Group dynamics and creativity: a research with young adults in Reggio Emilia, Italy
Abstract
Modern society demands innovativeness and creativity. Few studies have examined group dynamics’ influence on individuals’ creativity. This study explores creativity in group settings and how the gender of participants influences group dynamics and the creative process by observing specific behaviors, including social interaction and play, creative action, and creative thinking. In groups of three, thirty participants (20–25 years) were asked to create mosaics representing a “learning community” using Lego DOTS. Relationships between group dynamics and creativity, creative thinking and creative action, gender of participants and their orientation to creativity and group dynamics were explored. Results showed negative relationships between group processes, creative thinking, and creative actions: the more intense the group dynamics were, the less the creativity. Surprisingly, female participants were more oriented to the creative task; male participants were more oriented to group dynamics. Further investigation of the relationship between creativity and cultural stereotypes on gender roles is needed.
Keyword : creative action, creative thinking, gender infusion, group dynamics, social interaction
How to Cite
Komarova, S., Ndungu, F., Gavazzoli, A., & Mineo, R. (2023). Group dynamics and creativity: a research with young adults in Reggio Emilia, Italy. Creativity Studies, 16(1), 297–314. https://doi.org/10.3846/cs.2023.17564
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
References
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Cafaro, A., Ravenet, B., Ochs, M., Vilhjálmsson, H. H., & Pelachaud, C. (2016). The effects of interpersonal attitude of a group of agents on user’s presence and proxemics behavior. Association for Computing Machinery Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems, 6(2), 1–33. https://doi.org/10.1145/2914796
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Halpern, D. F. (2014). Thought and knowledge: An introduction to critical thinking. Psychology Press.
Hillman, W., & Radel, K. (Eds.). (2018). Aspects of tourism. Qualitative methods in tourism research: Theory and practice (Vol. 82). Ch. Cooper, C. M. Hall, & D. J. Timothy (Series Eds.). Channel View Publications. https://doi.org/10.21832/HILLMA6409
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Klug, M., & Bagrow, J. P. (2016). Understanding the group dynamics and success of teams. Royal Society Open Science, 3(4), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.160007
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Kurtzberg, T. R., & Amabile, T. M. (2000–2001). From Guilford to creative synergy: Opening the black box of team-level creativity. Creativity Research Journal, 13(3–4), 285–294. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15326934CRJ1334_06
Meitiyani, M., Elvianasti, M., & Pambudi Dharma, A. (2020). Correlation between students creative thinking ability in solving environmental problem with achievement of environmental education. Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, 547, 275–281. https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.210430.042
Meyer, M. S., & Plucker, J. A. (2022). Creativity in groups: Catalyst or complication? In J. A. Plucker (Ed.). Creativity and innovation: Theory, research, and practice (pp. 209–216). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003233923-17
Miles, M. B., & Huberman, A. M. (1984). Qualitative data analysis: A sourcebook of new methods. SAGE Publications.
Mineo, R., Hofstede, A., Newara, R., Abdeltawab, A.-Sh. M., Ndungu, F., & Rakhawy, M. (2022). Teen dating violence among Italian high school students: A quantitative study on gender differences. Youth Voice Journal, November. https://iris.unimore.it/retrieve/0a3b5861-dfaf-465c-b2e7-80674d0ae9d5/Mineo%20et%20al.%20YVJ%202022.pdf
Parlitz, U., Junge, L., Lauterborn, W., & Kocarev, L. (1996). Experimental observation of phase synchronization. Physical Review E, 54(2), 2115–2117. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.54.2115
Paulus, P. (2000). Groups, teams, and creativity: The creative potential of idea-generating groups. Applied Psychology, 49(2), 237–262. https://doi.org/10.1111/1464-0597.00013
Piaget, J. (1995). Commentary on Vygotsky’s criticisms of Language and Thought of the Child and Judgment and Reasoning in the Child. New Ideas in Psychology, 13(3), 325–340. https://doi.org/10.1016/0732-118X(95)00010-E
Plucker, J. A., Beghetto, R. A., & Dow, G. T. (2004). Why isn’t creativity more important to educational psychologists? Potentials, pitfalls, and future directions in creativity research. Educational Psychologist, 39(2), 83–96. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326985ep3902_1
Popescu, G. (2014). Human behavior, from psychology to a transdisciplinary insight. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 128, 442–446. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.03.185
Resnick, M. (2007). All i really need to know (about creative thinking) I learned (by studying how children learn) in Kindergarten. In C&C ’07: Proceedings of the 6th ACM SIGCHI Conference on Creativity and Cognition (pp. 1–6). Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/1254960.1254961
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Simonton, D. K. (2018). Defining creativity: Don’t we also need to define what is not creative? Journal of Creative Behavior, 52(1), 80–90. https://doi.org/10.1002/jocb.137
Slayton, M., Bristol, A. S., & Viskontas, I. V. (2019). Factors affecting group creativity: Lessons from musical ensembles. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 27, 169–174. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2018.12.013
Srnka, K. J., & Koeszegi, S. T. (2007). From words to numbers: How to transform qualitative data into meaningful quantitative results. Schmalenbach Business Review, 59, 29–57. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03396741
Staffa, S. J., & Zurakowski, D. (2020). Calculation of confidence intervals for differences in medians between groups and comparison of methods. Anesthesia and Analgesia, 130(2), 542–546. https://doi.org/10.1213/ANE.0000000000004535
Troendle, J. F., Zhang, Zh., Mathews, M. E., & Guo, J. (2012). Methods of adjusted comparison of medians. Biometrical Journal, 54(4), 481–493. https://doi.org/10.1002/bimj.201100220
Tromp, C., & Sternberg, R. J. (2022). Dynamic creativity: A person × task × situation interaction framework. Journal of Creative Behavior, 56(4), 553–565. https://doi.org/10.1002/jocb.551
Vygotsky, L. (2006). Piaget’s theory: Child language and thought. Blog da Psicologia da Educação. https://www.ufrgs.br/psicoeduc/vygotsky/piaget%E2%80%99s-theory-child-language-and-thought/
Wolfe, R. A. (2000). Statistical analysis, a necessity for observational studies. Kidney International, 57(74), 14–18. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1523-1755.2000.07404.x
Woodman, R. W., Sawyer, J. E., & Griffin, R. W. (1993). Toward a theory of organizational creativity. Academy of Management Review, 18(2), 293–321. https://doi.org/10.2307/258761
Zhou, N., Kisselburgh, L., Chandrasegaran, S., Badam, S. K., Elmqvist, N., & Ramani, K. (2020). Using social interaction trace data and context to predict collaboration quality and creative fluency in collaborative design learning environments. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 136. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2019.102378
Abraham, A., Rutter, B., & Hermann, Ch. (2021). Conceptual expansion via novel metaphor processing: An ERP replication and extension study examining individual differences in creativity. Brain and Language, 221. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2021.105007
Adarves-Yorno, I., Postmes, T., & Haslam, S. A. (2006). Social identity and the recognition of creativity in groups. British Journal Psychology, 45(3), 479–497. https://doi.org/10.1348/014466605X50184
Amabile, T. M. (1996). Creativity and innovation in organizations. Harvard Business School Background Note No. 9-396-239. https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfile.php/4927750/mod_resource/content/0/Creativity%20and%20Innovation%20in%20Organizations.pdf
Andreasen, N. C., & Ramchandran, K. (2012). Creativity in art and science: are there two cultures? Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, 14(1), 49–54. https://doi.org/10.31887/DCNS.2012.14.1/nandreasen
Argyle, M. (2017). Social interaction. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315129556
Banasik-Jemielniak, N., & Kałowski, P. (2022). Socio-cultural and individual factors in verbal irony use and understanding: What we know, what we don’t know, what we want to know. Review of Communication Research: Literature Reviews and Meta-Analyses for the Communication Field, 10, 80–113. https://doi.org/10.12840/ISSN.2255-4165.036
Berman, E. A. (2017). An exploratory sequential mixed methods approach to understanding researchers’ data management practices at UVM: Findings from the quantitative phase. Journal of E-Science Librarianship, 6(1). https://doi.org/10.7191/jeslib.2017.1098
Berson, M. J., & Berson, I. R. (1995). The influence of gender on group process: Implications for the secondary classroom. American Secondary Education, 24(1), 29–33.
Brown, R., & Pehrson, S. (2020). Group processes: Dynamics within and between groups. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118719244
Cafaro, A., Ravenet, B., Ochs, M., Vilhjálmsson, H. H., & Pelachaud, C. (2016). The effects of interpersonal attitude of a group of agents on user’s presence and proxemics behavior. Association for Computing Machinery Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems, 6(2), 1–33. https://doi.org/10.1145/2914796
Cássia Nakano, de T., Silva Oliveira, da K., & Zaia, P. (2021). Gender differences in creativity: A systematic literature review. Psicologia: Teoria e Pesquisa, 37. https://doi.org/10.1590/0102.3772e372116
Edwards, C., Gandini, L., & Forman, G. (Eds.). (2011). The hundred languages of children: The Reggio Emilia experience in transformation. Praeger.
Fitrianawati, M., Sintawati, M., & Retnowati, E. (2020). Analysis toward relationship between mathematical literacy and creative thinking abilities of students. Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 1521. https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/1521/3/032104
Ford, C. M. (1996). A theory of individual creative action in multiple social domains. Academy of Management Review, 21(4), 1112–1142. https://doi.org/10.2307/259166
Forsyth, D. R. (2019). Group dynamics. Cengage Learning, Inc.
Gardner, H. (1993). Creating minds: An anatomy of creativity seen through the lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Gandhi. Basic Books.
Gardner, H. (2006). Leadership for the common good. Five minds for the future. Harvard Business School Press.
Gerosa, M., Lee, S., Giuliani, D., & Narayanan, S. (2006, 14–19 May). Analyzing children’s speech: An acoustic study of consonants and consonant-vowel transition. In 2006 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics Speech and Signal Processing Proceedings. Toulouse, France. https://sail.usc.edu/publications/files/gerosaicassp2006.pdf
Gillespie, R. (1993). Manufacturing knowledge: A history of the Hawthorne experiments. Cambridge University Press.
Glaveanu, V. P., Hanchett Hanson, M., Baer, J., Barbot, B., Clapp, E. P., Corazza, G. E., Hennessey, B., Kaufman, J. C., Lebuda, I., Lubart, T., Montuori, A., Ness, I. J., Plucker, J., Reiter-Palmon, R., Sierra, Z., Simonton, D. K., Souza Neves-Pereira, M., & Sternberg, R. J. (2020). Advancing creativity theory and research: A socio‐cultural manifesto. Journal of Creative Behavior, 54(3), 741–745. https://doi.org/10.1002/jocb.395
Halpern, D. F. (2014). Thought and knowledge: An introduction to critical thinking. Psychology Press.
Hillman, W., & Radel, K. (Eds.). (2018). Aspects of tourism. Qualitative methods in tourism research: Theory and practice (Vol. 82). Ch. Cooper, C. M. Hall, & D. J. Timothy (Series Eds.). Channel View Publications. https://doi.org/10.21832/HILLMA6409
Kaufman, J. C., Plucker, J. A., & Baer, J. (2008). Essentials of psychological assessment. Essentials of creativity assessment. A. S. Kaufman & N. L. Kaufman (Series Eds.). John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Klug, M., & Bagrow, J. P. (2016). Understanding the group dynamics and success of teams. Royal Society Open Science, 3(4), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.160007
Komarova, S., Gianotti, M., Atanassov, A., Bordonaro, G., Rousseau, C., Goldschmidt, M., Caslini, G., & Garzotto, F. (2022, 20–23 June,). Investigation and perspectives about the promoting creativity to children with ASD in a multisensory environment magic room. Generative game “Explora!”. In T. Bastiaens (Ed.), Proceedings of EdMedia + Innovate Learning (pp. 696–710). Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education.
Kuckartz, U., & Rädiker, S. (2019). Analyzing qualitative data with MAXQDA: Text, audio, and video. Springer Nature Switzerland AG. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15671-8
Kurtzberg, T. R., & Amabile, T. M. (2000–2001). From Guilford to creative synergy: Opening the black box of team-level creativity. Creativity Research Journal, 13(3–4), 285–294. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15326934CRJ1334_06
Meitiyani, M., Elvianasti, M., & Pambudi Dharma, A. (2020). Correlation between students creative thinking ability in solving environmental problem with achievement of environmental education. Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, 547, 275–281. https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.210430.042
Meyer, M. S., & Plucker, J. A. (2022). Creativity in groups: Catalyst or complication? In J. A. Plucker (Ed.). Creativity and innovation: Theory, research, and practice (pp. 209–216). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003233923-17
Miles, M. B., & Huberman, A. M. (1984). Qualitative data analysis: A sourcebook of new methods. SAGE Publications.
Mineo, R., Hofstede, A., Newara, R., Abdeltawab, A.-Sh. M., Ndungu, F., & Rakhawy, M. (2022). Teen dating violence among Italian high school students: A quantitative study on gender differences. Youth Voice Journal, November. https://iris.unimore.it/retrieve/0a3b5861-dfaf-465c-b2e7-80674d0ae9d5/Mineo%20et%20al.%20YVJ%202022.pdf
Parlitz, U., Junge, L., Lauterborn, W., & Kocarev, L. (1996). Experimental observation of phase synchronization. Physical Review E, 54(2), 2115–2117. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.54.2115
Paulus, P. (2000). Groups, teams, and creativity: The creative potential of idea-generating groups. Applied Psychology, 49(2), 237–262. https://doi.org/10.1111/1464-0597.00013
Piaget, J. (1995). Commentary on Vygotsky’s criticisms of Language and Thought of the Child and Judgment and Reasoning in the Child. New Ideas in Psychology, 13(3), 325–340. https://doi.org/10.1016/0732-118X(95)00010-E
Plucker, J. A., Beghetto, R. A., & Dow, G. T. (2004). Why isn’t creativity more important to educational psychologists? Potentials, pitfalls, and future directions in creativity research. Educational Psychologist, 39(2), 83–96. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326985ep3902_1
Popescu, G. (2014). Human behavior, from psychology to a transdisciplinary insight. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 128, 442–446. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.03.185
Resnick, M. (2007). All i really need to know (about creative thinking) I learned (by studying how children learn) in Kindergarten. In C&C ’07: Proceedings of the 6th ACM SIGCHI Conference on Creativity and Cognition (pp. 1–6). Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/1254960.1254961
Richards, R. (2007). Everyday creativity: Our hidden potential. In R. Richards (Ed.), Everyday creativity and new views of human nature: Psychological, social, and spiritual perspectives (pp. 25–53). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/11595-001
Simonton, D. K. (2018). Defining creativity: Don’t we also need to define what is not creative? Journal of Creative Behavior, 52(1), 80–90. https://doi.org/10.1002/jocb.137
Slayton, M., Bristol, A. S., & Viskontas, I. V. (2019). Factors affecting group creativity: Lessons from musical ensembles. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 27, 169–174. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2018.12.013
Srnka, K. J., & Koeszegi, S. T. (2007). From words to numbers: How to transform qualitative data into meaningful quantitative results. Schmalenbach Business Review, 59, 29–57. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03396741
Staffa, S. J., & Zurakowski, D. (2020). Calculation of confidence intervals for differences in medians between groups and comparison of methods. Anesthesia and Analgesia, 130(2), 542–546. https://doi.org/10.1213/ANE.0000000000004535
Troendle, J. F., Zhang, Zh., Mathews, M. E., & Guo, J. (2012). Methods of adjusted comparison of medians. Biometrical Journal, 54(4), 481–493. https://doi.org/10.1002/bimj.201100220
Tromp, C., & Sternberg, R. J. (2022). Dynamic creativity: A person × task × situation interaction framework. Journal of Creative Behavior, 56(4), 553–565. https://doi.org/10.1002/jocb.551
Vygotsky, L. (2006). Piaget’s theory: Child language and thought. Blog da Psicologia da Educação. https://www.ufrgs.br/psicoeduc/vygotsky/piaget%E2%80%99s-theory-child-language-and-thought/
Wolfe, R. A. (2000). Statistical analysis, a necessity for observational studies. Kidney International, 57(74), 14–18. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1523-1755.2000.07404.x
Woodman, R. W., Sawyer, J. E., & Griffin, R. W. (1993). Toward a theory of organizational creativity. Academy of Management Review, 18(2), 293–321. https://doi.org/10.2307/258761
Zhou, N., Kisselburgh, L., Chandrasegaran, S., Badam, S. K., Elmqvist, N., & Ramani, K. (2020). Using social interaction trace data and context to predict collaboration quality and creative fluency in collaborative design learning environments. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 136. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2019.102378