Psychology Commons^™

Connecting The Dots Within: Creative Performance And Identity Integration, Chi-Ying Cheng, Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks, Fion Lee

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In two studies drawing from social identity theory and the creative-cognition approach, we found that higher levels of identity integration - perceived compatibility between two social identities - predict higher levels of creative performance in tasks that draw on both identity-relevant knowledge domains. Study 1 showed that Asian Americans with higher identity integration were more creative in developing new dishes using a given set of ingredients, but only when both Asian and American ingredients were available. Study 2 showed that female engineers with higher identity integration were more creative in designing a product, but only when the product was targeted …