Experiment in Cognition

Running head: EXPERIMENT IN COGNITION

Experiment in Cognition

Eleasha M. Miller

University of North Texas


Abstract

This experiment was conducted to further the previous research of Smith, Ward, and Schumacher (1993) and Marsh, Landau, and Hicks (1996) on the standard conformity effect. Participants in the experimental group were shown examples of three creatures that shared features converging on the single concept of hostility, while participants were not shown ay examples. Consistent with previous research, the experimental group participants’ novel creations conformed to the examples they were shown even with specific instructions to not copy any aspect of the examples. Additionally, participants in the experimental group used more hostile features when creating novel creatures than the participants in the control group who were not shown examples. These results suggest that outside influences can unintentionally have profound effects on creativity and originality.


Experiment in Cognition

        One facet of creativity research explores how memory contributes to the products of creativity (e.g. drawings, inventions, songs, etc.). A standard finding is that people tend to incorporate elements of recently experienced stimuli in creative products. More specifically, Smith, Ward, and Schumacher (1993) and Marsh, Landau, and Hicks (1996) have shown the standard conformity effect – that participants will incorporate shared features from examples into novel drawings more frequently than participants who are not shown any examples

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        Smith et al. (1993) conducted an experiment to “demonstrate that merely presenting individuals with examples in a creative generation task would bias their creations to contain the shared properties of those examples.” In the experiment, participants were asked to draw as many novel ideas (toys or imaginary creatures) as possible in a specific amount of time. Half of the participants were shown examples prior to the task while the other half were not. The result showed that indeed, “creative designs were constrained when the examples were shown prior to the generation task.”

        Marsh et al. (1996) replicated the previous experiment ...

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