From quantity to quality : cognitive, motivational and social aspects of creative idea generation and selection

Abstract

The main principles behind brainstorming are the belief that quantity breeds quality, and the deferment of judgment. Adherence to the brainstorming rules, which are derived from these principles, should increase the number of high-quality ideas that are generated in a brainstorming session, and should therefore increase the chance that a good idea gets selected for further development. This last assumption is central to this dissertation. Eight experiments are reported. My findings indicated that (1) productivity was not related to the quality of selected ideas, i.e., generating more ideas did not increase the chance that good ideas were selected; (2) deep exploration of domain knowledge increased the originality of generated, but not selected, ideas; (3) the selection of creative ideas was hindered by participants' persistent tendency to select ideas that were perceived as feasible and desirable.