On counter-stereotypes and creative cognition: When interventions for reducing prejudice can boost divergent thinking
By M. Gocłowska, R. Crisp. 2013
92 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Abstract School-based psychological interventions which require students and pupils to think of counter-stereotypic individuals (e.g., a female mechanic, a Black President) have been shown to reduce stereotyping and prejudice. But while these interventions are increasingly popular, no one has tested whether tasks like this can have benefits beyond promoting tolerance, particularly with respect to the way individuals think and solve problems. We looked at one such intervention and asked whether this task could, in addition to decreasing propensities to stereotype others, contribute to more flexible and original performance. We expected that because exposure to people who disconfirm stereotypes compels students to think “out of the box”, they will subsequently not only rely less on stereotypes, but in more general thinking rely less on easily accessible knowledge structures and be more flexible and creative. As predicted, being encouraged to think counter-stereotypically not only decreased stereotyping, but also, on a divergent creativity task, lead to the generation of more creative ideas – but only for individuals who initially reported a lower personal need for structure (PNS).
Subfields: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Social Psychology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bc6262464439429f1d87844a8ec6b5215baef5d0
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
In Social Psychology
Citations in the corpus
- How Dual-Identity Processes Foster Creativity (2014, background): “…to note that these effects are conditional upon personal need for structure (PNS) in such a way that individuals who are comfortable with uncertainty and inconsistencies (low PNS) are most likely to benefit from exposure to inconsistencies (Gocłowska et al., 2014; Gocłowska & Crisp, 2013).”
- A Sociocultural Theory of Creativity: Bridging the Social, the Material, and the Psychological (2020, background): “A more recent line of research into counter-stereotypes shows that offering this kind of information boosts flexible and divergent thinking (Gocłowska & Crisp, 2013; Gocłowska et al., 2013).”