Union College, Psychology Department, 807 Union St, Schenectady, New York, 12308, USA.
University of Illinois at Chicago, Department of Psychology, 1007 W. Harrison St (MC 285), Chicago, Illinois, 60607, USA.
Mem Cognit. 2020 Feb;48(2):226-243. doi: 10.3758/s13421-019-01005-4.
Creative idea generation involves search and retrieval of memory. There is a default tendency to rely too heavily on familiar or easily accessible information during idea generation, especially in tasks such as the alternate uses task (AUT) that involve generating novel uses for common objects. Knowing which obvious ideas to avoid may be important in creating more original ideas. The present experiments tested whether instructions encouraging participants to avoid a set of common example ideas would enhance originality or cause fixation on the AUT. The results of Experiment 1 demonstrated that presenting a verbal list of common example uses along with a warning to avoid those uses enhanced originality. In contrast, when the example ideas were presented in the absence of any "avoid" instructions, there was no benefit on originality, indicating that mere example exposure did not stimulate more creative idea generation. The design of Experiment 2 was parallel to that of Experiment 1, but the verbal examples were replaced with visually depicted examples. Exposure to the visual examples led to reduced originality, suggesting fixation. Although the "avoid" instruction helped to mitigate this fixation, it did not enhance originality beyond the no-example condition. The results suggest that under some conditions presenting unoriginal examples along with an "avoid" warning can allow people to shift their focus away from easily retrieved ideas and toward more novel approaches. The results are also consistent with prior work showing a negative impact of visual presentation of examples on creativity.
创意的产生涉及到搜索和检索记忆。在创意产生的过程中，人们往往会过于依赖熟悉的或容易获取的信息，尤其是在像“替代用途任务”（AUT）这样的任务中，需要为常见物体生成新颖的用途。了解应该避免哪些明显的想法，对于产生更具原创性的想法可能很重要。本实验测试了鼓励参与者避免一组常见示例想法的指令是否会提高创意的新颖性或导致对 AUT 的固着。实验 1 的结果表明，提供常见示例用途的口头列表，并警告要避免使用这些用途，可以提高新颖性。相比之下，当示例想法在没有任何“避免”指令的情况下呈现时，对新颖性没有好处，这表明仅仅呈现示例并不能刺激更具创意的想法生成。实验 2 的设计与实验 1 平行，但用视觉上呈现的示例代替了口头示例。接触视觉示例会导致新颖性降低，表明存在固着。尽管“避免”指令有助于减轻这种固着，但它并没有提高新颖性，超过没有示例的情况。结果表明，在某些条件下，呈现非原创的示例并加上“避免”警告可以帮助人们将注意力从容易获取的想法转移开，转向更具新颖性的方法。结果也与先前的工作一致，表明视觉呈现示例对创造力有负面影响。
