Can Viewing Films Promote Creative Thinking Styles? Examining The Complex Roles of Personality and Meaning-Making

ABSTRACT

Can watching avant-garde film temporarily shift individuals’ thinking styles? What factors influence how individuals respond to avant-garde films? The perception of meaning is a critical element in the positive reception of visual artworks and may be an important mediating step in influencing creative thought. This highlights a unique problem for art forms in which meaning is more open to interpretation, such as avant-garde art. Past research indicates a relationship between preference for nonrepresentational art forms and schizotypy; this may be driven by differences in the ability to perceive meaning. In two studies, we investigate the ability of two film types to promote two correlates of creativity, overinclusive thinking – characterized by conceptual expansion – and creative inspiration, as a function of meaning-making and schizotypy. We find that lower levels of schizotypy predict greater perceived meaning from a conventional film, which in turn mediates an effect on overinclusive thinking and creative inspiration. We further find that once schizotypy and meaning-making are held constant, viewing an avant-garde film leads to greater overinclusive thinking. The results suggest that it may be necessary for individuals lower in schizotypy to experience a film as meaningful in order to be afforded further cognitive opportunities related to creative thinking.

Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. Sowon Park for her invaluable support during this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2022.2138040.

Additional information

Funding

This project was funded by an NSF Crossroads Fellowship; National Science Foundation (NSF); [Project Id: HMNSF1; Award #: 1820886]; University of California, Santa Barbara, Grad Division.