Abstract
Three experiments were performed to test Smith, Ward, and Schumacher’s (1993) conformity hypothesis— that people’s ideas will conform to examples they are shown in a creative generation task. Conformity was observed in all three experiments; participants tended to incorporate critical features of experimenter-provided examples. However, examination of total output, elaborateness of design, and the noncritical features did not confirm that the conformity effect constrained creative output in any of the three experiments. Increasing the number of examples increased the conformity effect (Experiment 1). Examples that covaried features that are naturally uncorrelated in the real world led to a greater subjective rating of creativity (Experiment 2). A delay between presentation and test increased conformity (Experiment 3), just as models of inadvertent plagiarism would predict. The explanatory power of theoretical accounts such as activation, retrieval blocking, structured imagination, and category abstraction are evaluated.
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This research was supported in part by a University of Georgia Research Foundation, Inc. grant awarded to the first author and a Sigma Xi Grant-in-Aid to each of the second and third authors. Appreciation is expressed to Evan Heit and to Tom Ward for insightful comments expressed on an earlier version.
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Marsh, R.L., Landau, J.D. & Hicks, J.L. How examples may (and may not) constrain creativity. Mem Cogn 24, 669–680 (1996). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03201091
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03201091