Creativity and culture: State of the art

Abstract

Our project goal was to understand how creativity is defined across cultures, to identify key stimuli for fostering creativity in different cultures, and to understand how creative performance differs by culture. Based on a comprehensive literature review and several field studies of designers, we find that current research on creativity and culture is biased toward Western conceptions. Applying this Western-biased view of creativity, research concludes that the West shows greater creative performance than the East. The East, in contrast, emphasizes the value of re-interpreting existing practices and de-emphasizing originality. Most recent approaches to the study of creativity, however, measure the number of ideas and the level of originality as key indicators of creativity. We also found that scant research has been conducted to understand the factors that stimulate creativity in different cultures. Though factors such as extrinsic vs. intrinsic motivation and conformity pressure have been explored, results are inconclusive. We speculate on new directions for research on creativity and culture.