Cultural and Bilingual Influences on Artistic Creativity Performances: Comparison of German and Chinese Students

Abstract

Empirical research on the relationship between culture and creativity has thus far yielded no consistent results. Investigations of the differences are mostly post-hoc, and results are inconclusive. A creativity-value-oriented theory is proposed to explain cultural differences, as an alternative to ethnic and language effects. This study was conducted to compare the performances of artistic creativity of Germans and Chinese. Results revealed that the four groups of students examined (German students of Caucasian descent, German students of Asian descent, Chinese students studying abroad, and Chinese students studying in China) differed in their artistic creativity. German participants (Caucasian Germans and Asian Germans) produced more creative and aesthetically pleasing artwork than did their Chinese counterparts (Chinese studying abroad and domestic Chinese). This difference was observed by both German and Chinese judges. There no significant subgroup differences in creative performances—no difference between the two German groups, and no difference between the two Chinese groups. Finally, although there were significant differences between German judges, Chinese judges studying abroad, and domestic Chinese judges in judging the artworks, these were not due to a preference for artwork from students from their own cultural background. Chinese and German judges roughly agreed on what constitutes creativity. These results suggest that cultural differences affect creative performances.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Chongde Lin and Ralf Schwarzer for their support, and the members of the Department of Educational Science and Psychology at Freie Universität Berlin and the members of the institute of Developmental Psychology at Beijing Normal University. At the same time, thanks to Kaiping Peng and Christian Nowak for draft reading.

This research was supported in part by National Nature Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 31100755), Scientific Foundation for Returned Overseas Chinese Scholars, Ministry of Education and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation, as well as 2011 Teacher Education and Teaching Reform Projects and 2012 Master Students Education Project (Grant No. GERP—12—04) of Shaanxi Normal University to the first author. And it was also partly supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No. GK201101001). Thanks to Lingshan Liu, Bärbel Günter, Amelie Wiedemann, Jianpei Yang, Jingzhu Lv who helped us with the translation of the researching materials. The time all of the 21 judges devoted to the experiment of artistic creativity is much appreciated; they are Stefan Schaffer, Erik Bernoth, Sascha Wagner, Jörg-Manuel von Brietzke, Lena Remme, Jana Richert, Lisa Warner, Junling Yao, Yaqin Yang, Jing Qu, Jun Zhang, Yang Yu, Fangzhou Zhao, Guanggang Ma, Zongqian Zhang, Jianhui Li, Lin Li, Dr. Xuanwei Cao, Lili Li, Xiüling Wu, and Nan Wu. A lot of thanks go to the people who helped us with the sampling in Germany and China; they are Picheng Wang, Yi Lu, Tao Yang, Ibrahim Raoua Ouedraogo, Xuyi Xu, and Xiaohao Wang.

Notes

Note. The numbers indicate the reliabilities of the judges on each dimension. Creat = creativity; Like = likeability; Appr = appropriateness; Tech = technical quality; Imag = imagination; Art = artistic level; Elab = elaboration; Gene = general impression.

Note. For each comparison among the four groups, Caucasian German, Asian German, studying abroad Chinese and domestic Chinese, means differ significantly at p < .01.

Note. Creat = creativity; Like = likeability; Appr = appropriateness; Tech = technical quality; Imag = imagination; Art = artistic level; Elab = elaboration; Gene = general impression.

Note. Creat = creativity; Like = likeability; Appr = appropriateness; Tech = technical quality; Imag = imagination; Art = artistic level; Elab = elaboration; Gene = general impression.

Note. The numbers indicate the correlation of the art products of all the participants Creat = creativity; Like = likeability; Appr = appropriateness; Tech = technical quality; Imag = imagination; Art = artistic level; Elab = elaboration; Gene = general impression.

*p < .05. **p < .01 (two-tailed).