A Study Of Effects Of Polyculturalism On Creativity

Innovation is the primary driving force for social development,and individual creativity is the key to innovation.Creativity is influenced by the interaction of individual characteristics and the external environment.In the context of globalization,people's perception of foreign groups will not only affect their intergroup attitudes,but also their cognitive abilities.The latter focuses on the relationship between culture and creativity.Individuals can gain new ideas and expand their knowledge base through foreign cultures.At the same time,when integrating incompatible cultures,individuals can increase the flexibility and complexity of cognition,thereby enhancing creativity.Therefore,it is of great significance to study the influence of culture on individual creativity in the context of multi-ethnic society.Foreign culture can enhance individual creativity,and the individual's perception of the relationship between cultures may also affect their cognition.Polyculturalism is a new cultural ideology of cultural psychology following colorblindness and multiculturalism,which emphasizes the connection,interaction,and dynamic construction of culture.The current research on polyculturalism mainly focuses on intergroup relations,which found that the endorsement of polyculturalism can bring positive intergroup attitudes,and at the same time this positive attitude can leap from cultural groups to general social groups.This leap reflects that polyculturalism may contain a general way of thinking,and this general way of thinking may also continue to affect individual cognition.Polyculturalism and convergent thinking have something in common: both need to look for relationships in different things.Polyculturalism can promote individual cultural intelligence,and cultural intelligence itself can predict creativity.Individuals with the endorsement of polyculturalism are more tolerant and open to foreign cultures,more accustomed to cultural changes,and more likely to across cultural boundaries.Therefore,it may be easier to break the category thinking and form a flexible cognition;meanwhile,polyculturalism is a high-level construal,which will trigger the general and abstract representation of things.Both cognitive flexibility and abstraction contribute to the creation of creativity.Therefore,this article predicts that polyculturalism can promote creativity.In addition,based on the true cultural relationship in history or reality may be positive or negative,so the individual experience of different cultural connections may be different,which may affect the relationship between polyculturalism and creativity.This study will further explore the relationship between polyculturalism and creativity by exploring the effects of different kinds of polyculturalism on creativity.Study 1 used questionnaire to explore the impact of polyculturalism on creative aptitude,taking multi-ethnic college students as participant.A total of 670 valid questionnaires were collected,and it was found that polyculturalism is significantly related to creativity.Polyculturalism can positively predict the creative aptitude.The stronger polyculturalism held by an individual,the higher the creative aptitude.Study 1 preliminary confirmed the connection of polyculturalism and creativity.In study 2 the relationship of polyculturalism and creativity was explored by manipulating individuals cultural ideology in the laboratory with AUT,which is the classic divergent thinking test.It was found that,compared with multiculturalism and the control group,polyculturalism can significantly promote individual's flexibility,fluency and originality.It is proved that in contrast to the static cultural view,the cultural view that emphasizes cultural connections and dynamic construction can promote individual creativity;Study 3 explored the impact of polyculturalism on creativity by activating different kinds of polyculturalism with a task of RAT,a classic convergent thinking test.It was found that the promotion effect of polyculturalism on convergent thinking was conditional.Specifically,the promotion of polyculturalism to convergent thinking only appeared in the low-difficult RAT tasks,neither in the high-difficult RAT tasks.In addition,in the low difficulty RAT task,the promotion effect of positive polyculturalism is significantly higher than that of negative polyculturalism.The results show that polyculturalism with flexible cognition can improve the ability of divergent thinking that depends on the flexible path,but the promotion effect of the convergent thinking that mainly depends on the persistent path only appeared in low-difficult tasks.In addition,only cultural ideology which understood and practiced by people can have an impact on individual creativity.This study used questionnaires and experimental research methods to examine the effects of polyculturalism on different types of creative thinking in multi-ethnic groups and got the following conclusions:(1)Polyculturalism can significantly predict individual's creative aptitude.(2)Polyculturalism has different effects on different types of creative thinking.Polyculturalism promotes creativity mainly in divergent thinking,and the promotion of convergence thinking is conditional.Only a positive view of polyculturalism can play a role in promoting low-level convergent thinking,and a negative view of polyculturalism has no effect on convergent thinking.(3)Different kinds of polyculturalism will play different roles on the individual's cognition and behavior.Compared with the negative view of polyculturalism,the positive view has a stronger promotion effect on creativity.