magazine issue 7 2007 / Issue 4

Do Multicultural Experiences Make People More Creative? If So, How?

• written by Chi-yue Chiu & Angela Ka-yee Leung

What is most intriguing about the creative effects of multicultural experiences is that it can be carried forwarded to a subsequent, unrelated task. This happens because the experience of combining non-overlapping concepts also fosters a habitual tendency to perform extensive memory for unconventional solutions when solving a problem. As a result, people become more fluent in generating creative ideas in a subsequent task unrelated to the conceptual combination task. In one experiment (Wan & Chiu, Experiment 1), some participants, randomly selected, solved a set of novel conceptual combination problems (e.g., What is a vehicle that is also a kind of fish?). The remaining participants solved a set of ordinary conceptual combination problems (e.g.,What is a plant that is also a kind of fuel?). Next, the participants took the Figural Tests of the Torrance Tests of Creativity Thinking (Torrance, 1974), a widely used standard test of creativity. As expected, participants who solved the novel conceptual combination problems first had better performance on the creativity test than did those who solved the ordinary conceptual combination problems first. In another experiment (Wan & Chiu, 2002, Experiment 2) using the same experimental design but a different dependent measure, the investigators obtained the same results. In this experiment, after solving the novel or ordinary conceptual combination problems, participants used LEGO blocks to build model(s) of any objects they liked. Again, the participants who solved the novel conceptual combination problems first built more creative LEGO models than did those who solved the ordinary conceptual combination problems first.

Exposure to multiple cultures has similar effects on creative performance as solving novel conceptual combination problems. In one experiment (Leung & Chiu, 2007a), the investigators had European American undergraduate students who had little knowledge of Chinese culture watch a slideshow and complete a creativity test. In one condition, the participants watched a slideshow of the arts, architecture, music, and life styles in Chinese culture (Chinese Culture Condition). In the second condition, the participants watched a slideshow of both American and Chinese cultures. In each slide, images of American cultures were presented side by side (Juxtaposition Condition). In the third condition, participants watched a slideshow that depicts American-Chinese fusion culture (e.g., Shanghai Tang fashion, Starbucks Coffee Mooncake, McDonald’s Riceburger) (Fusion Condition). In addition, there were two control conditions in the experiment. In the first control condition, the participants watched a slideshow of American culture (American Culture Control Condition). In the second control condition, the participants did not watch any slideshow (No Slideshow Control Condition). After watching the slideshow, the participants received a summary of the Cinderella Story and some demographic information about Turkey, and were asked to write a creative Cinderella Story for the children in Turkey. Notice that the measure of creativity in this study did not require knowledge of Chinese culture.

In this experiment, the participants who had watched a slideshow that presented American and Chinese cultures in juxtaposition or a slideshow that presented American-Chinese fusion culture wrote more creative Cinderella stories, compared to the participants in the two control conditions. Interestingly, the stories written by those who watched a slideshow of Chinese culture only were not more creative than those written by the control participants.

The creative benefits of multicultural exposure survived the test of time. Five to seven days later, the participants were contacted again to complete another measure of creativity. This time, they were asked to generate creative analogies of time. This measure also did not require knowledge of Chinese culture. Again, only the participants in the Juxtaposition and Fusion Conditions generated more creative analogies than did the control participants.