Feeling Creative, Being Creative: An Empirical Study of Diversity and Creativity in Teams

Abstract

Two empirical studies explored objectively measured creative fluency and subjectively perceived creativity in cognitively diverse teams. Results indicate that cognitive diversity may be beneficial for objective functioning but may damage team satisfaction, affect, and members' impressions of their creative performance. Subjective ratings diverged greatly from more objective measures and were more closely related to affective measures. The overall findings present creativity as a complex multidimensional construct, and cognitive diversity as an important predictor of both team emotions and outcomes. Arguments are presented for the value of subjectively perceived creativity, even in the absence of more concrete performance in the immediate time period.