The Effect Of Social Anxiety And Self-involvement On Social Creativity

Social creativity refers to the creativity that occurs in the social field.Specifically,it is the creativity that people show when they propose and solve social problems in social interactions and social activities.It plays a vital role in promoting the sustainable and healthy development of individuals and even the entire human society.Recalling previous studies,the impact of social anxiety on individual/group social creativity is not clear.The reason may be that some situational factors,such as the degree of individual/group self-involvement in problem solving,are ignored.In addition,the impact of group member diversity on group social creativity still needs to be explored.Therefore,this study used the real situation problem as the experimental task,and explored the effects of social anxiety and self-involvement on individual/group social creativity through two experiments.Experiment 1 explored the effects of social anxiety and self-involvement on individual social creativity.A mixed design of 2(social anxiety: high vs.low)× 2(self-involvement: high vs.low)was used.Social anxiety was between-group variable,self-involvement was within-group variable,and social creative performance(applicability,novelty)was the dependent variable.Social Interaction Anxiety Scale and Social Phobia Scale were used to screen the participants,and 80 participants completed two social creative tasks with different levels of self-involvement.The results showed that:(1)The main effect of social anxiety was significant,and the novelty score of individuals with low social anxiety was significantly higher than that of individuals with high social anxiety.(2)The main effect of self-involvement was significant.Individuals score higher on the novelty of opinions in low self-involvement problem situations,while score higher on the applicability of opinions in high self-involvement problem situations.(3)The interaction between social anxiety and self-involvement was significant.For individuals with low social anxiety,self-involvement conditions significantly affected their social creative performance,that is,novelty scores were higher under low self-involvement conditions,while for individuals with high social anxiety,self-involvement conditions have no significant effect on their social creative performance.Experiment 2 explored the effects of social anxiety group type and self-involvement on group social creativity.A mixed design of 3(social anxiety group type: high vs.low vs.mixed)× 2(self-involvement: high vs.low)was used.The type of social anxiety group was between-group variable,self-involvement was within-group variable,and the social creative performance of the group(applicability,novelty)was the dependent variable.The results showed that:(1)The main effect of social anxiety group type was significant.The novelty score of low social anxiety group was significantly higher than that of high social anxiety group.(2)The main effect of self-involvement was significant.The novelty score of group’s opinion output in low self-involvement problem situation was significantly higher than that in high self-involvement problem situation,while the applicability was the opposite.(3)The interaction between social anxiety group type and self-involvement was not significant.This study found that high levels of social anxiety and self-involvement hinder the social creative performance of individuals/groups,and there was a significant interaction between social anxiety and self-involvement on the novelty of individual social creative performance.Future research can expand the age range and occupation range of the subjects,and further subdivide the social problem situation to test the universality of the conclusions of this study.