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Multicultural Psychology Commons

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Personality and Social Contexts

Multicultural Competence and Creative Cognitions

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Full-Text Articles in Multicultural Psychology

Revisiting The Multicultural Experience-Creativity Link: The Effects Of Cultural Distance And Comparison Mindset, Chi-Ying Cheng, Angela K.-Y. Leung May 2013

Revisiting The Multicultural Experience-Creativity Link: The Effects Of Cultural Distance And Comparison Mindset, Chi-Ying Cheng, Angela K.-Y. Leung

Ka Yee Angela LEUNG

A growing literature provides evidence for the multicultural experience-creativity link such that exposure to the juxtaposition of two cultures facilitates individual creativity. The underlying mechanisms for this relationship, however, are still far from being well explored. Drawing upon the novel perspective of motivated cognition, we hypothesize that two factors interact to affect creative outcomes: (a) perceived cultural distance between the two juxtaposed cultures, and (b) comparison mind-sets. Specifically, we argue that individuals’ creative performance will be increased only when a difference mind-set is employed to process the cultural stimuli that are sufficiently different from each other. In two studies, individuals …


Going Beyond The Multicultural Experience-Creativity Link: The Mediating Role Of Emotions, Chi-Ying Cheng, Angela K.-Y. Leung, Tsung-Yu Wu Aug 2012

Going Beyond The Multicultural Experience-Creativity Link: The Mediating Role Of Emotions, Chi-Ying Cheng, Angela K.-Y. Leung, Tsung-Yu Wu

Ka Yee Angela LEUNG

This research examines the mediating role of emotions implicated in the multicultural experience—creativity link. We propose that when individuals are dealing with apparent cultural contradictions upon encountering two cultures simultaneously, mentally juxtaposing dissonant cultural stimuli could lower positive affect or increase negative affect, which could in turn induce a deeper level of cognitive processing of cultural discrepancies and inspire creativity. Two studies compared dual cultural exposure versus single cultural exposure among bicultural Singaporeans (Study 1) and compared self-relevant (jointly presenting local and foreign cultures) versus self-irrelevant (jointly presenting foreign cultures only) dual cultural exposure among monocultural Taiwanese (Study 2). As …


Multicultural Experience, Idea Receptiveness, And Creativity, Angela K. Y. Leung, Chi-Yue Chiu Jan 2012

Multicultural Experience, Idea Receptiveness, And Creativity, Angela K. Y. Leung, Chi-Yue Chiu

Ka Yee Angela LEUNG

Inspired by recent advances in creative cognition research, the authors examined in the current research some creative benefits of multicultural experiences. Study 1 showed that European American undergraduates had better creative performance immediately after being exposed to American and Chinese cultures or to a hybrid culture formed by fusing American and Chinese cultures; this effect was also observed 5 to 7 days after the initial exposure. Studies 2 and 3 showed that exposure to multicultural experiences is positively related to the likelihood of engaging in some creativity-supporting processes—generation of unconventional ideas (Study 2) and receptiveness to ideas originated from foreign …