The effects of social comparison and self-construal on creative idea generation: An EEG study.

Social comparisons usually occur in teams when members are tasked with generating creative ideas. However, it is unclear how these comparisons influence creative idea generation, which may be due to a lack of research on the interpretations of social comparison feedback. Self-construal is a psychological characteristic wherein individuals attempt to explain their cooperation and personal behaviours. Therefore, this study explored the influence of social comparison and self-construal on creative idea generation and the underlying neural mechanisms by recording electroencephalogram (EEG) activity. Individuals with independent and interdependent self-construal were randomly assigned to upward or downward comparison conditions and completed an alternative uses task. Results indicated that interdependent self-construal individuals had better originality and flexibility performance in the upward comparison condition compared to those in the downward comparison condition. The EEG results further revealed that, among interdependent self-construal individuals, the upward comparison condition elicited greater alpha synchronization in the bilateral frontal, right parietal, and right temporal regions compared to the downward comparison condition. Moreover, in the upward comparison condition, left frontal alpha synchronization mediated the effect of interdependent self-construal on creative idea generation. These findings support the notion of the joint effect of self-construal and social comparison on creative idea generation and suggest that interdependent self-construal individuals are better able to control irrelevant interfering information and form novel associations during an upward comparison situation compared to a downward comparison situation.

The effects of emotional valence on insight problem solving in global-local processing: An ERP study.

Recently, some studies have reported that the joint effects of different processing types and emotions can lead to different task outcomes, but it remains unclear how they affect insight problem solving. In this study, we used event-related potentials (ERP) to examine the joint effect and neural mechanism of processing type and emotional valence on insight problem solving. Behavioural results found that, compared to positive emotion, negative emotion promoted insight problem solving in the global processing condition. In contrast, in the local processing condition, positive emotion promoted insight problem solving compared to negative emotion. ERP results further found that local processing elicited larger N1 compared with global processing, indicating more focused visual processing. Importantly, negative emotion in global processing and positive emotion in local processing elicited more negative N450 amplitudes and N600-1200 amplitudes. The findings suggest that negative emotion in global processing and positive emotion in local processing facilitated insight problem solving by promoting the breaking of mental impasses and forming novel associations. The findings contribute to a new understanding of the relationship between emotional valence and insight problem solving.