The role of divergent thinking in interpersonal trust during the COVID-19 pandemic: creative aspects
Abstract
Interpersonal trust relies on positive expectations about other people. Social psychology distinguishes ingroup (individuals share social identity, e.g., family) from outgroup trust (individuals do not share social identity, e.g., strangers). We conducted an experimental study to test if divergent thinking, which relies on an inclusive processing mode, differently affected ingroup and outgroup trust during the lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A sample of 114 healthy college students, with no prior or current COVID-19 infection (mean age = 23.66, sd = 2.53, 89% women) was recruited. Interpersonal trust was measured by three ingroup and three outgroup trust items. Divergent thinking was measured by the alternative uses task, which asked to find alternative uses for common objects. Divergent thinking was scored by two independent raters in terms of fluency and quality of ideas. To control for generalized anxiety and mood states, the generalized anxiety disorder scale and the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule were administered, respectively. To control for the inclusiveness of divergent thinking performance, the alternative uses task was administered using three types of instructions. Thus, the sample was divided in three groups of 38 participants according to the divergent thinking task instructions: “be-fluent: find as many different uses for the objects”, “be-creative: find creative uses for the objects”, and “be fluent and creative: find as many different and creative uses of the objects”. The hierarchical regression analyses showed that the quality, but not the quantity of divergent thinking positively predicted only outgroup trust, whereas the mood positively predicted ingroup trust. Divergent thinking task instructions did not affect interpersonal trust. Thus, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the quality of divergent thinking supports only outgroup trust based on the inclusive processing mode, meaning that people showing high ability to produce uncommon, remote and clever ideas are more inclusive and by consequence more prone to trust strangers. Limitations and implications are discussed.
Keyword : coronavirus, creativity, emotions, group membership, inclusive processing mode, social identity, trust
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
References
Acar, S., Runco, M. A., & Park, H. (2020). What should people be told when they take a divergent thinking test? A meta-analytic review of explicit instructions for divergent thinking. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 14(1), 39–49. https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000256
Algan, Y., Guriev, S., Papaioannou, E., & Passari, E. (2018). The European trust crisis and the rise of populism. European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Working Paper Series, 208. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3128274
Allison, P. D. (1999). Multiple regression: A primer. Pine Forge Press, Inc.
Balliet, D., & Lange, van P. A. M. (2013). Trust, conflict, and cooperation: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 139(5), 1090–1112. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0030939
Bao, Y., Sun, Y., Meng, Sh., Shi, J., & Lu, L. (2020). 2019-nCoV epidemic: Address mental health care to empower society. The Lancet, 395(10224), e37–e38. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30309-3
Bauer, M., Blattman, Ch., Chytilová, J., Henrich, J., Miguel, E., & Mitts, T. (2016). Can war foster cooperation? Journal of Economic Perspectives, 30(3), 249–274. https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.30.3.249
Beard, C., & Björgvinsson, T. (2014). Beyond generalized anxiety disorder: Psychometric properties of the GAD-7 in a heterogeneous psychiatric sample. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 28(6), 547–552. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2014.06.002
Beaty, R. E., Kenett, Y. N., Christensen, A. P., Rosenberg, M. D., Benedek, M., Chen, Q., Fink, A., Qiu, J., Kwapil, Th. R., Kane, M. J., & Silvia, P. J. (2018). Robust prediction of individual creative ability from brain functional connectivity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 15(5), 1087–1092. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1713532115
Beaty, R. E., Zeitlen, D. C., Baker, B. S., & Kenett, Y. N. (2021). Forward flow and creative thought: Assessing associative cognition and its role in divergent thinking. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 41. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2021.100859
Bienvenu, O. J., Nestadt, G., Samuels, J. F., Costa, P. T., Howard, W. T., & Eaton, W. W. (2001). Phobic, panic, and major depressive disorders and the five-factor model of personality. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 189(3), 154–161. https://doi.org/10.1097/00005053-200103000-00003
Bonferroni, C. E. (1936). Teoria statistica delle classi e calcolo delle probabilitá. Pubblicazioni del R Istituto Superiore di Scienze Economiche e Commericiali di Firenze, 8, 3–62.
Cannito, L., Crosta, di A., Palumbo, R., Ceccato, I., Anzani, S., Malva, la P., Palumbo, R., & Domenico, di A. (2020). Health anxiety and attentional bias toward virus-related stimuli during the COVID-19 pandemic. Scientific Reports, 10. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-73599-8
Cao, W., Fang, Z., Hou, G., Han, M., Xu, X., Dong, J., & Zheng, J. (2020). The psychological impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on college students in China. Psychiatry Research, 287. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2020.112934
Ceccato, I., Palumbo, R., Crosta, di A., Malva, la P., Marchetti, D., Maiella, R., Verrocchio, M. C., Marin, A., Mammarella, N., Palumbo, R., & Domenico, di A. (2021). Age-related differences in the perception of COVID-19 emergency during the Italian outbreak. Aging and Mental Health, 25(7), 1305–1313. https://doi.org/10.1080/13607863.2020.1856781
Colzato, L. S., Wildenberg, van den W. P. M., & Hommel, B. (2013). Increasing self–other integration through divergent thinking. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 20, 1011–1016. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-013-0413-4
Cornine, A. (2020). Reducing nursing student anxiety in the clinical setting: An integrative review. Nursing Education Perspectives, 41(4), 229–234. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.NEP.0000000000000633
Crepaz, M. M. L., Polk, J. T., Bakker, R. S., & Singh, Sh. P. (2014). Trust matters: The impact of ingroup and outgroup trust on nativism and civicness. Social Science Quarterly, 95(4), 938–959. https://doi.org/10.1111/ssqu.12082
Cropley, A. (2006). In praise of convergent thinking. Creativity Research Journal, 18(3), 391–404. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15326934crj1803_13
Crosta, di A., Palumbo, R., Marchetti, D., Ceccato, I., Malva, la P., Maiella, R., Cipi, M., Roma, P., Mammarella, N., Verrocchio, M. C., & Domenico, di A. (2020). Individual differences, economic stability, and fear of contagion as risk factors for PTSD symptoms in the COVID-19 emergency. Frontiers in Psychology, 11. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.567367
Cruwys, T., Greenaway, K. H., Ferris, L. J., Rathbone, J. A., Saeri, A. K., Williams, E., Parker, S. L., Chang, M. X.-L., Croft, N., Bingley, W., & Grace, L. (2021). When trust goes wrong: A social identity model of risk taking. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 120(1), 57–83. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000243
Dear, B. F., Titov, N., Sunderland, M., McMillan, D., Anderson, T., Lorian, C., & Robinson, E. (2011). Psychometric comparison of the generalized anxiety disorder scale-7 and the Penn State Worry questionnaire for measuring response during treatment of generalised anxiety disorder. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, 40(3), 216–227. https://doi.org/10.1080/16506073.2011.582138
Delhey, J., & Welzel, Ch. (2012). Generalizing trust: How outgroup-trust grows beyond ingroup-trust. World Values Research, 5(3), 45–69. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2390636
Dunn, J. R., & Schweitzer, M. E. (2005). Feeling and believing: The influence of emotion on trust. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88(5), 736–748. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.88.5.736
Ellena, A. M., Aresi, G., Marta, E., & Pozzi, M. (2021). Post-traumatic growth dimensions differently mediate the relationship between national identity and interpersonal trust among young adults: A study on COVID-19 crisis in Italy. Frontiers in Psychology, 11. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.576610
Esaiasson, P., Sohlberg, J., Ghersetti, M., & Johansson, B. (2021). How the Coronavirus crisis affects citizen trust in institutions and in unknown others: Evidence from “The Swedish experiment”. European Journal of Political Research, 60(3), 748–760. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12419
Fell, L. (2020). Trust and COVID-19: Implications for interpersonal, workplace, institutional, and information-based trust. Digital Government: Research and Practice, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.1145/3428472
Field, A. (2009). Discovering statistics using SPSS. SAGE Publications Ltd.
Fischer, R., & Hommel, B. (2012). Deep thinking increases task-set shielding and reduces shifting flexibility in dual-task performance. Cognition, 123(2), 303–307. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2011.11.015
Forthmann, B., Holling, H., Çelik, P., Storme, M., & Lubart, T. (2017). Typing speed as a confounding variable and the measurement of quality in divergent thinking. Creativity Research Journal, 29(3), 257–269. https://doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2017.1360059
Golub, S. A., Gilbert, D. T., & Wilson, T. D. (2009). Anticipating one’s troubles: The costs and benefits of negative expectations. Emotion, 9(2), 277–281. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014716
Guilford, J. P. (1967). Creativity: Yesterday, today and tomorrow. Journal of Creative Behavior, 1(1), 3–14. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2162-6057.1967.tb00002.x
Hair, Jr. J. F., Black, W. C., Babin, B. J., & Anderson, R. E. (2010). Multivariate data analysis. Prentice Hall.
Haslam, S. A. (2014). Making good theory practical: Five lessons for an applied social identity approach to challenges of organizational, health, and clinical psychology. British Journal of Social Psychology, 53(1), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12061
Hommel, B., & Colzato, L. S. (2015). Interpersonal trust: An event-based account. Frontiers in Psychology, 6. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01399
Huang, Y., & Zhao, N. (2020). Generalized anxiety disorder, depressive symptoms and sleep quality during COVID-19 outbreak in China: A web-based cross-sectional survey. Psychiatry Research, 288. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2020.112954
Hughes, B. L., Ambady, N., & Zaki, J. (2017). Trusting outgroup, but notingroup members, requires control: Neural and behavioral evidence. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 12(3), 372–381. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsw139
Japardi, K., Bookheimer, S., Knudsen, K., Ghahremani, D. G., & Bilder, R. M. (2018). Functional magnetic resonance imaging of divergent and convergent thinking in big-c creativity. Neuropsychologia, 118A, 59–67. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2018.02.017
Kmietowicz, Z. (2020). Rules on isolation rooms for suspected COVID-19 cases in GP surgeries to be relaxed. BMJ, 368. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m707
Kramer, R. M., & Brewer, M. B. (1984). Effects of group identity on resource use in a simulated commons dilemma. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46(5), 1044–1057. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.46.5.1044
Kramer, R. M., Brewer, M. B., & Hanna, B. A. (1996). Collective trust and collective action: The decision to trust as a social decision. In R. M. Kramer & T. R. Tyler (Eds.), Trust in organizations: Frontiers of theory and research (pp. 357–389). SAGE Publications, Inc. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781452243610.n17
Lewicki, R. J., & Benedict Bunker, B. (1996). Developing and maintaining trust in work relationships. In R. M. Kramer & T. R. Tyler (Eds.), Trust in organizations: Frontiers of theory and research (pp. 114–139). SAGE Publications, Inc. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781452243610.n7
Li, T. W., Mei-chun Lee, T., Goodwin, R., Ben-Ezra, M., Liang, L., Liu, H., & Hou, W. K. (2020). Social capital, income loss, and psychobehavioral responses amid COVID-19: A population-based analysis. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(23). https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17238888
Lount, Jr. R. B. (2010). The impact of positive mood on trust in interpersonal and intergroup interactions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(3), 420–433. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0017344
Löwe, B., Decker, O., Müller, S., Brähler, E., Schellberg, D., Herzog, W., & Yorck Herzberg, Ph. (2008). Validation and standardization of the Generalized Anxiety Disorder Screener (GAD-7) in the general population. Medical Care: Official Journal of the Medical Care Section, American Public Health Association, 46(3), 266–274. https://doi.org/10.1097/MLR.0b013e318160d093
Maitner, A. T., Mackie, D. M., & Smith, E. R. (2007). Antecedents and consequences of satisfaction and guilt following ingroup aggression. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 10(2), 223–237. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430207075154
Millisecond. (2022). Inquisit: Precision testing for psychological research. https://www.millisecond.com/
Mislin, A., Williams, L. V., & Shaughnessy, B. A. (2015). Motivating trust: Can mood and incentives increase interpersonal trust? Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 58, 11–19. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socec.2015.06.001
Moons, W. G., Leonard, D. J., Mackie, D. M., & Smith, E. R. (2009). I feel our pain: Antecedents and consequences of emotional self-stereotyping. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45(4), 760–769. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2009.04.016
Ovando-Tellez, M. P., Bieth, Th., Bernard, M., & Volle, E. (2019). The Contribution of the lesion approach to the neuroscience of creative cognition. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 27, 100–108. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2018.10.011
Palmiero, M., Fusi, G., Crepaldi, M., Borsa, V. M., & Rusconi, M. L. (2022). Divergent thinking and the core executive functions: A state of the art review. Cognitive Processing, 23, 341–366. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-022-01091-4
Palmiero, M., Giulianella, L., Guariglia, P., Boccia, M., D’Amico, S., & Piccardi, L. (2019). The dancers’ visuospatial body map explains their enhanced divergence in the production of motor forms: Evidence in the early development. Frontiers in Psychology, 10. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00768
Palmiero, M., Guariglia, P., Crivello, R., & Piccardi, L. (2020). The relationships between musical expertise and divergent thinking. Acta Psychologica, 203. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2019.102990
Phillips, L. H., Smith, L., & Gilhooly, K. J. (2002). The effects of adult aging and induced positive and negative mood on planning. Emotion, 2(3), 263–272. https://doi.org/10.1037/1528-3542.2.3.263
Rotenberg, K. J. (1994). Loneliness and interpersonal trust. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 13(2), 152–173. https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.1994.13.2.152
Rousseau, D. M., Sitkin, S. B., Burt, R. S., & Camerer, C. (1998). Not so different after all: A cross-discipline view of trust. Academy of Management Review, 23(3), 393–404. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1998.926617
Sellaro, R., Hommel, B., Kwaadsteniet, de E. W., Groep, van de S., & Colzato, L. S. (2014). Increasing interpersonal trust through divergent thinking. Frontiers in Psychology, 5. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00561
Sheather, S. J. (2009). Springer texts in statistics. A modern approach to regression with R. G. Casella, S. Fienberg, & I. Olkin (Eds.). Springer Science+Business Media, LLC. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-09608-7
Silvia, P. J., Winterstein, B. P., Willse, J. T., Barona, Ch. M., Cram, J. T., Hess, K. I., Martinez, J. L., & Richard, C. A. (2008). Assessing creativity with divergent thinking tasks: Exploring the reliability and validity of new subjective scoring methods. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 2(2), 68–85. https://doi.org/10.1037/1931-3896.2.2.68
Smith, E. R., Seger, C. R., & Mackie, D. M. (2007). Can emotions be truly group level? Evidence regarding four conceptual criteria. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93(3), 431–446. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.93.3.431
Spitzer, R. L., Kroenke, K., Williams, J. B. W., & Löwe, B. (2006). A brief measure for assessing generalized anxiety disorder: The GAD-7. Archives of Internal Medicine, 166(10), 1092–1097. https://doi.org/10.1001/archinte.166.10.1092
Stolte, M., García, T., Luit, van J. E. H., Oranje, B., & Kroesbergen, E. H. (2020). The contribution of executive functions in predicting mathematical creativity in typical elementary school classes: A twofold role for updating. Journal of Intelligence, 8(2). https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence8020026
Sun, J., Chen, Q., Zhang, Q., Li, Y., Li, H., Wei, D., Yang, W., & Qiu, J. (2016). Training your brain to be more creative: Brain functional and structural changes induced by divergent thinking training. Human Brain Mapping, 37(10), 3375–3387. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.23246
Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 33–47). Brooks/Cole Publishing Company.
Terracciano, A., McCrae, R. R., & Costa, Jr. P. T. (2003). Factorial and construct validity of the Italian positive and negative affect schedule (PANAS). European Journal of Psychological Assessment, 19(2), 131–141. https://doi.org/10.1027//1015-5759.19.2.131
Tjosvold, D. (1988). Cooperative and competitive interdependence: Collaboration between departments to serve customers. Group and Organization Studies, 13(3), 274–289. https://doi.org/10.1177/105960118801300303
Turner, J. C., Hogg, M. A., Oakes, P. J., Reicher, S. D., & Wetherell, M. S. (1987). Rediscovering the social group: A self-categorization theory. Basil Blackwell.
Vinceti, M., Filippini, T., Rothman, K. J., Federico, di S., & Orsini, N. (2021). SARS-CoV-2 infection incidence during the first and second COVID-19 waves in Italy. Environmental Research, 197. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2021.111097
Wang, Ch., Horby, P. W., Hayden, F. G., & Gao, G. F. (2020). A novel Coronavirus outbreak of global health concern. The Lancet, 395, 470–473. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30185-9
Watson, D., Clark Lee, A., & Tellegen, A. (1988). Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: The PANAS scales. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(6), 1063–1070. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.54.6.1063
World Health Organization. (2020). Current novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak. https://www.who.int/health-topics/coronavirus
Wu, X., Yang, W., Tong, D., Sun, J., Chen, Q., Wei, D., Zhang, Q., Zhang, M., & Qiu, J. (2015). A meta‐analysis of neuroimaging studies on divergent thinking using activation likelihood estimation. Human Brain Mapping, 36(7), 2703–2718. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.22801
Yang, J., & Moorman, S. M. (2021). Beyond the individual: Evidence linking neighborhood trust and social isolation among community-dwelling older adults. The International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 92(1), 22–39. https://doi.org/10.1177/0091415019871201
Zabelina, D. L. (2018). Attention and creativity. In R. E. Jung & O. Vartanian (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of the neuroscience of creativity (pp. 161–179). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316556238.010