in our culture. In both tales, the main characters suffer because they are different from others, because they do not fit in.

Research in psychology and sociology supports the idea that people suffer psychologically when they do not fit in.  In a classic study from 1965, for example, the sociologist Morris Rosenberg found that Protestants and Catholics reported having lower self-esteem when they lived in a neighborhood in which most people were of the other religion and, thus, they didn’t “fit in.”  Likewise, in 2010, a team of cultural psychologists compared the self-esteem levels of extraverted people in two types of nations: highly extraverted countries in which inhabitants were generally quite extraverted and less extraverted countries in which inhabitants were generally less extraverted. In line with the researchers’ expectations, extraverted people reported lower self-esteem when they lived in countries in which most people were less extraverted.

Yet, does misery inevitably result from not fitting in, as people assume?  Our research team had reason to suspect that failing to fit in does not always make people unhappy. Our earlier research suggested that assertive, creative, and open people do not care all that much whether or not they fit in. So, such people may not suffer a great deal from being a misfit. Our earlier research also suggested that warmhearted, nice, and agreeable people have a particularly strong desire to fit in. As a result, those people may suffer particularly strongly when they think they don’t fit in.

Our most recent research, which examined a very large dataset that included more than 2.5 million people from 102 nations, compared two groups of people. The first group consisted of people with personality traits that should lower the negative effects of being a misfit, such as high levels of assertiveness, creativity, and openness, and low levels of warmth, niceness, and agreeableness. The second group contained people with personality traits that should amplify the negative effects of being a misfit: low levels of assertiveness, creativity, and openness, and high levels of warmth, niceness, and agreeableness. We expected that the first group would suffer less from not fitting in than the second group.

By and large, that’s what we found. Being a misfit was not associated with misery in the first group of people—those who were high in assertiveness, creativity, and openness and low in warmth, niceness, and agreeableness. However, people in the second group—those who were low in assertiveness, creativity, and openness and high in warmth, niceness, and agreeableness—were much more miserable when they didn’t fit in.

Importantly, we measured misfit in a variety of ways. For example, we measured religious misfit—being religious in non-religious nations or non-religious in religious nations. We also measured political misfit—being liberal in conservative U.S. states or conservative in liberal U.S. states. We also used different measures of misery, including low self-esteem and depression.

To the best of our knowledge, these results are the first to show that the negative effects of not fitting in are not equally strong for everybody and that some people may not suffer all that much when they don’t fit in. On the other hand, we also identified personality traits that lead misfits to be particularly unhappy. In particular, people who are low in assertiveness, creativity, and openness and high in warmth, niceness, and agreeableness seem to be most troubled when they don’t fit in.

The next time you see a nice but not very assertive person who doesn’t seem to fit into a particular group of people, it’s worth remembering that he or she is likely to feel particularly uncomfortable. To help this person feel better, you may want to talk to this person and look for things you have in common.


For Further Reading (openly available, by clicking on the link)

Gebauer, J. E., Eck, J., Entringer, T. M., Bleidorn, W., Rentfrow, P. J., Potter, J., & Gosling, S. D. (2020). The well-being benefits of person-culture match are contingent on basic personality traits. Psychological Science, 31, 1283-1293. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620951115

 

Jochen Gebauer is Heisenberg-Professor of Cross-Cultural Social and Personality Psychology at the University of Mannheim, Germany and Professor of Social and Personality Psychology at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Jennifer Eck is a postdoctoral researcher at the Heisenberg-Professorship of Cross-Cultural Social and Personality Psychology at the University of Mannheim, Germany.

Are Creative Teams More Effective When Their Members Vary in Agreeableness?

Agreeableness is one of the Big Five cardinal personality traits. People who are higher in agreeableness tend to be more collegial and concerned about maintaining positive relationships with others. In contrast, those lower in agreeableness tend to voice their disagreements with other people and are less concerned about maintaining positive relationships.

In the context of work teams, team members who are higher in agreeableness tend to prioritize relational harmony and avoid disagreements with other members.  The upside of this is that positive working relationships are maintained and member satisfaction is generally high. But the downside is that being highly agreeable may inculcate a climate in which group members are reluctant to share dissenting perspectives and opinions, which may hamper the generation of creative ideas.

On the other hand, team members who are lower in agreeableness are much less deferential and freely air their disagreements without constraint. Although this approach may provide the team with a much wider range of perspectives to work on, it risks breeding a climate of animosity and general negativity that can impact morale and people’s willingness to even work with one another.

In light of these double-edged effects, researchers have suggested that having a good mix of members across the agreeableness spectrum might address this trade-off and promote optimal functioning in creative teams. This suggestion assumes that people with different levels of agreeableness will complement each other and play to each other’s strengths. However, this idea has never been empirically tested.

Our study found that, contrary to popular belief, having a greater spread of members along the agreeableness spectrum was associated with decreases in both team creativity and team member satisfaction. This effect seemed to occur because having members of varying levels of agreeableness heightened both task and relationship conflict.  In other words, having a mix of agreeable and less agreeable members on the same team precipitated both task-oriented and interpersonal conflict, which harmed both the team’s creative performance and the working relationships among team members.

These findings suggest that, instead of playing to each other’s strengths, people with different levels of agreeableness levels may have played to each other’s weaknesses instead. But, why?

Studies on the social implications of agreeableness have found that agreeableness is easily perceived in other people. People are often very sensitive to how agreeable other people are, and seeing stark differences in agreeableness can engender feelings of being interpersonally incompatible. In addition, people who are higher versus lower in agreeableness differ in how they approach and resolve disagreements with other people.  Agreeable people prefer amicable negotiations, and disagreeable people prefer to dominate discussions.  In our study, such stark contrasts in how members interact and communicate may have led to interpersonal acrimony and hampered development of a shared understanding about how the team should work and function, leading to task conflict.

Our study also found evidence suggesting a vicious cycle between task and relationship conflict in teams that had a broad mix of both agreeable and disagreeable members. As other studies have shown, poor conflict management prevents team members from taking disagreements in stride.  Opposing views are perceived as interpersonal acrimony rather than constructive input, which further aggravates interpersonal discord and prevents team members from being receptive to one another’s input. All of this then potentially leads to even greater conflict.

Overall, our findings suggest that it may be best to compose creative teams of members who have similar levels of agreeableness. Our analyses suggest that even teams composed predominantly of lower agreeableness individuals may function more effectively than those with members of varying levels of agreeableness. Perhaps members who are all low in agreeableness may have been aware of their similarity in being less agreeable, thereby normalizing their less agreeable ways of managing divergent viewpoints and reducing the odds that dissenting opinions would be interpreted as interpersonal acrimony. When groups are composed of people of varying levels of agreeableness, members may not understand or accept each other’s ways of dealing with disagreement, which causes task conflict and relationship conflict to escalate.  

All-in-all, team managers might be better off focusing their efforts on managing the downsides associated with having members of generally high or generally low agreeableness rather than trying to create teams with a mix of agreeableness.  


For further reading

Lee, S. T. H., & Park, G. (2020). Does diversity in team members’ agreeableness benefit creative teams? Journal of Research in Personality, 85, 103932.
 

Dr. Sean T. H. Lee is a recent PhD in Psychology graduate from the Singapore Management University, School of Social Sciences. He studies creativity and innovation, as well as emotions, health, and well-being.

Dr. Park Guihyun is a senior lecturer at the Australian National University, College of Business and Economics, Research School of Management. She studies group processes and team dynamics.

Small Self, Big Heart

How can children become kinder and more generous versions of themselves? As the world is becoming increasingly individualistic, nurturing prosociality is one of the major challenges for parents and teachers around the world.

Our research shows that finding moments of awe can help children to feel more relaxed and able to set aside their own concerns to focus on the needs of others: Awe fosters children's kindness and generosity.

What is Awe and How Can it Make Children Kinder?

People experience awe when they encounter vast mysteries that are hard to grasp. The rainbow, waterfalls, fireworks, Van Gogh's Starry Night, Beethoven's symphonies, the harmony of planets' movement, and the mysteries of the life cycle are just a few examples that give people goosebumps and transfix them in front of sites greater and grander than the self. These awe-filled experiences soften the ego and make one feel small, making it possible to turn attention outwards and reach out to others. Past research shows that this humbling experience of "small self" makes adults more relaxed and willing to help others.

Although awe is a common experience in childhood, scientific research on children's reactions to awe was scarce. Our research filled this gap by studying reactions to awe-eliciting stimuli in children aged 8–13.

One of our main challenges was how to produce, and then measure, the experience of awe in children. We first constructed emojis that were easily understood by children and allowed us to measure experiences of awe and other emotions (anger, boredom, fear, joy, and sadness). We then asked 51 children to watch 15 different movie clips and asked them to rate each of these clips on the emotions they experienced using the emojis, after making sure the kids understood what we meant by awe. We selected a clip that the children rated highest on producing awe, another one that scored the highest on joy, and a third one that was rather neutral. Then we could compare these clips for their impact on children's behavior after seeing them.

We asked 159 children to watch one of the three clips online and then asked them to do two tasks that measured their willingness to help others at their own cost. The first task was to count items in a spreadsheet to help determine what had been donated to a university food drive for local refugees. The second task was to decide whether they wanted to donate a museum ticket that was offered to them as a reward for completing the study to a refugee family or to keep it to themselves. The results were clear: Children who watched the awe-inducing clip counted about 50% more items for the food drive and were at least twice as likely to donate their museum ticket to a refugee family than children who watched the joyful clip or the neutral clip.

Next, we went into a real-world setting, aiming to understand the physiological impact of awe on the body. The setting was the NEMO Science Museum in Amsterdam, as part of their Science Live Program, with 384 children who again watched one of three clips and completed two tasks measuring their helping behavior. We also measured children's physiological reactions using sensors attached to their bodies.

Although children who watched the awe clip did not count more items than children who watched the joyful or neutral clips, they showed greater helping behavior in the second task: They were more likely to donate a chocolate snack that was given to them as a reward for completing the study to a refugee children's organization. What is more, the children's physiological reactions differed: While watching the awe-inspiring clip they had more activation of the part of the nervous system known to make a person more relaxed and connected to others.

Are you a parent or teacher, and would you like to inspire kindness and generosity in your children or students? Encourage them to explore the wonders of the world—from rainbows to waterfalls, from paintings to symphonies, and from starry nights to sunrise.


For Further Reading  

Brummelman, E., & Sedikides, C. (2020). Raising children with high self-esteem (but not narcissism). Child Development Perspectives, 14, 83–89. doi:10.1111/cdep.12362

Keltner, D. (2023). Awe: The new science of everyday wonder and how it can transform your life. Penguin.

Stamkou, E., Brummelman, E., Dunham, R., Nikolic, M., & Keltner, D. (2023). Awe sparks prosociality in children. Psychological Science, 34 (4)https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976221150616  


Eftychia Stamkou is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Amsterdam. She studies how artworks influence our emotions, thoughts, and worldviews.

Eddie Brummelman is an Associate Professor at the Research Institute of Child Development and Education, University of Amsterdam. He studies the developing self.

Rohan Dunham is a PhD candidate in Social Psychology at the University of Amsterdam. He studies the social impact of art.

Milica Nikolic is an Assistant Professor at the Research Institute of Child Development and Education, University of Amsterdam. She studies how social emotions and social cognition influence the social lives of children.

10 Daily Habits to Improve Your Mood and Maximize Self-Care While Achieving Grad School Goals

Mental Health Awareness Month is an excellent time to evaluate whether you're making the most of daily self-care rituals. Whether you're a graduate student taking the summer off or just starting the Summer 2023 semester, balancing your health and well-being during the summer months may help you leap forward into a more productive fall term. Here are a few tips to boost your mindset and level up your self-care regime:

1. Keep a mood journal, gratitude journal, or a roses and thorns journal

Our current SPSP Student Committee Chair, Garam Lee, shared the "roses and thorns" icebreaker during one of our recent meetings, and you can even extend this concept into a daily "roses and thorns" journal exercise. I'd recommend combining the "three good things" daily practice into the "roses" section of the journal, as this may heighten your positive mood. There are countless benefits to keeping a gratitude journal and a mood journal as forms of autoethnography and writing therapy. Even having the journal open to your daily entries is a way to reinforce the behavior of using the tool, and it can also become a form of new self-expression and acceptance.  

2. Allow yourself "permission to feel"

I find the Character Lab's playbooks helpful as quick reminders for positively balancing many aspects of our unique personalities and lives. The emotional intelligence playbook was insightful as it integrated Dr. Marc Brackett's "Permission to Feel" concepts of knowing that emotions matter and understanding differences between the emotional scientist versus the emotional judge. For example, you can utilize the Mood Meter from "Permission to Feel" to help organize your emotions on a daily basis and see if you can identify any areas that might be out of balance. Brackett's "Permission to Feel" focuses on seven key areas for success as good sleep hygiene, healthy nutrition, mindfulness and breathing, exercise, building and keeping positive relationships, engaging in positive self-talk, involvement in meaningful activities such as hobbies, and implementing self-compassion and acceptance. 

The process involves continued reappraisal and visualization of this progress while continuing to problem-solve as needed. So, give yourself grace and feel through the emotions, as simply naming the emotions will help you tame them as well, according to Dan Siegel's theory. Shaun McNiff refers to the process of "spiritual composting" as an excellent way to process emotional discomfort, specifically through art or expressive writing, by connecting strongly to the emotions followed by a cathartic release after the experience. Even savoring bitter moments or emotions may help spiritually compost these and transform them into new positive pathways. 

3. Savor the small successes as dreams accomplished

As graduate students, we face a plethora of deadlines—from minor ones to major milestones—on the journey toward accomplishing our long-term goals. Create new ways to celebrate every small and large win along the way. For example, I typically make a daily entry in my gratitude journal of all the tasks accomplished, especially academic duties. Cherish these small wins each day and add them to your gratitude pile. Start building momentum toward the next set of milestones and dreams. 

4. Find your flow, increase creativity, and find inspiration

Carl Jung drew inspiration on the concept of flow by describing the iconic artist, Jackson Pollock's process, as painting in a trance unconsciously, through chaotic and powerful expressions of confused alchemy, resulting in artistic breakthroughs. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi explains further that conditions resulting in flow may happen spontaneously or by chance, perhaps due to potentially positive conditions, either environmentally or internally, and at times we must create our own pathways to achieve flow.  

As graduate students, we can utilize these tactics to improve our daily flow and design creative strategies to innovate in our research, writing, creative, or academic pursuits. I encourage you to find flow while doing an activity you enjoy doing or when engaging in your hobby of choice. 

5. Create a behavioral intervention to increase daily meditation time or reduce daily screen time

As a self-care resolution earlier this year, I created a quick behavioral intervention to help improve my daily work-life balance using iPhone alarm chimes. It helped improve my daily time management allowing me to refocus and increase daily meditation practice while balancing a sleep hygiene schedule. 

I recommend designing a daily intervention to help you transform any undesirable behavior you want to change into positive results. For example, as a sleep hygiene tool, you might set an alarm at a certain time every night that reminds you to put your screen devices away at least 1-2 hours before bedtime. Utilize this time for extended meditation, creative journaling, or bibliotherapy tactics. 

6. Increase mindfulness, meditation, and relaxation, through online tools or apps

One way to decompress after a stressful academic day that extends late into the evening is to use free UCLA meditations or other mental health apps to wind down and improve your nightly sleep hygiene. I've combined a group of free online worksheets that help with daily stressors to improve your work-life balance and well-being. These tools are also helpful to overcome negative automatic thoughts, identify emotions, and keep you on track toward your goals. These downloads are available here via the Open Science Framework.

It is also important to find time for meditation, internal mindfulness, and deep relaxation. Here's a list of some popular tools to help you start and maintain your daily practice:  

7. Expand your malleable or growth mindset

At times when things may not go your way as a graduate student, having a growth mindset with malleable qualities will allow you to excel in your change-ability factor and pivoting skills. If you find yourself stuck, quickly examine if your thoughts are based on fixed versus malleable intelligence. When experiencing failure, it might be easy to sit in the fixed mindset.

Transform your thinking to embrace new strategies after difficulty and become a defensive player against self-defeating ideologies. This effort is to transform fixed thinking into malleable and growth mindset tactics to overcome any difficulties or hurdles along the way.  

8. Spend time in nature, take daily walks, or try gardening activities connecting you with the earth

Several years ago, I found the meditative practice of forest bathing or shinrin yoku and it transformed my morning rituals. Meta-analysis conducted suggests that allowing the sensory experience of the forest atmosphere and microclimates may reduce blood pressure and might significantly influence cortisol stress levels.

Take time for daily walks and appreciate the nature around you as a grounding self-care regimen. Some studies have also suggested that connecting with 30 minutes of indoor or outdoor gardening activities influenced a positive mood, so find time to create a container garden for herbs or an outdoor raised bed with seedlings as another form of self-care to boost your mood. 

9. Use the expressive arts in your daily habits to improve well-being

In Csikszentmihalyi's Creativity, creativity is linked to positive mental activity requiring interaction between the individual and their environment, even expanding on certain personality types as personally creative that experience the world around them with fresh eyes and new perspectives. At times, our emotions take over all of our senses and it might be difficult to express them in words.

Tools such as the Scribble Technique that assist by connecting both hemispheres of the brain while processing difficult emotions. Listening to music and combining this with other self-care rituals will also help boost mood. Utilize movement or dance or spend an hour painting to reduce cortisol levels through visceral sensory experiences. 

10. Practice increasing daily eudaimonia

As researchers-in-training, we understand that scientific progress takes a great deal of time, patience, and effort. In this same vein, increasing your daily eudaimonia level takes a significant amount of effort, intrinsic motivation, and desire to achieve. At times, it may be easier to sink into life's daily stressors. Alternatively, transform these impulses into positive motivators that help you leap into what I like to call happy change. 

For many grad students, our furry companions bring us tremendous amounts of daily joy and well-being. This is another way that aims to reduce daily cortisol levels. 

Send us a photo of your fur baby pets by completing the form below, and we'll post them in a future newsletter!

Share Your Furry Friend Photo Here

Be well, stay grateful, and be inspired to improve your self-care strategies.


References

Brackett, M., & Elbertson, N. (2019). Emotional Intelligence. Character Lab Playbooks. https://doi.org/10.53776/playbooks-emotional-intelligence 

Brackett, M. (2021). Mood Meter | Permission to Feel. MarcBrackett.com. Retrieved May 16, 2023, from https://www.marcbrackett.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Mood-Meter-Permission-To-Feel-2.pdf 

Boyd, D. (2019, June 13). Mental Health Apps. The American Institute of Stress. https://www.stress.org/mental-health-apps

Caplan, E. (2021, December 7). 10 Mental Health Apps to Use in 2022. Healthline. https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/mental-health-apps
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2013). Creativity: The Psychology of Discovery and Invention. Harper Perennial.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2009). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harper Collins.

Hill, D., & Sorensen, D. (2021). ACT Daily Journal ACT Daily Action Plan. New Harbinger Publications.

Ideno, Y., Hayashi, K., Abe, Y., Ueda, K., Iso, H., Noda, M., Lee, J. P., & Suzuki, S. (2017). Blood pressure-lowering effect of Shinrin-yoku (Forest bathing): a systematic review and meta-analysis. BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 17(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12906-017-1912-z

Jung, C. (1968). Man and His Symbols. Dell Publishing, Random House.

McNamee, C. M. (2004). Using Both Sides of the Brain: Experiences that Integrate Art and Talk Therapy Through Scribble Drawings. Art Therapy, 21(3), 136–142. https://doi.org/10.1080/07421656.2004.10129495

McNiff, S. (2004). Art Heals: How Creativity Cures the Soul. Shambhala Publications.

Peterson, C. (2006). A Primer in Positive Psychology. Oxford University Press.

PositivePsychology.com. (2022, December 16). PositivePsychology.com - Helping You Help Others. https://positivepsychology.com/ 

Therapy worksheets, tools, and handouts | Therapist Aid. (n.d.). Therapist Aid. https://therapistaid.com/

The Best Mental Health Apps of 2022. (2022, April 6). Verywell Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/best-mental-health-apps-4692902

UCLA Free Guided Meditations. (2023). UCLA Health. https://www.uclahealth.org/programs/marc/free-guided-meditations/guided-meditations 

Useful Wellness and Mental Health Apps. (2021, October 19). UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. https://psych.ucsf.edu/copingresources/apps

Van Den Berg AE, Custers MHG. Gardening Promotes Neuroendocrine and Affective Restoration from Stress. Journal of Health Psychology. 2011;16(1):3-11. doi:10.1177/1359105310365577

 

Hansika Kapoor

Dr. Hansika Kapoor is Research Author at the Department of Psychology, Monk Prayogshala, Mumbai. She holds a PhD from IIT, Bombay and is the recipient of the Fulbright-Nehru Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship (2019-2020), and is an Affiliate at the University of Connecticut. Dr. Kapoor has been cited as a subject matter expert in numerous features on social and cognitive psychology in the Indian context. Hansika has also been featured in the book 31 Fantastic Adventures in Science: Women Scientists in India; she tweets @hansika_kapoor. To know more, please visit: www.hansikakapoor.in


What led you to choose a career in personality and social psychology?

In 2011, when I started subscribing to new journal issue alerts, I noticed that there were very few (if any) articles by authors based in India. Whenever I came across an "Indian-sounding name," I looked up the researcher and they were nearly always affiliated with a University in the West. I chose this career so that psychology researchers based in India after me could recognize an Indian name, who's based in India and does research with Indian participants!


Briefly summarize your current research, and any future research interests you plan to pursue.

Currently, my research is in two primary domains: dark creativity (aka how people get good ideas to do bad things) and misinformation in India. With respect to the first, I have a few ongoing studies intersecting with moral considerations of such dark creative behaviors, as well as a few theoretical book chapters on affect, deception, and dark innovation. With respect to misinformation, I'm working (with my past colleague Arathy Puthillam) on understanding how political ideology in India influences when and how misinformation spreads.


Why did you join SPSP?

Honestly, I joined SPSP only in 2020 because the convention was online for the first time due to COVID-19 restrictions! I value being a part of the psychological science community and everything that societies like SPSP do to ensure adequate representation from the world over. However, COVID-19 gave researchers (like me) working in low-resource environments a great opportunity to gain visibility at a huge convention like SPSP. Ever since, I've received an SPSP Small Research Grant as well as an International Bridge-Building Award that has helped build capacity for doing psychological science research in India!


What is your most memorable SPSP Annual Convention experience?

In 2021, I had about three "double days" where I stayed up till around 4 A.M. to attend live sessions in my time zone (IST). I suppose that was memorable for sleep-deprived reasons, haha. 


Do you have any advice for individuals who wish to pursue a career in personality and social psychology?

One, always pay attention to the context where you and your research are situated! It is incredibly important to be aware of this so that you can generalize (or specify that you cannot generalize) results. Two, practice good data hygiene and update yourself with the latest advances in the open science movement.


What’s the best advice you have ever received?

From my postgraduate mentor: "Never do anything full-time—you'll get bored too quickly!" I've taken this advice very seriously and have been able to dabble around with teaching, academic research, applied research, academia-industry partnerships, clinical work as a psychologist, proofreading and typesetting work, and multiple consultancy engagements. You never know where the next idea might come from!


What career path would you have chosen if you had decided to not pursue psychology? 

I used to sketch and draw cartoons when I was younger—so maybe an animator? I'd have also loved to become an art historian or a librarian.


Outside of psychology, how do you spend your free time?

I play Pokemon GO! It's a great way to stay active and explore new places. I also enjoy cross-stitching or baking whenever I have some time; although, lately free time has been hard to come by on account of my 6-month-old son!

 

As an Act of Self-disclosure, Workplace Creativity Can Be Risky Business

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — It’s increasingly common for managers to direct employees to “be creative” during office brainstorming sessions. But should employees acquiesce to that managerial edict? According to a new paper from a U. of I. expert in work behaviors and organizations, being creative in the workplace is potentially precarious because creativity itself is deeply personal, which can make the creative act feel self-disclosing.

Research from Jack Goncalo, a professor of business administration at the Gies College of Business, investigates the psychological and interpersonal consequences of creativity, showing that when prompted to be creative, people share ideas that reflect their unique point of view and personal preferences – which can be risky business in the office.

“One of the things organizations often tell their employees is be creative, but that’s not a benign instruction,” Goncalo said. “When you’re being creative, you’re sharing something about yourself and allowing others to make judgments about you. I think people – both managers and employees – should be mindful of the risks involved. There ought to be some caution flags raised around the idea that employees can be freely creative, unless you go through a lot of hoops to make sure there aren’t consequences.”

Whether it’s formulating the latest scientific breakthrough, developing new technology or creating a collaborative work of art, creativity not only entails conjuring novel ideas but also mustering the courage to openly express those ideas to colleagues, and thereby expose them to criticism.

“When people are being creative, they’re not just solving problems. They’re actually revealing something deeply personal,” Goncalo said. “The ideas that we share when we’re brainstorming and generating ideas – they’re not just abstract, cold solutions to a problem. They’re derived from our own unique idiosyncratic perspective. You’re reaching down into yourself to share something that reflects your point of view, and that makes sharing those ideas risky, personal and consequential.”

Over the course of five experiments, Goncalo and co-author Joshua H. Katz, a graduate student at Illinois, sought to test the hypothesis that generating creative ideas would prompt the perception of self-disclosure.

When subjects were told to be creative, they inevitably “thought about their own preferences, their own likes and dislikes, and less about what other people thought,” Goncalo said.

“That reveals why creativity is risky, and it reveals something about the process that people go through, and we measure this in the paper,” he said. “We had experiments where we instructed people to generate creative ideas for potato chip flavors and candle scents, and you can’t help but read their ideas and feel like you know the person afterward.”

Most of the research on creativity is on its antecedents and how to generate more of it. But this paper shows that there are consequences to being creative, Goncalo said.

“When you say you don’t like my idea, you’re actually rejecting someone’s perspective or point of view, which is dangerously close to rejecting that person – which is risky, to say the least, when you’re in a workplace,” he said.

Another finding of the research is that being creative together is a way of getting to know someone else.

“When I hear your creative ideas, I get the sense that I can predict something about your personality,” Goncalo said.

One of the respondents for the creative candle scent experiment came up with some fairly unique ideas – “Zombie Outbreak,” “Spoiled Milk in a Hot Car” and a euphemism for canine flatulence.

“Based on those ideas, you may feel like you know this person, but you also might not necessarily like them,” he said. “When people are being creative, they are sharing the kind of information that may rub people the wrong way.”

Being creative also is something that can help people bond or know each other better, Goncalo said.

“The most positive spin on this is that when people are creative together, a byproduct is that they get to know each other a little better,” he said. “Then again, you might not like what you hear. That’s where the risk comes from, but you can certainly match people on their mutual preferences, which could easily lead to bonding.”

The research not only has implications for creative types and marketing managers, but also for any group setting where out-of-the-box thinking and brainstorming is demanded.

“This speaks to making people feel anonymous when they’re brainstorming,” Goncalo said. “It’s the same reason that people share more when they know that their response will be anonymous, because there’s less risk. So one way to be more creative is by lowering the risk, but also realizing that it’s an opportunity to get to know each other better. It could certainly be an icebreaker.”

The paper will be published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.


Shared with permission from University of Illinois News Center's Phil Ciciora. Read the original post here.

Editor’s note: To contact Jack Goncalo, email [email protected].

Goncalo, J. A., & Katz, J. H. (2019). Your Soul Spills Out: The Creative Act Feels Self-Disclosing. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167219873480
 

 

 

Why Confronting Paradoxes Can Give You a Creative Boost

In either the social or corporate world, we often face contradictory expectations. Your friend expects you to maintain regular contact, but to give them personal space. Your boss expects you to follow rules, but to remain flexible and adaptive. You compete to outperform your coworkers, but collaborate with them in a team to deliver high quality work. Researchers call these simultaneously present, contradictory yet interrelated demands paradoxes. These seemingly conflicting demands and practices could be confusing and challenging. But although paradoxes can be coupled with conflict and tension, there is a bright side to confronting paradoxes: they can engender creativity. 

Harnessing paradoxes to boost creativity

To thrive in complex and conflicting environments, creativity – the generation of both novel and useful ideas – is key. Research suggests that creative advantages are more likely to come about if people adopt paradoxical frames, which are mental templates that encourage them to recognize and embrace contradictions (see Luscher & Lewis, 2008; Miron-Spektor et al., 2011).

Paradoxical frames facilitate “both/and” thinking. When people entertain “both/and” solutions that embrace multiple elements simultaneously, they might experience higher conflict. (This is opposed to “either/or” solutions that consider one element and ignore another.) However, this experience of conflict can destabilize established conceptions and give rise to out-of-the-box thinking.

The handheld digital pet “Tamagotshi” that hit the market in the late 90s is a great example of paradoxical creativity. The notion of a “virtual pet” radically defies people’s expectations that keeping a pet is a hassle and an electronic device is lifeless. Tamagotshi integrated these contradictory elements. Such “both/and” thinking is in contrast with “either/or” thinking that simplifies or polarizes opposing elements. If people approach paradoxes in terms of “either/or” strategies, they are likely to overlook complex inter-relationships between opposing concepts and do worse in creative integration.

For whom do paradoxes benefit creativity? Endorsement of the “middle ground”

Prior research found a paradox–creativity link in Western samples. But would this happen among East Asians?

We were curious about this question because members of Western and East Asian cultures differ systematically in the way they interpret paradoxes. Western approaches tend to emphasize differentiation and synergy of contradictory elements to allow full existence of both elements simultaneously. In contrast, East Asian dialectical approaches tend to emphasize middle-ground solutions that acknowledge each of the contradictory elements in moderate degrees. Tolerance for paradoxes is also present in the Confucian philosophy of the “Doctrine of the Mean” (Zhongyong), which values harmonizing conflicts, avoiding extremes, and compromising instead of directly confronting conflicts. Going back to the Tamagotschi example, taking a “middle ground” approach would have likely resulted in less creative ideas; for example, products such as a dog-shaped robot or a movable dog toy for kids, which hold onto the defining features of an animal and an electronic device.

In our first study, Taiwanese students read about two elements in product design – creativity and efficiency – framed as paradoxical (e.g., “This product is both unique and efficiently built”) or not (e.g. “This project is unique and creative”). Next, participants were asked to generate creative chocolate designs. Unlike prior findings observed in the West, activating paradoxical frames did not help the Taiwanese students become more creative.

Then, we examined whether endorsement of the “middle ground” approach explained these results. We primed paradoxical frames by having participants recall paradoxical statements (e.g., “It is paradoxical that standing is more tiring than walking”). We found that the conflict induced by paradoxical frames only boosted creativity among the Taiwanese students who did not endorse the “middle ground” approach as much. Another study compared Singaporeans (East Asians) who typically endorse the middle ground approach more and Israelis (Westerners) who typically endorse the middle ground approach less. Results revealed that creative advantages of conflict emerged mainly for the Israelis, but not their Singaporean counterparts. Another study showed that endorsing the middle ground approach less causes people to feel more conflicted in the face of contradictory positions and in turn to reap more creative benefits. 

Why do paradoxes benefit creativity? The role of integrative complex thinking

But why do people who endorse the middle ground approach less harness more creative benefits of paradoxical frames?  We thought that endorsing the middle ground approach less prepares people to identify distinctions between contradictory perspectives and to forge conceptual integration between these perspectives, a process we call integrative complex thinking.

To test whether integrative complex thinking explains the benefits of paradoxes, we asked some participants to engage high integrative complex thinking during a negotiation task by prompting them to process thoroughly the opposing interests of the buyer and the seller by taking both of their perspectives. Other participants engaged low integrative complex thinking by considering the interests of only the buyer or the seller.  We found that creative deal-making was more likely to occur among the low endorsers of middle ground after they engaged high integrative complex thinking. High endorsers of middle ground, however, could not benefit from integrative complex thinking and were less adept at closing a deal with creative win-win solutions.

This research showcases that individual and cultural differences exist in how paradoxes are interpreted and managed. For those who don’t endorse the middle ground approach, paradoxes fuel creative insights by encouraging people to fully and simultaneously embrace contradictory demands. The creative benefits of paradox lie in the thorough differentiation and synthesis of contradictory demands through integrative complex thinking.


Dr. Angela Leung is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Singapore Management University.

Carsten K.W. De Dreu

Carsten studies the neurobiological and psychological mechanisms underlying cooperation and conflict, group decision-making, and creativity and innovation. He has published over 200 articles in disciplinary journals such as J Personality and Social Psychology and J Applied Psychology, and in interdisciplinary journals such as Science and Proceedings National Academy of Sciences. He was president of EASP (2008-2011), and is fellow of SPSP, APS, and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences. He is a recipient of the Kurt Lewin Medal (EASP, 2014), the William Owen Scholarly Achievement Award (SIOP, 2014), and the Hendrik Muller Award (Roy Neth Acad Sciences, 2015).

Employer: Leiden University (Psychology), and University of Amsterdam (Economics)
Job Title: Professor
Highest Degree: PhD
Institution Providing Degree: University of Groningen, the Netherlands
Member of SPSP Since: Late 1990's

Visit Carsten's Social Psychology Network and University Leiden pages.


Why did you join SPSP?

Especially early in my career SPSP provided to a great platform for learning and international exchange.

 

What led you to choose a career in personality and social psychology?

I have been fascinated by the ways groups influence individuals well before I discovered this was at the core of social psychology. When I did find out soon after I started my undergraduate studies in psychology, there was no turning back

 

Briefly summarize your current research, and any future research interests you plan to pursue. 

In my recent research I use game-theoretic principles and experimental “games” to study human decision making as it affects their own outcomes, and those of others. The paradigm provides for a conceptually tight framework with strong interdisciplinary outreach, and enables us to incorporate neuroscience techniques such as hormonal challenge, fMRI, and brain stimulation. I am very excited about developments at the cross-road of social psychology, neurobiology, and behavioral economics and hope to benefit from, and add to these developments with regard to two key interests—cooperation and conflict, and creativity and innovation.

 

What is your most memorable SPSP Annual Convention experience?

Between 2008 and 2010 I was president of the European Association for Social Psychology, and worked with Rich Petty (representing SPSP) and Linda Skitka (representing SESP) to start a new journal – Social Psychological and Personality Science. The journal has been a hit from its very start and is thriving. This makes me happy of course. But most memorable are the meetings we had at SPSP to build the journal; it was always pleasant and collaborative, and very exciting to work on this project and to be able to contribute to our respective societies and the field of social and personality psychology.

 

How has being a member of SPSP helped to advance your career?

It has helped me advance my science, and enabled me to create and establish a professional network. Although I cannot “prove” it advanced my career, indirectly it must have.

 

Do you have any advice for individuals who wish to pursue a career in personality and social psychology?

Be open-minded, curious and thorough. And be productive.

 

Outside of psychology, how do you spend your free time?

I love to be outdoors. And I like to read reviews and books from other sciences, biology and history in particular.