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Who are the Best‐Known National and Foreign Creators — a Comparative Study Among Undergraduates in China and Germany
Author(s) -
YUE XIAO DONG,
BENDER MICHAEL,
CHEUNG CHAUKIU
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
the journal of creative behavior
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.896
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 2162-6057
pISSN - 0022-0175
DOI - 10.1002/j.2162-6057.2011.tb01082.x
Subject(s) - creativity , salience (neuroscience) , german , china , psychology , perception , aesthetics , social psychology , political science , history , art , cognitive psychology , law , archaeology , neuroscience
Separate studies of Chinese and Western individuals have suggested that there are cultural differences in perceptions of creativity, particularly in an emphasis on meritorious salience versus aesthetic salience as bases for creativity, but cross‐cultural studies are needed to substantiate that difference. In this study, undergraduates from Giessen in Germany and Hong Kong and Nanjing in China provided data on the recognition of famous creative persons. Chinese undergraduates in Hong Kong and Nanjing mostly nominated politicians, scientists or inventors, but rarely nominated artists, musicians. German undergraduates mostly nominated philosophers, artists, and writers but rarely nominated politicians. This supports our assumption that the Chinese evaluation of creators emphasizes the meritorious salience of creativity whereas the German evaluation of creators emphasizes the aesthetic salience of creativity. Implications and limitations of this study are discussed at the end of the paper.