Cooperative Criticism: When Criticism Enhances Creativity in Brainstorming and Negotiation

Long-standing wisdom holds that criticism is antithetical to effective brainstorming because it incites intragroup conflict. However, a number of recent studies have challenged this assumption, suggesting that criticism might actually enhance creativity in brainstorming by fostering divergent thinking. Our paper reconciles these perspectives with new theory and a multimethod investigation to explain when and why criticism promotes creativity in brainstorming. We propose that a cooperative social context allows criticism to be construed positively, spurring creativity without inciting intragroup conflict, whereas a competitive social context makes criticism more divisive, leading to intragroup conflict and a corresponding reduction in creativity. We found support for this theory from a field experiment involving 100 group brainstorming sessions with actual stakeholders in a controversial urban planning project. In a cooperative context, instructions encouraging criticism yielded more ideas and more creative ideas, whereas in a competitive context, encouraging criticism yielded fewer ideas and less creative ideas. We replicated this finding in a laboratory study involving brainstorming in the context of a union-management negotiation scenario, which allowed us to hold constant the nature of the criticism. Taken together, our findings suggest that the optimal context for creativity in brainstorming is a cooperative one in which criticism occurs but is interpreted constructively because the brainstorming parties perceive their goals as aligned.