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Does Collectivism Inhibit Individual Creativity? The Effects of Collectivism and Perceived Diversity On Individuals Diversity and Satisfaction in Virtual Ideation Teams (2017) #24
It took me a couple of reads to fully grasp terms and concepts in this paper, but I found this paper to be really interesting and it gave some good tips for virtual team decision-making and ideation. This study was also done through a chat-based experiment and looked at idea generation/brainstorming in virtual teams, which is pretty relevant towards what I have been researching.
In this study, participants were primed either with collective self-priming or private self-priming. Priming is when "where individuals are exposed to a stimulus that can change their subsequent behaviors [8]. For example, Lewis et al. [69] primed participants in their study by showing them pictures and found that it increased idea generation." The way I remember priming, is when I see cigarette commercials that present pictures of friends laughing together, feeling relaxed, and showing states of happiness. The advertisements intention is to prime the viewer to associate cigarette's with fun or happiness.
This study noticed that previous literatures showed collectivism reducing creativity for virtual and face-to-face teams. As a result of what they noticed, their experiments goal was to identify what facilitate's creativity and looking at ways to combat against the negative effects of collectivism. Also, to look at any benefits of collectivism.
Results found that "collectivism reduces perceived diversity and the problems associated with it. This, in turn, should promote teamwork in many different types of tasks". In other words, people who were high in collectivism had less of a perception of differences with their members (perceived diversity). So, there was a negative relationship between collectivism and perceived diversity.
Along with this finding, "participants who thought their teammates were different from themselves were significantly more creative when they were high in collectivism. Collectivism facilities creativity because with it, people are more cooperative and as a result they are more motivated to contribute to the team and are less likely to free-ride on their teammate's work. as a result collectivism amplified the effect of perceived diversity on creativity". This finding was a bit difficult for me to understand, since I felt that it went against what they stated in their first finding (that there was a negative relationship between collectivism and perceived diversity). But, after reading it a bit more times, I think it is means to say that members who had a perception of differences within their teammates as well as high levels of collectivism, were having more unique ideas compared to low-level collectivistic members. This would then infer to me that there is a delicate balance towards viewing team members as different, as it can help or hurt team members. As well as perceived diversity having benefits if the members inhibit the right mindset (collectivistic selves) towards differences.
In summary, their study "indicates that the negative relationship between collectivism and creativity may be a result of collectivism’s relationship with perceived diversity. Increases in collectivism are likely to correspond with decreases in perceived diversity. To the degree that teams are low in perceived diversity they may be less creative. These individuals are more likely to conform and less likely to think divergently and come up with more creative ideas. " These results would indicate that there is a need to switch peoples perception of one another to help improve brainstorming and decision-making. This overall results in trust, since members tend to have less trust towards people that are different than themselves. However, being able to intentionally switch ones perception and view similarities can help improve trust with team members. The article also states that "Perceptions may be particularly important to CSCW/HCI scholars who study brainstorming in virtual or technology-enabled teams, because people in these teams commonly lack physically contact as well as shared context and they are more likely to make inferences about their dispersed teammates beyond perceptions." This relates to challenges virtual teams face(physical loss), and how to combat that.
Some advice they recommend that would be beneficial for virtual teams, are to have activities that prime team-members before tasks that deal with ideation and decision-making. This activity could be to take a few minutes before a meeting to write similarities and differences from members in their team. This could also help in relationship building as members remember that they have certain similarities with team members, such as going to the same university, have similar forms of music interest, and similar skills or experience. Additionally, embedding pictures of people hugging and working together could help increase collectivism and perceived diversity through priming. Which then could help improve decision-making and collaboration.
This was a lengthy description, but there was a lot to discuss in this paper and I thought it was a beneficial read to help collaboration in virtual teams. Some limits were that this study only looked at deep-level perceived diversity, which does not involve race, gender, age, etc. and the experiment only focused on a specific task of brainstorming.
It took me a couple of reads to fully grasp terms and concepts in this paper, but I found this paper to be really interesting and it gave some good tips for virtual team decision-making and ideation. This study was also done through a chat-based experiment and looked at idea generation/brainstorming in virtual teams, which is pretty relevant towards what I have been researching.
In this study, participants were primed either with collective self-priming or private self-priming. Priming is when "where individuals are exposed to a stimulus that can change their subsequent behaviors [8]. For example, Lewis et al. [69] primed participants in their study by showing them pictures and found that it increased idea generation." The way I remember priming, is when I see cigarette commercials that present pictures of friends laughing together, feeling relaxed, and showing states of happiness. The advertisements intention is to prime the viewer to associate cigarette's with fun or happiness.
This study noticed that previous literatures showed collectivism reducing creativity for virtual and face-to-face teams. As a result of what they noticed, their experiments goal was to identify what facilitate's creativity and looking at ways to combat against the negative effects of collectivism. Also, to look at any benefits of collectivism.
Results found that "collectivism reduces perceived diversity and the problems associated with it. This, in turn, should promote teamwork in many different types of tasks". In other words, people who were high in collectivism had less of a perception of differences with their members (perceived diversity). So, there was a negative relationship between collectivism and perceived diversity.
Along with this finding, "participants who thought their teammates were different from themselves were significantly more creative when they were high in collectivism. Collectivism facilities creativity because with it, people are more cooperative and as a result they are more motivated to contribute to the team and are less likely to free-ride on their teammate's work. as a result collectivism amplified the effect of perceived diversity on creativity". This finding was a bit difficult for me to understand, since I felt that it went against what they stated in their first finding (that there was a negative relationship between collectivism and perceived diversity). But, after reading it a bit more times, I think it is means to say that members who had a perception of differences within their teammates as well as high levels of collectivism, were having more unique ideas compared to low-level collectivistic members. This would then infer to me that there is a delicate balance towards viewing team members as different, as it can help or hurt team members. As well as perceived diversity having benefits if the members inhibit the right mindset (collectivistic selves) towards differences.
In summary, their study "indicates that the negative relationship between collectivism and creativity may be a result of collectivism’s relationship with perceived diversity. Increases in collectivism are likely to correspond with decreases in perceived diversity. To the degree that teams are low in perceived diversity they may be less creative. These individuals are more likely to conform and less likely to think divergently and come up with more creative ideas. " These results would indicate that there is a need to switch peoples perception of one another to help improve brainstorming and decision-making. This overall results in trust, since members tend to have less trust towards people that are different than themselves. However, being able to intentionally switch ones perception and view similarities can help improve trust with team members. The article also states that "Perceptions may be particularly important to CSCW/HCI scholars who study brainstorming in virtual or technology-enabled teams, because people in these teams commonly lack physically contact as well as shared context and they are more likely to make inferences about their dispersed teammates beyond perceptions." This relates to challenges virtual teams face(physical loss), and how to combat that.
Some advice they recommend that would be beneficial for virtual teams, are to have activities that prime team-members before tasks that deal with ideation and decision-making. This activity could be to take a few minutes before a meeting to write similarities and differences from members in their team. This could also help in relationship building as members remember that they have certain similarities with team members, such as going to the same university, have similar forms of music interest, and similar skills or experience. Additionally, embedding pictures of people hugging and working together could help increase collectivism and perceived diversity through priming. Which then could help improve decision-making and collaboration.
This was a lengthy description, but there was a lot to discuss in this paper and I thought it was a beneficial read to help collaboration in virtual teams. Some limits were that this study only looked at deep-level perceived diversity, which does not involve race, gender, age, etc. and the experiment only focused on a specific task of brainstorming.