Examples in creative exhaustion: The role of example features and individual differences in creativity

This study examined how example features (i.e. idea novelty and idea diversity) affected creativity after creative exhaustion. In addition, how individual differences in creativity influenced the effect of example diversity was also investigated. By dividing examples into high-, medium- and low-novel ideas, experiment 1 revealed that idea originality was more enhanced in the high-novel example group than in the low-novel example and none example groups (control group). The low-novel group showed higher idea fluency and flexibility than the control group. In experiment 2, participants were divided into high-creative and low-creative groups. Both groups received diverse and similar examples with high novelty. Results showed that idea fluency, originality and flexibility were higher in the high-creative group than those in the low-creative group. Moreover, diverse examples facilitated fluency and flexibility while similar examples facilitated originality after creative exhaustion. These findings indicate that example features affect the stimulation effect of example after creative exhaustion.