Promoting creativity in temporary problem-solving groups: The effects of positive mood and autonomy in problem definition on idea-generating performance.

The current study examined the effect of mood and autonomy in problem definition on the idea-generating performance of temporary workgroups. Groups (N=54) were randomly assigned to a mood (positive vs neutral) and autonomy (high vs low) condition and asked to brainstorm ways to improve university student life. It was found that positive mood increased the originality of ideas and that problems that provided low autonomy led to a greater number of ideas. Mood and autonomy interacted to affect group satisfaction. Furthermore, positive mood led to the identification of more important domains for improvement in the high-autonomy condition. Implications for future research using temporary problem-solving groups are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The influence of creative process engagement on employee creative performance and overall job performance: A curvilinear assessment.

Integrating theories addressing attention and activation with creativity literature, we found an inverted U-shaped relationship between creative process engagement and overall job performance among professionals in complex jobs in an information technology firm. Work experience moderated the curvilinear relationship, with low-experience employees generally exhibiting higher levels of overall job performance at low to moderate levels of creative process engagement and high-experience employees demonstrating higher overall performance at moderate to high levels of creative process engagement. Creative performance partially mediated the relationship between creative process engagement and job performance. These relationships were tested within a moderated mediation framework. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Differences and disagreement as factors in creative group problem solving.

"This experiment was designed to test the following hypothesis: conflict generated by increasing the resistance of subordinate members of a group to a solution offered by member in an authority position increases the frequency of high quality solutions. The supplementary hypothesis that mixed-sex composition in interaction with such conflict further enhances the production of high quality solutions was also tested… . The results support the major hypothesis." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of daily events on mood states in major depressive disorder.

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is characterized by high negative affect (NA) and low positive affect (PA), but little is known about emotional reactivity in daily life. The authors used experience sampling methodology to investigate changes in NA and PA following minor daily events in MDD compared with healthy participants. Contrary to expectation, MDD participants did not report more frequent negative events, although they did report fewer positive events. Multilevel regression showed that both NA and PA responses to negative events were blunted in the MDD group, whereas responses to positive events were enhanced. NA responses to negative events persisted longer in MDD participants. Depressed participants with a positive family history or longer current episodes showed relatively greater NA responses to negative events. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Evaluation of training in creative problem solving.

"The experiment was designed to evaluate the effects of a creative problem-solving course on creative abilities and selected personality variables." There were 3 matched groups of 54 Ss each. 1 group was enrolled in courses in creative problem solving; the other 2 were enrolled in other courses. 11 prepost test measures were used. "Results are interpreted to indicate that the creative problem-solving course produces a significant increment on certain ability measures associated with practical creativity and on the personality variable dominance." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conflict's consequences: Effects of social motives on postnegotiation creative and convergent group functioning and performance.

Two studies tested the effects of social motives during negotiation on postnegotiation group performance. In both experiments, a prosocial or a proself motivation was induced, and participants negotiated in 3-person groups about a joint market. In Experiment 1, groups subsequently performed an advertisement task. Consistent with the authors' predictions, results showed that proself groups performed worse on the convergent aspects of this task but better on the divergent aspects than prosocial groups. In Experiment 2, the authors manipulated social motive and negotiation (negotiation vs. no negotiation), and groups performed a creativity task (requiring divergent performance) or a planning task (requiring convergent performance). Proself groups showed greater dedication, functioned more effectively, and performed better than prosocial groups on the creativity task, whereas prosocial groups showed greater dedication, functioned more effectively, and performed better than proself groups on the planning task, and these effects only occurred when the task was preceded by group negotiation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mood and context-dependence: Positive mood increases and negative mood decreases the effects of context on perception.

Five studies show that mood affects context-dependence, such that negative mood promotes attention to a salient target, whereas positive mood enhances attention to both target and context. Judgments of temperature (Study 1), weight (Study 2), and size (Studies 3 and 4) were more strongly affected by the context in a positive than in a negative mood. Moreover, these effects extend to the social domain: When perceiving a target person's emotions, happy people were more influenced by the context than were sad people (Study 5). Thus, positive mood enhanced, and negative mood reduced, the magnitude of perceptual context effects. The results suggest that this pattern is not easily explained in terms of effort or depth of processing differences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Depression moderates smoking behavior in response to a sad mood induction.

Stress and anxiety have been shown to increase smoking motivation. There is limited experimental data on depressed or sad mood and smoking. This study investigated the effects of two induced moods on smoking behavior. Depression scores were examined as a potential moderator and mood changes were tested as a potential mediator. Smokers (N = 121) were randomly assigned to receive either a sad induction or a neutral induction via standardized film clips. Among participants with higher depression scores, smoking duration and the number of cigarette puffs were greater in response to the sad condition. There was also a marginal interactive effect on the change in expired air carbon monoxide among this subsample; however, no differences in smoking latency or craving were observed. Changes in positive mood partially mediated the effect of condition on smoking behavior among participants with high depression scores. There was no modifying effect of gender or mediating effect of negative mood changes. The results provide preliminary support that decreases in positive mood may have a greater influence on smoking behavior among depression-prone smokers than less psychiatrically vulnerable smokers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Influence of brainstorming instructions and problem sequence on a creative problem solving test.

"The experiment was designed to study the effects on creative problem solving of instructions to express solutions without evaluation (brainstorming) and instructions which required only solutions of good quality and which involved a penalty for solutions of bad quality (nonbrainstorming). Each S [32 college students] was given two problems which required creative ability, in two testing periods." One was with and one without brainstorming. "Significantly more good solutions were produced under brainstorming… . There was no significant difference in the nonbrainstorming performance in the two test periods." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Daily negative mood affects fasting glucose in Type 2 diabetes.

Objective: To examine the relationship between mood and blood glucose in a 21-day daily diary study. Design: During a home visit, information was gathered from 206 persons with Type 2 diabetes regarding demographics, disease characteristics and treatment, and depressive symptoms. They had blood drawn at a laboratory, yielding HbA1C. The participants were then telephoned each evening for 21 days and were asked about their positive and negative mood during the past 24 hours. They also tested their blood glucose upon rising in the morning. Main Outcome Measures: The main outcomes measures were positive and negative affect and fasting glucose. Results: Multilevel analyses revealed a relationship between negative affect on one day and morning glucose on the next day. There was no such relationship between positive affect and glucose, nor was there a comparable effect of glucose on one day and either positive or negative affect on the next day. Conclusion: The observed relationship between mood and blood glucose appears to be because of negative affect, not positive, with no evidence of a lagged effect of glucose on mood. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A survey of studies contrasting the quality of group performance and individual performance, 1920-1957.

Research contrasting the quality of group performance with individual performance in each of the following general topic areas has been examined in this paper: judgment, learning, social facilitation, problem solving, memory, size of group, problem solving in more realistic situations, and productivity. Recent theoretical and methodological considerations as well as discussions of group types are included. Research weakness and theoretical problems are discussed. 74 references. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Homogeneity of member personality and its effect on group problem-solving.

The capacity to solve problems was studied in 2 groups, one composed of Ss with similar personalities (as measured by the Guilford-Zimmerman Tempermant Survey), the "homogenous" group, and a "nonhomogenous" group. Several aspects of the solution were studied with the result that "The degree of homogeneity of personality of the members of the groups used in this study was seen to have a direct bearing on the effectiveness of the groups in producing solutions to problems," and "The results imply that a multiplicity of perceptions of a problem are productive of creative solutions." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of an implicit mood prime on the accessibility of smoking expectancies in college women.

This study examined whether an implicit mood prime would differentially affect the accessibility of self-generated smoking expectancies in women. One hundred nine ever-smokers were randomly assigned to receive either a positive or negative musical mood induction or a no-music control condition. Participants self-generated smoking expectancies, and the 1st responses were categorized as positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, or negative consequence expectancies. Overall, participants generated mood-congruent smoking expectancies, suggesting that affect may act as a conditioned stimulus that elicits expectations of positive and negative reinforcement of smoking behavior. In addition, negative reinforcement expectancies were more frequently generated in current versus past smokers. Results are consistent with a situational-specificity hypothesis and memory-based models of affect and expectancies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Incubation of creative performance and specific associative priming.

In the context of an associative theory of creativity, the effect of specific associative priming upon incubation of creative performance was studied. 2 experiments were conducted. In Experiment I, using 30 Ss, it was demonstrated that performance on a remote-associate task was enhanced by specific priming. In a 2nd study, using the same method and materials, high scores (HC) and low scorers (LC) on the Remote Associate Test (a measure of creative potential) were compared in a 2 X 2 X 3 factorial design also included 2 levels of priming (some and none) and 3 time relationships (immediate, pre-24 hr. and post-24 hr.) HC Ss performed significantly better than LC Ss, and the effect of specific priming was significantly greater than no priming. The time relationship had no effect. These data lend support to an associative interpretation of the phenomenon of incubation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Creativity and domain specificity: The effect of task type on multiple indexes of creative problem-solving.

This study addresses the issue of domain specificity within creativity by understanding the characteristics of creative tasks and how participants react to the task. Participants (N = 187) were given 1 of 3 realistic everyday problems to solve. The problems differed in terms of complexity, involvement, and problem-based efficacy. Problem solutions were evaluated on several measures of creativity. Results indicate that creativity was influenced by the type of problem solved and the measure of creativity used to evaluate the solution. Furthermore, these results were obtained after controlling for the effect of ability. Results imply that not all real-world problems are equivalent and that researchers need to investigate how reactions to different problems and the creativity index used may influence conclusions regarding creative problem solving. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

How are evaluations of positive and negative experiences related to the intensity of affect in workgroups?

This study explored appraisals and attributions that workgroup members make regarding events that elicit affective reactions. Fifty-nine employees in workgroups in an organization completed a survey in which they described group experiences, appraisals associated with those experiences, and attributions for those experiences. The results suggested that the intensity of affective experiences in workgroups is linked to group goals and group process. Additionally, for positive experiences, individuals were as likely to attribute credit for positive experiences to others within and outside the group as they were to themselves. In contrast, individuals were much more likely to attribute blame for negative experiences to others within the group than they were to themselves or others outside the group. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Positive mood + action = negative mood + inaction: Effects of general action and inaction concepts on decisions and performance as a function of affect.

General action and inaction concepts have been shown to produce broad, goal-mediated effects on cognitive and motor activity irrespective of the type of activity. The current research tested a model in which action and inaction goals interact with the valence of incidental moods to guide behavior. Over four experiments, participants' moods were manipulated to be positive (happy), neutral, or negative (angry or sad), and then general action, inaction, and neutral concepts were primed. In Experiment 1, action primes increased intellectual performance when participants experienced a positive (happy) or neutral mood, whereas inaction primes increased performance when participants experienced a negative (angry) mood. Including a control-prime condition, Experiments 2 and 3 replicated these results measuring the number of general interest articles participants were willing to read and participants' memory for pictures of celebrities. Experiment 4 replicated the results comparing happiness with sadness and suggested that the effect of the prime's adoption was automatic. Overall, the findings supported an interactive model by which action concepts and positive affect produce the same increases in active behavior as inaction concepts and negative affect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of work-group structure and certain task variables on group performance.

This investigation explored how team performance varies as a function of information processing demands and how the information-handling capacity of teams depends upon the requirements for internal transmission of information imposed by a communication structure. 3-man groups performed a simple "team" task under 2 different work structures, differing in the extent to which they required the transmission of information. "… the most difficult structure was that in which a larger proportion of information had to be relayed… from several different sources… . Errors for both structure conditions significantly increased when the rate of change of instrument readings increased." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Group performance as function of task difficulty and the group's awareness of member satisfaction.

Investigated the hypothesis that group effectiveness increases with increased member awareness of group satisfaction, and that this effect is greater for difficult than for easy tasks. 5-person groups attempted 3 tasks differing in difficulty, under 3 conditions of satisfaction feedback: no feedback, overt feedback, and covert feedback. In the overt condition, Ss publicly indicated their satisfaction with the problem-solving process, whereas in the covert condition their satisfaction was indicated anonymously. The results supported the hypothesis. It was suggested that valid communication of satisfaction leads to more complete use of members' contributions, and hence improves performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Creative thinking as a predictor of creative problem solving in architectural design students.

The findings demonstrated that creative thinking, operationally defined as the cognitive ability to generate a large number of original ideas/solutions predicted creative thinking in solving problems in architecture. Research participants were 111 students of architectural design. A strong correlation was found between the predictor and criterion measures, r = .45, p r = .51, p r = .31, p