Shao et al. - How Does Culture Shape Creativity?
Shao, Y., Zhang, C., Zhou, J., Gu, T., & Yuan, Y. (2019). How Does Culture Shape Creativity? A Mini-Review. Frontiers in Psychology, 10.
The purpose of this review article was to critically examine how culture shapes creativity by reviewing empirical findings across diverse studies. By contrasting Eastern and Western cultures, the authors discussed and summarised cross-cultural differences in conceptualising, processing, and measuring creativity. Their conclusion is that the review provides substantial evidence supporting the profound role of culture in defining and assessing creativity and underwriting creative processes. What is more, because the definition and assessment of creativity are highly dependent on culture, that authors state that most of the observed differences in actual creativity could be the result of cultural differences.
According to the authors, the impact of culture on creativity is typically manifested in three ways: (1) people from different cultures or settings have distinct implicit and/or explicit conceptions of creativity; (2) individuals from different cultures, particularly those from individualist and collectivist cultures, show differences in preferred creative processes and creative processing modes when they are engaged in creative endeavours (e.g., usefulness seems more important than novelty in the East, whereas novelty seems equally important as usefulness, if not more so, in the West); (3) creativity may be assessed using different measures based on culture-related contents or materials, and findings are accurate only when culturally appropriate or culturally fair measures are used. Potential implications and future directions are also proposed.
Shao et al. “How Does Culture Shape Creativity?”