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When Problems Lead to Ideas: The Roles of Daily Vigor and Social Interactions
Author(s) -
Groenewoudt Aleid C.,
Rooks Gerrit,
Gool Piet J. R.
Publication year - 2019
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/jocb.179
Subject(s) - creativity , identification (biology) , relation (database) , redundancy (engineering) , psychology , social psychology , social relation , lead (geology) , computer science , ecology , data mining , biology , operating system , geomorphology , geology
In this study, we investigate idea generation by conducting a diary study. We hypothesized that idea generation depends on problem identification, and that this relation is moderated by two factors: (a) the number of social interactions an individual has with “non‐redundant” network connections, and (b) an individual's level of vigor. The hypotheses were tested by making use of a diary study among 31 employees of a Dutch applied university over a period of 2 weeks. Results showed that idea generation results from the identification of problems that require new ideas to solve them. An individual's number of social interactions and the level of redundancy of these social interactions moderated this relation. The level of vigor of an individual did not predict idea generation, but results suggest that vigor is needed for interacting with others. Furthermore, this study contributes to the creativity research using a new approach to look at the effects of social interactions by relating them to the overall structure of social networks.