In social contexts, creativity is dependent on individualism

Organizations are governed by socio-culturally determined norms. At the same time, organizations need people who dare to think outside that box and thus use their innate creativity to be able to solve ongoing complex problems. People's values vary, e.g. between collectivism and individualism. The former tend to stay within the box, while the latter tend to venture outside the box. Collectivism poses problems for companies. The Emperor's new clothes, Facit in Åtvidaberg, Sweden, and Apollo 13 are mentioned as examples. It is important to stand up for one's values in combination but to accept the ditto of others. It gives room for reasoning that leads to new insights and conclusions. 3 pages.

Please support the blog via Swish (Sweden), MobilePay (Finland) or Wise.

Organizations are governed by socio-culturally determined norms. At the same time, organizations need people who dare to think outside that box and thus use their innate creativity to be able to solve ongoing complex problems. People's values vary, e.g. between collectivism and individualism. The former tend to stay within the box, while the latter tend to venture outside the box. Collectivism poses problems for companies.

One might ask why it is important to be independent and stand up for one's values, even in social contexts?

From a perspective of creativity, it can be argued that independent individuals more easily achieve results in complex problem solving by maintaining the debate that leads to new combinations.

Compare with people who easily fall prey to the forces of conformism or collectivism.

A study was conducted to test whether individualists are more creative in social contexts compared to collectivists. The result showed significant differences, that is, individualism is associated with creative performance to a greater extent compared to collectivism.

Link to source.

To understand this effect, it is useful to understand the precursive concepts used in the study, such as individualism, collectivism, and creativity.

Individualism is the ability to maintain one's values under social pressure. Many mistakenly confuse the concept with egoism — a personality characteristic marked by selfishness and behavior based on self-interest with disregard for the needs of others (A.P.A.), which probably has a greater prevalence among conformists/collectivists.

Collectivism is the tendency to view oneself as a member of a larger (family or social) group, rather than as an isolated, independent being (A.P.A.).

Conformity, which was not studied but which has some correlation with collectivism, is the adjustment of one’s opinions, judgments, or actions so that they become more consistent with (a) the opinions, judgments, or actions of other people (A.P.A.).

Famously Asch (1956), Festinger, Riecken, and Schacter (1956), and Milgram (1963) demonstrated the impact of social influence.

Contrary to what most people might think, creativity is a general disposition among us Homo sapiens sapiens, and perhaps even the ability that has made us survive through the millions of years.

Creativity is a process where unrelated knowledge objects, or fragments thereof, are combined or melded into new concepts (Wynn, Coolidge och Bright, 2009; Österberg, 2012 (The thesis was ready for dissertation, but I was on forced gardening leave after I decided to move from the university that recruited me)). Objects can be something actually like a car or firewood, or a mental representation – image – of a car or firewood. A fragment of an object then becomes part of the car (imagine you took a photo of the rear light on the car and you ask someone to guess which car brand the rear light belongs to) or a piece of wood (a bit of the bark). Concept is a cognitive structure that has meaning.

In order for the individual to create creative products, a cognitive association process is required that is common to everyone. In social contexts, one must add reasoning between two or more parties that culminates in a conclusion where one combines the contributions of the various parties. If one party chooses not to accept the others' points of view, conflict arises. So: you can say that in social contexts, creativity is dependent on individualism.

A famous example of social creativity is the Apollo 13 project, which was filmed with Tom Hanks in one of the main roles. The story is about an accident in space and how some NASA employees under circumstances that can be considered challenging created a new type of air purifier that saved the crew from certain death. It was about complex problem solving and in the initial phase of the problem solving itself there was a consensus (collectivism) that it was not possible. Nevertheless, they succeeded!

In Sweden and Åtvidaberg there was once a company – Facit – which was successful in manufacturing calculators. They were not particularly anxious to approve changes in the outside world – instead, they were sure that they would dominate the market for a long time. The organization was probably dominated by collectivist values and thus overconfidence in one's own abilities. Thus the management at Facit was taken to bed when a Japanese company – Casio – launched cheap calculators in pocket format. Facit soon thereafter ceased to exist...

In the saga of the Emperor's new clothes, there were collectivist values that led to considerable conformism around the delusion that the naked emperor was not naked at all. Everyone saw that he was naked, but no one dared to break the norm.

In H.C. Andersen's fairy tale, individualism is illustrated by a little boy who, in the manner of a child, said what he saw.

It is important to stand up for one's values in combination but to accept the ditto of others. it gives room for reasoning that leads to new insights and conclusions.

Please support the blog via Swish (Sweden), MobilePay (Finland) or Wise.

More about my expertise:

Executive coaching for CEOs/managers and workshops to facilitate Organizational Performance, Learning, and Creativity for Problem Solving | Lectures: Nutrition for physical and mental health | Course/lecture: children's emotional and social adjustment and cognitive development | Language training - Swedish | Academy Competency | CV | Teaching skills and experience | Summary of research project | Instagram | Linkedin | YouTube-channel | TikTok | X