Individualism and Collectivism as Predictors of Creative Potentials and Real-Life Creativity in China and US

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the relationships between culture and creativity from the perspective of individualism and collectivism (I/C). Specifically, we compared cultural differences in I/C as well as creativity between two major economies, namely China and the US. We also examined how specific dimensions of I/C are associated with indices of creativity in these two cultural contexts. Four hundred and thirty-four Chinese college students and four hundred and seventy-eight US college students were recruited to complete a measure of I/C, a test of creative potentials, and a real-life creativity inventory. A four-dimensional I/C measure which assesses participants’ horizontal individualistic (HI), vertical individualistic (VI), horizontal collectivistic (HC), and vertical collectivistic (VC) tendencies was employed. The results showed significant differences in all of the I/C and creativity indices between the two countries. In addition, across the two cultural contexts, 1) HI, VI, and HC were all positively related to creativity to some extent; and 2) VC was negatively associated with creativity to some extent. Most importantly, culture-specific links between VI and creativity, HC and creativity, and VC and creativity were found in the Chinese and US samples. The findings were discussed from a culturally contextualized perspective.