Group dynamics (Literature review)

Reference: Cronin, M. A., Weingart, L. R., & Todorova, G. (2011). Dynamics in groups: Are we there yet?. The Academy of Management Annals, 5(1), 571-612.

Abstract: We know that groups are dynamic entities, and yet we rarely study them as such. Previously hamstrung by limited theory, a decade of advances in understanding the fundamental nature of groups and change promised a revolution in group research. Our goal here is to review those theoretical developments and then examine their impact on our empirical understanding of group dynamics. Examining work done and not done, we will take stock of this work, identify the obstacles that seem to keep us focused more on group statics than dynamics, and then close by offering suggestions about not only what approaches to take when studying group dynamics, but also how the field can help develop these approaches. We hope that a review of the group dynamic literature in 2021 will celebrate our coming empirical accomplishments rather than lament a lack of them.

Notes: Always useful to see what recent literature reviews present in an area where many open questions are still present and even more are needed.

Creative Collaboration

Reference: Elsbach, K. D., & Flynn, F. J. (2013). Creative Collaboration and the Self‐Concept: A Study of Toy Designers. Journal of Management Studies, 50(4), 515-544.

Abstract: In this paper, we explored how collaborative behaviours were related to the self-concepts of creative workers. Our findings, derived from a qualitative study of corporate toy designers, showed that the personal (vs. social) identities of toy designers were most strongly related to collaborative behaviours. Further, collaborative behaviours defined as idea giving were most congruent with all toy designers' personal identities, while collaborative behaviours defined as idea taking were most incongruent with those identities. Finally, specific collaborative behaviours related to specific types of personal identities (e.g. the collaborative behaviour of ‘incorporating the ideas of others’ was especially incongruent with ‘artistic’ personal identities). Together, these results suggest that promoting collaboration among creative workers may require attention to not only idea-giving behaviours and social identities (as suggested by most extant theories), but also to idea-taking behaviours and personal identities. We discuss the implications of these findings for theories of creative collaboration and identity in organizations.

Notes: This is probably one of the best papers about creative collaboration that I've read in a while. Kimberly D. Elsbach did a very interesting and thorough job here, collecting massive amounts of data over long time periods of interviews and observations of product designers (unclear if they were a mix of industrial designers and design engineers). I think that sometimes qualitative research is considered not as rigorous as the average quantitative approach, but I'd use this as an example of what seems like a quite thorough and rigorous piece of work. The designers are then categorised as "artistic" or "problem solvers", which in principle I'd agree based on my years of experience working with designers, however the choice of words for these labels is rather unfortunate. I can also add that some designers are quite able to switch between these two archetypes depending on the situation, type of project, group or dyad dynamics, goals, etc. But overall, a very interesting contribution and I'll be citing this paper in my work. Ironically, in its first 2 years, it has only been cited 2 times. Another example of good research not being read enough.

Incorporating Creativity in the Teaching of Mathematics

Reference: Mann, E. L. (2006). Creativity: The essence of mathematics. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 30(2), 236-260.

Abstract: Testing, grades, and pacing overshadow the essential role of creativity involved in doing mathematics. Talent development requires creative applications in the exploration of mathematics problems. Traditional teaching methods involving demonstration and practice using closed problems with predetermined answers insufficiently prepare students in mathematics. Students leave school with adequate computational skills but lack the ability to apply these skills in meaningful ways. Teaching mathematics without providing for creativity denies all students, especially gifted and talented students, the opportunity to appreciate the beauty of mathematics and fails to provide the gifted student an opportunity to fully develop his or her talents. In this article, a review of literature defines mathematical creativity, develops an understanding of the creative student of mathematics, and discusses the issues and implications for the teaching of mathematics.

Notes:
- "Mathematical talent requires creative applications of mathematics in the exploration of problems, not replication of the work of others"
- "School board members and administrators need to encourage and support innovative methods of teaching mathematics"
- "The challenge is to provide an environment of practice and problem solving that stimulates creativity, while avoiding the imposition of problem-solving heuristic strategies (Pehkonen, 1997) that will enable the development of mathematically talented students who can think creatively and introspectively (Ginsburg, 1996)."

How Well Can People Identify Their Most Creative Ideas?

Reference: Silvia, P. J. (2008). Discernment and creativity: How well can people identify their most creative ideas?. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts,2(3), 139.

Abstract: How well can people judge the creativity of their ideas? The distinction between generating ideas and evaluating ideas appears in many theories of creativity, but the massive literature on generation has overshadowed the question of evaluation. After critically reviewing the notion of accuracy in creativity judgments, this article explores whether (1) people in general are discerning and (2) whether some people are more discerning than others. University students (n 226) completed four divergent thinking tasks and then decided which responses were their most creative. Judges then rated the creativity of all of the responses. Multilevel latent-variable models found that people’s choices strongly agreed with judges’ ratings of the responses; overall, people were discerning in their decisions. But some people were more discerning than others: people high in openness to experience, in particular, had stronger agreement between their decisions and the judges’ ratings. Creative people are thus doubly skilled: they are better at generating good ideas and at picking their best ideas.

Notes: Sometimes I choose to add papers here not so much because of their intellectual value, but for the clarity with which they illustrate a whole research tradition widely accepted in some community. One could talk about the many weak assumptions behind studies like this, the biases and limitations of their methods and their analysis. But here I instead just focus on the one-paragraph conclusion in this paper, which reads:

"The prevalence of tired, rewarmed ideas could make a cynic conclude that people are bad at separating their creative ideas from their unoriginal ideas. This study explored how well people can pick their best ideas. People could choose their best ideas better than chance: their choices covaried significantly with judges’ creativity ratings. But some people—such as people high in openness to experience—were more discerning. Creative people are thus doubly skilled: they are better at generating creative ideas and at discerning which ones are the best."

Wow! the wording of these claims is "worth a thousand words", particularly based on what the researchers actually did:

1. Studied 226 undergrad students of psychology at a specific US university, a large majority female
2. Asked them to respond to four divergent thinking tests
3. Each test lasts for 3 minutes, that's right, 180 seconds
4. All tasks are based on words (linguistic divergence)

So, just as an exercise, let's re-write that final paragraph to be more realistic and see how it looks:

"We don't know the processes by which young, American female students of psychology assess their responses to linguistic-based divergent tests. We also don't whether their assessment matches that of three undergraduate research assistants who we gave instructions to assess responses to such type of tests, and which we call "judges". This study explored how these students pick their best ideas when instructed to "circle the two responses that they thought were their most creative ones", without any definition of what we meant. These students chose their best ideas better than chance: their choices covaried significantly with how the three judging undergrad students rate creativity using our criteria. But some of these students -such as those high in openness to experience- were more discerning. Undergrad psychology students who generate more responses to a certain type of divergent reasoning tests which are more likely to be selected by our judges are doubly skilled: they are better at generating divergent ideas that we consider creative and at discerning which ones we consider the best."

But I guess that would read like a circular argument and isn't as interesting to close a paper, is it? But that'd be a lot more honest and aligned with the actual work and the actual findings.

Reviewing reflection in design: lack of definitions

Reference: Baumer, E. P., Khovanskaya, V., Matthews, M., Reynolds, L., Schwanda Sosik, V., & Gay, G. (2014, June). Reviewing reflection: On the use of reflection in interactive system design. In Proceedings of the 2014 conference on Designing interactive systems (pp. 93-102). ACM.

Abstract: Designers have demonstrated an increased interest in designing for reflection. However, that work currently occurs under a variety of diverse auspices. To help organize and investigate this literature, this paper present a review of research on systems designed to support reflection. Key findings include that most work in this area does not actually define the concept of reflection. We also find that most evaluations do not focus on reflection per se rather but on some other outcome arguably linked to reflection. Our review also describes the relationship between reflection and persuasion evidenced implicitly by both rhetorical motivations for and implementation details of system design. After discussing the significance of our findings, we conclude with a series of recommendations for improving research on and design for reflection.

Notes:
1. little work actually explicitly defines what reflection is, and even less grounds the definition in a conceptual or theoretical framework
2. a majority of work using colloquial or implicit definitions of reflection and as a result presenting the concept as fairly limited in its scope
3. without a clear explicit definition, many of the papers we reviewed implicitly conflated reflection with feedback
4. Most of the papers we reviewed described reflection as an individual, largely mental or cognitive activity, e.g.,reflecting on one’s performance as a given task [44,62] or observing data about one’s self [25,55,56]. A few papers did acknowledge the possibility of reflection as a social activity.

Gender differences in creativity

Reference: Baer, J., & Kaufman, J. C. (2008). Gender differences in creativity. The Journal of Creative Behavior, 42(2), 75-105.

Abstract: Research on gender differences in creativity, including creativity test scores, creative achievements, and self-reported creativity is reviewed, as are theories that have been offered to explain such differences and available evidence that supports or refutes such theories. This is a difficult arena in which to conduct research, but there is a consistent lack of gender differences both in creativity test scores and in the creative accomplishments of boys and girls (which if anything tend to favor girls). As a result, it is difficult to show how innate gender differences in creativity could possibly explain later differences in creative accomplishment. At the same time, the large difference in the creative achievement of men and women in many fields make blanket environmental explanations inadequate, and the explanations that have been proposed thus far are at best incomplete. A new theoretical framework (the APT model of creativity) is proposed to allow better understanding of what is known about gender differences in creativity.

Notes: A highly-cited paper (I consider 150+ citations to be high in these topics anyway), which builds upon a classic study* (much less cited, interestingly) and presents a thorough literature review of the possible gender differences in creativity, which by the way overall are non-existent as we all could reasonably expect. Nonetheless, self-assessment does vary, and as we all know, attitudes by researchers, teachers and parents do change**, which is something that we all should be working to eliminate.


* Kogan, N. (1974). Creativity and Sex Differences*. The Journal of Creative Behavior, 8(1), 1-14.
** Conti, R., Collins, M. A., & Picariello, M. L. (2001). The impact of competition on intrinsic motivation and creativity: considering gender, gender segregation and gender role orientation. Personality and individual differences, 31(8), 1273-1289.