The Impact Of Cognitive Curiosity On Creativit

Curiosity is considered as a desire to acquire new knowledge or new sensory experience.It can be divided into epistemic curiosity,perceptual curiosity,diversified curiosity and specific curiosity(Berlyne,1960).Based on the cognitive level,this study examines the impact of epistemic curiosity on creativity.Epistemic curiosity urges people to look for missing information.In this process,individuals believe that obtaining missing information is a reward,that is,satisfying curiosity by obtaining missing information(Loewenstein,1994).It is found that curiosity can be used as a creative personality trait,and epistemic curiosity is the creative motivation to promote individuals to find and solve problems(Kashdan et al.,2004;Litman &Jimerson,2004).Creativity refers to the ability of individuals to create novel,unique and practical products or ideas(Sternberg & Lubart,1996).Among the factors affecting creativity,epistemic curiosity,which is mainly oriented to make up for the knowledge gap,plays an important role.Creative thinking is the core of creativity,including many forms,such as divergent thinking,insight problem solving,long-distance Association,etc.Does epistemic curiosity have the same influence on insight problem solving and divergent thinking? Idea linking is defined as a dynamic cognitive process that takes all aspects of early ideas as the input of subsequent ideas in a sequential way.Idea linking plays a bridge role and constructs the transformation process from epistemic curiosity to creativity(Hagtvedt et al.,2019).In order to explore the above problems,this research is based on the process model of creative idea generation and information gap theory,and investigates the influence and mechanism of epistemic curiosity on creativity.Two studies were designed by questionnaire and experiment to explore the impact of epistemic curiosity on creativity from the perspectives of trait and state.In Study 1,a questionnaire was used to investigate the impact of trait epistemic curiosity on creativity.Using the trait epistemic curiosity scale and creative behavior scale,the results show that at the trait level,college students’ trait epistemic curiosity was positively correlated with creativity,and high trait-epistemic curiosity could predict high creativity,Study 2 was divided into two experiments,exploring the casual effect of epistemic curiosity on creativity.Experiment 1 used the scientific invention of problem materials and the prototype elicitation experimental paradigm to investigate the impact of state epistemic curiosity on insight problem solving.The results of experiment 1 show that the screening effect of high and low curiosity materials is good.Compared with the low curiosity problem group,the subjects have better insight effect in the high curiosity problem group.Experiment 2 manipulates state epistemic curiosity with the help of magic video materials and magic originality task paradigm to investigate the impact of state epistemic curiosity on divergent thinking and its cognitive mechanism.The results of Experiment 2 show that state epistemic curiosity is effectively manipulated.Compared with the full group,the subjects who stimulate high state epistemic curiosity performed better in divergent thinking test.The research conclusions are as follows:(1)Trait epistemic curiosity has a significant positive correlation with creativity,and positively predicts creativity.(2)Individuals score higher on the questions that cause their high-state epistemic curiosity,and the insight effect is better.(3)Compared with satisfaction,individuals who stimulate high-state epistemic curiosity can put forward high-level creative ideas.(4)Idea linking plays a mediating role in state epistemic curiosity’s prediction of originality of divergent thinking.The study effectively manipulated the individual’s state epistemic curiosity,confirm the causal effect of cognitive curiosity promoting creativity,and reveal the mechanism of idea linking.It provides empirical basis for stimulating epistemic curiosity and improving creativity,and provides enlightenment for setting a reasonable "information gap",divergent students’ thinking and promoting creative problem-solving.