Risk-Taking and Creativity: Convergent, but Not Divergent Thinking Is Better in Low-Risk Takers

Abstract

The relationship between risk-taking and creativity is critical to understanding social harmony and innovation. Although some studies have assessed the link between risk-taking and divergent thinking, the association between risk-taking and convergent thinking remains unclear. Two studies were conducted to systemically investigate whether risk-taking is linked to convergent thinking. In Study 1, a sample of 127 healthy participants performed a Chinese remote associate test (RAT) and completed a risk-taking questionnaire. As predicted, risk-taking was negatively correlated with RAT performance, implying that risk-taking has a negative association with convergent thinking. Study 2 was an online survey study that replicated Study 1 and extended the measures to include self-rated risk and a measure of divergent thinking (the alternate uses task). The findings were fully replicated, showing that low risk-taking goes with better convergent thinking and risk-taking was not significantly correlated with divergent thinking. Furthermore, the risk-taking/convergent-thinking relationship was best described by a linear regression model in both studies. Taken together, these results suggest that appropriate reductions in risk-taking can boost convergent thinking.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31500870), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2017B14514), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2017M621603), China Scholarship Council Foundation (201706715037), Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu College of China (17KJB190002), and the Philosophical and Social Science Foundation of Jiangsu Colleges of China (2017SJB0649). We send our sincere thanks to Miss Zongying Liu, Haixia Gu, and Yuan Zhao for their scoring the divergent thinking test.

Notes

¹ The elaboration score was not meaningful enough, as only a few elaborated responses were provided by participants.

² The response time was controlled by the participants through their own timing tools (e.g., timing software in their computers/telephones or alarm clocks/watches). To ensure that participants followed the rules and completed each divergent thinking item within the time interval, they were informed that the response time for each item was automatically monitored by the web service platform and their time-keeping performance would be rewarded.

³ Nonlinear (including logarithmic and quadratic) regressions of these two risk-taking measures on the Chinese RAT solution accuracy and on the three indicators of divergent thinking were also calculated, but none of them reached the level of statistical significance (p > 0.05), except the quadratic model of the RPI (only for the square of the RPI on the average originality score; β = −0.66, SE = 0.003, t₁₅₁ = −2.27, p < 0.05).