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Can counter-stereotypes boost flexible thinking? Malgorzata A. Goclowska, Richard J. Crisp and Kirsty Labuschagne Group Processes Intergroup Relations 2013 16: 217 originally published online 7 May 2012 DOI: 10.1177/1368430212445076 The online version of this article can be found at: http://gpi.sagepub.com/content/16/2/217

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10.1177/1368430212445076Gocłowska et al.Group Processes & Intergroup Relations

Group Processes & Intergroup Relations Article

Can counter-stereotypes boost flexible thinking?

G P I R

Group Processes & Intergroup Relations 16(2) 217–231 © The Author(s) 2012 Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1368430212445076 gpir.sagepub.com

Małgorzata A. Gocłowska1, Richard J. Crisp1 and Kirsty Labuschagne1

Abstract To reduce prejudice psychologists design interventions requiring people to think of counter-stereotypes (i.e., people who defy stereotypic expectations––a strong woman, a Black President). Grounded in the idea that stereotypes constrain the ability to think flexibly, we propose that thinking of counterstereotypes can have benefits that extend beyond the goal of prejudice reduction––in particular to tasks measuring cognitive flexibility and creative performance. Findings supported this conjecture. In Experiment 1 priming a gender counter-stereotype enhanced cognitive flexibility. This effect could not be attributed to changes in mood. In Experiment 2, using a gender-independent manipulation, priming various social counter-stereotypes brought a boost to creative performance. We discuss implications of these extended benefits of counter-stereotypic thinking for developing future prejudice-reduction interventions. Keywords creativity, flexibility, mindsets, prejudice, stereotypes Paper received 6 November 2011; revised version accepted 14 March 2012. It is well established that thinking of counter-stereotypic people compels individuals to abandon the use of category labels (Hastie, Schroeder, & Weber, 1990; Hutter & Crisp, 2005; Kunda, Miller, & Claire, 1990). Grounded in the idea that social interactions can impact general cognitive functioning (Crisp & Turner, 2011; Ybarra, Burnstein, et al., 2008; Ybarra, Chan, Park, & Burnstein, 2008), we tested the hypothesis that thinking about counterstereotypes will lead to more flexible cognition, with impacts that reach beyond the domain of prejudice and stereotyping. Specifically, we expected that thinking of a counter-stereotype would activate

a mindset characterized by the inhibition of recently activated knowledge, leading to better performance on tasks measuring cognitive flexibility and creativity (De Dreu, Baas, & Nijstad, 2008).

1

University of Kent, UK

Corresponding author: Małgorzata A. Gocłowska, Centre for the Study of Group Processes, School of Psychology, University of Kent, Canterbury, CT2 7NP, UK Email: [email protected]


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Flexible pathway to creativity Flexible thinking entails a capacity to “break set”, go beyond the established and mentally accessible ways of thinking in favor of thinking differently from other people or differently from what is habitual (Schank & Abelson, 1977; for a recent review see Nijstad, De Dreu, Rietzschel, & Baas, 2010). Flexible thinking is adaptive as it allows people to efficiently switch between different behaviors and strategies in the face of novel situations and environmental demands. Notably, it can also contribute to people’s ability to create new ideas and solutions (Ashby, Isen, & Turken, 1999; De Dreu et al., 2008; Heilman, Nadeau, & Beversdorf, 2003; Koestler, 1968; Nijstad et al., 2010; Sligte, de Dreu, & Nijstad, 2011).1 For instance, when people are not restricted by one semantic category while generating uses for an object, the uses that they provide are as a result judged as more creative (De Dreu et al., 2008; De Dreu, Nijstad, & Baas, in press; Sligte et al., 2011). Consistent with this, when people overly rely on stereotypes and recently activated knowledge, this restrains their capacity for flexible and creative thought (Marsh, Ward, & Landau, 1999; Ward, Smith, & Vaid, 1997; Ward, 2007). Based on this premise, we argue that thinking about counterstereotypic people may lead to more general boosts in flexible thinking and creative performance. This happens because when stereotypes are disconfirmed, using stereotypic or schematic knowledge is no longer adaptive. In such cases individuals are compelled to employ a processing style that entails reaching for solutions remote from immediately and habitually accessible knowledge (Amabile, 1983; Mednick, 1962; Nijstad et al., 2010; Schank & Abelson, 1977).

Counter-stereotypic thinking There is a great deal of evidence that stereotyping— the process of assigning traits to individuals based upon their group membership—can be curtailed by the availability of stereotype incongruent information (e.g., Blair, Ma, & Lenton, 2001; Crisp & Nicel, 2004; Macrae, Bodenhausen, & Milne, 1995;

Rudman, Ashmore, & Gary, 2001). Merely thinking of counter-stereotypes has been shown to decrease stereotyping. In one series of studies participants created a mental image of a counterstereotypic strong woman, which resulted in significantly weaker subsequent levels of gender stereotyping (Blair et al., 2001). In another line of research, White participants exposed to positive Black group members demonstrated weaker associations of Black and negative stimuli on an Implicit Association Test, even 24 hours after the experimental manipulation (Dasgupta & Greenwald, 2001). These effects were observed in laboratory as well as field studies: Students exposed to female leaders expressed less automatic gender stereotyping in an experimental setting (Dasgupta & Asgari, 2004; Study 1), as well as with long-term exposure while attending a college staffed by female leaders (Dasgupta & Asgari, 2004; Study 2). Similar effects occurred when people were compelled to form impressions of counterstereotypic targets: When people were encouraged to think about others in ways that contradict stereotypic expectations—meeting a Black CEO, a gay soldier, a woman engineer—the impressions formed were more “individuated” and relied less on the recall of easily accessible stereotypic information from memory (e.g., Hastie et al., 1990; Hall & Crisp, 2005; Hutter & Crisp, 2005; Kunda et al., 1990). Counterstereotypes have been shown to benefit not just to the immediate accessibility of stereotypes about others, but also the accessibility of gender-related self-stereotypes (Asgari, Dasgupta, & Cote, 2010), and it has been suggested that they may reduce stereotype threat (Crisp, Bache, & Maitner, 2009). Arguably, the results of these studies suggest that counter-stereotypes compel people to abandon the use of stereotypic and structured thinking in favor of more cognitively flexible approaches.

Priming a flexible thinking mindset We argue that benefits from counter-stereotypic thinking will extend beyond the immediate decrease in stereotype accessibility, to the activation of a mindset characterized by enhanced cognitive flexibility. Mindsets are goal-related orientations in


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information processing (e.g., Gollwitzer, Heckhausen, & Steller, 1990). When a mindset is activated, the goal pursued or mental procedure exercised in one task typically carries-over and influences a new context (e.g., Markman, Lindberg, Kray, & Galinsky, 2007; Maddux & Galinsky, 2009). More importantly to the current investigation, several studies have demonstrated, that it is possible to prime a mindset of “thinking outside the box,” akin to the flexible pathway in the Dual Pathway to Creativity Model (De Dreu et al., 2008), or a broad attention focus (Förster & Danneberg, 2010; Marguc, Gillebaart, & Förster, 2010). For instance, a flexible thinking mindset can be elicited by being in a position of power (Galinsky, Magee, Gruenfeld, Whitson, & Liljenquist, 2008; Sligte et al., 2011) or recalling past multicultural experiences (Maddux, Adam, & Galinsky, 2010; Maddux & Galinsky, 2009). Also social interactions have been shown to increase individuals’ levels of cognitive flexibility (Ybarra, Burnstein, et al., 2008). Following findings of how counter-stereotypes decrease reliance on stereotypic thinking, we hypothesized that such stimuli could also activate a flexible thinking mindset. A flexible mindset would be characterized by information processing that is less influenced by immediately accessible knowledge, allowing for more creative thinking. Specifically, we now know that thinking about counter-stereotypic people involves the cognitive inhibition of stereotypic traits (Blair et al., 2001; Crisp & Nicel, 2004; Hutter & Crisp, 2005; 2008; Macrae et al., 1995; Rudman et al., 2001). So after thinking of a counter-stereotypic person, people are less likely to use stereotypes— highly accessible knowledge structures. If this thinking mindset were to generalize to other domains, unrelated to stereotypic thinking, it should be of benefit to any tasks that require the inhibition of existing knowledge - such as cognitive flexibility tasks (Experiment 1) or creativity tasks (Experiment 2). In other words, counterstereotypic thinking should compel individuals to employ a processing style that avoids the use of immediately and habitually accessible knowledge

(Amabile, 1983; Mednick, 1962; Nijstad et al., 2010; Schank & Abelson, 1977).

This research We predicted that thinking of counter-stereotypes would lead to more flexible performance on a subsequent, unrelated task. We tested this idea using two different procedures: In Experiment 1, an impression formation task, and in Experiment 2, a task in which participants had to generate different counter-stereotypes. If thinking of counterstereotypic exemplars activates a cognitive flexibility mindset, we should observe boosts to performance on subsequent tasks measuring cognitive flexibility and creative performance. In Experiment 1 we therefore tested whether thinking about a gender counter-stereotypic target increased flexible thinking. In Experiment 2 we replicated these results using an alternative manipulation that did not focus on a specific (e.g., gender) stereotype, and we examined whether the proposed flexibility mindset could boost creative performance.

Experiment 1 First, we tested the idea that forming impressions of a counter-stereotypic individual would increase cognitive flexibility on a subsequent task, unrelated to the counter-stereotypic target. We asked participants to think of a person belonging to a stereotypic or counter-stereotypic combination of social categories (see Hutter & Crisp, 2005; Kunda et al., 1990). This procedure has in the past been successfully used to prompt people to abandon stereotypic thinking in favor of more individuated impression formation (Hutter & Crisp, 2005, 2006, 2008). We then measured flexibility—peoples’ ability to go beyond immediately activated knowledge. To do this, we used the “inadvertent plagiarism” task utilized in previous research (Dijksterhuis & Meurs, 2006; Marsh et al., 1999). People have an unconscious tendency to be restrained by the currently activated knowledge structures and exemplars



220 (Marsh et al., 1999; Ward, 1994; Ward et al., 1997). When looking for solutions or generating ideas, individuals first scan their memory for the best fitting idea, and the information found is later used as building blocks to the new idea or problem solution. For instance, when asked to generate new names for a commercial product, people will to a large extent copy the orthographic structure of exemplars given to them in the instruction (Marsh et al., 1999). Generating items not in line with recently activated knowledge would be indicative of a cognitively flexible mindset (Dijksterhuis & Meurs, 2006; Duncker, 1945). We therefore expected that, on this task, prior engagement in thinking of a counter-stereotypic individual would boost flexibility, expressed as reduced tendency to copy the orthographic structure of exemplars given in the task instruction.

Method Participants and design Sixty-five undergraduate volunteers (52 females, Mean age = 21) took part in this online experiment and received course credits for their involvement. Participants were asked to generate adjectives to describe a female mechanic (counter-stereotype) or a male mechanic (stereotype) using ten single adjectives (based on the procedure used by Hastie et al., 1990; Hutter & Crisp, 2005; 2006; Hutter, Crisp, Humphreys, Waters, & Moffitt, 2009; Kunda et al., 1990). Following that, they completed the flexibility measure and mood controls. Dependent variables Following the manipulation, we measured participants’ cognitive flexibility. To test our manipulation, we coded participants’ performance on the impression formation task. To account for alternative explanations, we measured participants’ mood. For correlations between these variables see Table 1. Attributes As a manipulation check, we looked at whether our experimental condition was perceived as less stereotypic, relative to the control condition. To do this, we measured the number

Table 1. Correlations between variables (Experiment 1) 1 1 2 3 4 5 6

Condition Constituent –.370** Emergent .312* Flexibility .317* Valence .194 Arousal .050

2

3

4

5

–.682** –.035 –.014 –.077

.013 –.020 –.018 –.029 –.004 .777**

*p < .05; **p < .01.

of constituent (stereotypic) and emergent (emerging from the unique combination) attributes used in the description of counter-stereotypic (vs. stereotypic) targets. Past research has argued that when people form impressions of counter-stereotypes they use more emergent (novel) attributes in order to explain away the stereotypic inconsistency (e.g., Hastie et al.,1990; Hall & Crisp, 2005; Hutter & Crisp, 2005; Kunda et al., 1990). Two raters blind to condition and hypotheses were instructed to follow the definition established in previous research that emergent attributes are only those used in the counter-stereotypic category combination (‘female mechanic’), but not when describing the categories which constitute this combination (‘female’ or ‘mechanic’). Some participants used an attribute or its synonym more than once (e.g., muscly and masculine to describe a male mechanic), and such a repetition or synonym would not be included in the count. Coders’ rating was reliable: inter-rater Cronbach’s α = .66 for constituent, and α = .75 for emergent attributes. We averaged the two raters’ scores into a singe variable of constituent, and another one of emergent, attributes. Cognitive flexibility To capture cognitive flexibility, we measured the extent to which participants copied the grammatical structure of exemplars given in the instruction, instead of generating novel names. Participants were asked to generate three new names of pasta, and were given five examples of non-existent names. All the examples ended with the letter “i,” but participants were never explicitly told that they


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should copy any features of those examples. A few participants listed an existing pasta name, and such answers were not included in the count. Following Dijksterhuis and Meurs (2006) we counted the number of new pasta names for all participants. Flexibility (ability to ignore easily accessible exemplars) was measured by computing the number of new pasta names that despite the cued information did not end with an “i” (diverging items). Mood In past research positive mood and arousal were found to facilitate creative performance (Ashby et al., 1999; De Dreu et al., 2008; Filipowicz, 2006; Lyubomirsky, King, & Diener, 2005). To eliminate this as an alternative explanation, we used mood items from the mood introspection scale (Mayer & Gaschke, 1988), and asked participants to rate to what extent they experienced this mood during the experimental procedure (1 = not at all; 7 = very much). To measure mood valence, we computed the PleasantUnpleasant scale from Mayer and Gashke (1998) by adding participant’s rating of how active, calm, caring, content, happy, lively, loving, and peppy they feel, and adding that to the reverse coded items such as drowsy, fed up, gloomy, grouchy, jittery, nervous, sad, and tired. (α = .82). To measure arousal, we computed the Arousal-Calm scale by adding participants’ rating of how active, caring, fed up, gloomy, jittery, loving, lively, nervous, peppy, and sad they feel, and adding to that the reverse coded items of calm and tired (α = .66).

Results and discussion Manipulation check We subjected the attribute ratings to a 2 (combination) x 2 (attribute type) ANOVA. This revealed no effect of combination, F(1,63) = .81, p =.372, ηp2 = .01, but a significant main effect for attribute type, F(1,63) = 66.84, p < .001, ηp2 = .52. Overall, there were more constituent (M = 6.30) than emergent (M = 2.95) attributes generated across both social categories. This main effect was qualified by the predicted interaction between combination and

Table 2. Constituent and emergent attributes, and diverging names of pasta (flexibility) across the two experimental conditions (Experiment 1) Item type

Constituent attributes* Emergent attributes** Flexibility*

Condition Stereotypic

Counterstereotypic

7.05 (1.56) 2.38 (1.41) .50 (.76)

5.56 (2.16) 3.52 (2.04) 1.09 (1.01)

*p < .05; **p < .01. Note: Standard deviations are shown in parentheses.

attribute type, F(1,63) = 10.22, p = .002, ηp2 = .14 (for means and standard deviations see Table 2). In line with predictions, there were fewer constituent attributes used to define the counterstereotypic combination compared to the stereotypic combination, F(1,63) = 10.02, p = .002, ηp2 = .14, and more emergent attributes were used to describe the counter-stereotypic, compared to the stereotypic combination, F(1,63) = 6.80, p = .011, ηp2 = .10. This is consistent with past research showing that when people form impressions of counter-stereotypes they use more emergent attributes (e.g., Hastie et al., 1990; Hall & Crisp, 2005; Hutter & Crisp, 2005; Kunda et al.,1990). Flexibility A one-way ANOVA (combination) revealed that participants used significantly more diverging items when in the counter-stereotypic rather than stereotypic condition, F(1,63) = 7.05, p = .010, ηp2 = .10. This indicates higher flexibility (more answers not in line with the primed grammatical structure) in the counter-stereotypic condition. Mood controls Examining the means for the Pleasant-Unpleasant scale (Mayer & Gashke, 1988), participants reported more positive mood in the female mechanic (M = 3.84), than the male mechanic condition (M = 3.63), but the effect was not significant, F(1,63) = 2.45, p= .122, ηp2 = .04. On the Arousal-Calm scale (Mayer & Gashke, 1988) participants also reported slightly more arousal in the female mechanic (M = 3.36), than



222 the male mechanic condition (M = 3.23), but again the effect was not significant, F(1,63) = .156, p= .694, ηp2 = .00. This indicates no significant difference in mood between the two conditions.2 Together, these results support the prediction that thinking of counter-stereotypic targets can elicit a cognitive flexibility mindset, as demonstrated by lesser reliance on primed knowledge on a task subsequent to counter-stereotypic impression formation. The effects were not due to a change in mood. In addition, the study supported previous findings that thinking of counter-stereotypes elicits more individuated and less stereotypic impression formation (e.g., Hutter & Crisp, 2006).

Experiment 2 Our second experiment aimed to extend the generalizability of the observed effects beyond gender stereotypes and to explore the impact of the observed cognitive flexibility on creative idea generation. Creativity is the ability to produce work that is novel and original but at the same time appropriate (e.g., Amabile, 1996; De Dreu et al., 2008). Creative performance is strongly tied to flexible thinking (e.g., De Dreu et al., 2008; Galinsky et al., 2008; Maddux & Galinsky, 2009; Maddux et al., 2010; Sligte et al., 2011). When people think flexibly they demonstrate decreased reliance on habitual knowledge structures and fixed task strategies, and an apparent ease in using remote (rather than close) associations (e.g., Amabile, 1983; Mednick, 1962). This type of information processing has been repeatedly shown to increase performance on various tests of creativity (De Dreu et al., 2008; Nijstad et al., 2008; Sligte et al., 2011). In addition to examining creative performance, this study employed an alternative manipulation of counter-stereotypic thinking. We did this for two reasons. First, instead of forming impressions of a specific counter-stereotypic individual, we wanted participants to think of multiple counter-stereotypic exemplars. So rather than asking people to form impressions of one idiosyncratic person, we instructed them to generate

five counter-stereotypic (vs. stereotypic) category combinations. We reasoned that the process of generating counter-stereotypic combinations would trigger the same cognitive flexibility mindset as observed in Experiment 1, but without the interpretational constraint of being tied to a single, specific counter-stereotype. We also changed the manipulation for a second reason. Forming impressions of counter-stereotypes has been shown to be a resource-consuming process (Gocłowska & Crisp, 2012; Hutter & Crisp, 2006). Although depletion of resources does not affect less demanding tasks (Schmeichel, Vohs, & Baumeister, 2003), such as the pasta-name task used in Experiment 1, it can cause performance detriments whenever more complex and effortful processing is required, such as on logic and reasoning tasks, thoughtful reading comprehension (Schmeichel et al., 2003), and creative idea generation (Baas, De Dreu, & Nijstad, 2011; Dietrich, 2004; Gocłowska & Crisp, 2012; Golden, 1975; Groborz & Nęcka, 2003).3 To avoid the impact of cognitive depletion, we needed to find a counter-stereotypic manipulation that was less load inducing. Thus, while forming impressions of counterstereotypic examplars is expected to activate a cognitive flexibility mindset, it will also cause resource depletion, which could interfere with subsequent creative tasks that are also resource intensive. To resolve this, we used a task developed by Crisp & Hall (2009) that required participants to generate counterstereotypic exemplars (mindset activation) but not form impressions of them (the resource-depleting component). The idea that generating counter-stereotypic exemplars, rather than forming impressions of them, can activate the flexibility mindset without concurrent depletion is underpinned by research in cognitive psychology. This work shows that the processes involved in simply activating antonym and synonym relations between concepts in memory require similar allocations of attentional resource (Lucas, 2000; Perea & Rosa, 2002). In this study, participants were therefore first asked to generate counter-stereotypic (vs. stereotypic) combinations. They were then asked to


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Table 3. Correlations between variables (Experiment 2) 1 1 2 3 4

Condition Counter-Stereotypicity Idea Creativity Poster Creativity

.835** .303* .333*

2

3

.262 .256

.494**

*p < .05; **p < .01.

generate ideas for a themed night at the university nightclub and to prepare a poster advertising their idea. Our expectation was that after generating different counter-stereotypes participants would perform more creatively, compared to the stereotypic condition.

Method Participants and design Forty-six participants (41 females, Mean age = 21) were randomly allocated to one of the two categorization conditions (stereotype vs. counter-stereotype), and they received course credit in return for participation. In a lab setting, we asked participants to think up five combinations of social categories that “tend to go together” (stereotypic condition) or “don’t tend to go together” (counter-stereotypic condition; see Crisp & Hall, 2009). Examples of combinations generated by participants included: woman-rugby player, hippy-lawyer, Black-Jewish or White-Muslim. Dependent variables As a manipulation check, we coded participants’ performance on the counter-stereotype task. Following the manipulation, we measured the creativity of participants’ ideas. Correlations between measures used in this experiment can be seen in Table 3. Attributes As a manipulation check, we looked at whether in the counter-stereotypic condition participants had indeed generated more counterstereotypic combinations. To do this, we asked two raters blind to condition and hypotheses to rate the degree of counter-stereotypicity of each

category combination (on a scale 1–7). Coders’ rating was reliable: Inter-rater Cronbach’s α = .91. We averaged the two raters’ scores into a single variable of counter-stereotypicity of the combinations. Creativity We then asked participants to develop a novel idea for a themed night that could be held at the university nightclub. Participants were first asked to develop their idea in writing (Task 1), then to sketch a poster advertising their themed night (Task 2). Following other studies using divergent measures of creativity (e.g., Maddux & Galinsky, 2009, Study 5), two coders blind to experimental condition and hypotheses judged the creativity of ideas and posters using a 7-point scale (from 1 = not at all creative to 7 = very creative). The inter-rater reliability was acceptable, Cronbach’s α = .79 for task 1 (idea), and α = .61 for task 2 (poster). Data from both coders were averaged to form one creativity variable for Task 1 and a separate one for Task 2. For illustrations of most and least creative posters (Task 2), see Figure 1.

Results and discussion Manipulation check The category combinations generated in the counter-stereotypic condition (M = 5.13) were rated as more counter-stereotypic to those in the stereotypic condition (M = 2.86), t(1,44) = -8.92, p < .001, d = 2.60, see Table 2. This indicates that our manipulation had indeed elicited more counter-stereotypic thinking in participants. Creativity On the second task, ideas generated in the counter-stereotypic condition (M = 5.79) were rated as more creative, relative to those in the stereotypic condition (M = 5.09), t(1,44) = -2.08, p = .043, d = .45, see Table 4. Also posters drawn in the counter-stereotypic categorization condition were rated as more creative (M = 4.98), relative to those in the stereotypic condition (M = 4.38), t(1,44) = -2.31, p = .026, d = .67.



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Figure 1. In order of appearance from left: Examples of least creative (M = 3.00), average (M = 4.50), and most creative (M = 6.50) posters sketched by participants.

Table 4. Creativity ratings of the themed night idea and poster (Experiment 2) Item type

Stereotypicity** Idea rating* Poster rating*

Target Impression Formation Stereotypic

Counterstereotypic

2.86 (1.11) 5.09 (1.47) 4.38 (.87)

5.13 (0.63) 5.79 (1.67) 4.98 (.93)

*p < .05; **p < .01. Note: Standard deviations are shown in parentheses.

General discussion In this research we found evidence that thinking of counter-stereotypes can activate a mindset characterized by more flexible and creative thought. We argued that this should happen because when people think about counter-stereotypes this activates the same processes that are of benefit to creative production: the inhibition of existing knowledge in favor of using novel solutions. As a result, tasks requiring participants to think beyond


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social stereotypes should also compel them to abandon easily accessible knowledge and perform more flexibly, and more creatively, in ostensibly unrelated domains of human performance. This basic hypothesis was supported in two experiments. In Experiment 1 thinking of a counter-stereotypic target led to enhanced cognitive flexibility evidenced in lesser reliance on accessible knowledge. People who saw an individual whose group membership was inconsistent with stereotypic expectations were more flexible: They relied less on schematic knowledge embedded in the task instruction. In Experiment 2 we extended the generalizability of our findings. Boosts to creative performance (indicative of higher flexibility) were achieved using an alternative counter-stereotypic thinking task: one that was not tied to any specific target group. In addition, this study showed that enhanced cognitive flexibility can also be observed in the form of improved creative idea generation. In addition to demonstrating how counterstereotypes boost flexibility and creativity, our studies controlled for and eliminated several important alternative explanations. First, we controlled for mood and showed that neither valence, nor activation, nor a combination thereof, were responsible for our effects. Secondly, by using an alternative manipulation which required participants to generate many counter-stereotypic combinations, we eliminated the possibility that something specific about the idiosyncratic combination female-mechanic improved participants’ performance. Third, by asking participants to generate alternative combinations of categories, rather than form an impression of an existing combination, we eliminated the possibility that creativity was elicited via surprise (Filipowicz, 2006) from encountering an unknown combination of categories.

Implications The findings presented in this paper have implications for existing theories of stereotyping, counterstereotypes, and creativity. First of all, they support the idea that challenging social stereotypes can be

beneficial, not only for fostering social harmony, but for individuals’ cognitive capabilities— enhancing performance in an ostensibly unrelated domain—creativity (Crisp & Turner, 2011). Secondly, these studies resonate with existing research showing that people who are counterstereotypic experience benefits to creativity. Psychologists have uncovered that individuals who are counter-stereotypic in the national or gender domain (e.g., Chinese-American, FemaleEngineer) must constantly adapt their behavior to fit in with the norms of either of the two groups that they belong to (Berry & Annis, 1974; Nguyen & Benet-Martínez, 2007; Ramirez-Esparza, Gosling, Benet-Martínez, Potter, & Pennebaker, 2006; Sam & Berry, 2010), and this can be of benefit to flexible thinking (Benet-Martinez, Lee, & Leu, 2006; Gutierrez & Sameroff, 1990; Suefeld, Tetlock, & Streufert, 1992; Tadmor & Tetlock, 2009) and creative performance (Cheng, SanchezBurks, & Lee, 2008; Maddux & Galinsky, 2009). The current research suggests a new and exciting dimension to this phenomenon: That even perceivers of counter-stereotypics can benefit from being around such individuals. It’s possible that not just the people who study abroad (as in the studies of Maddux & Galinsky, 2009), or enter counterstereotypic domains (Cheng et al., 2008), can benefit. Instead, simply living in diverse social environments where people enter counter-stereotypic group memberships may help foster creativity and innovation in society at large (Crisp & Turner, 2011). Finally, one could ask whether the fact that counter-stereotypes elicit more flexible thinking could benefit intergroup relations and group functioning in general. We believe this is indeed likely and consistent with the idea that when diversity disconfirms existing stereotypes, this is associated with more open and tolerant attitudes towards a wide range of groups (see Crisp & Hewstone, 2007; Crisp & Turner, 2011; Crisp, Hewstone, & Rubin, 2001; Hall & Crisp, 2005). Exploring the link between counter-stereotypes, flexible thinking, and tolerant attitudes is an important agenda for future research.



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Further research The extended benefits of counter-stereotypes revealed in this research have great import for social interventions designed to promote flexible and creative thought. Further research should test the boundary conditions of how and when counterstereotypicity will benefit peoples’ performance. One especially important caveat here is the type of interaction with counter-stereotypic individuals that people experience. The current paper looked at how thinking of counter-stereotypes impacts cognitive flexibility and creative performance. At this point in time further studies are needed to test whether effects like this would replicate in real-life interactions with counter-stereotypic targets. As we have noted above, while counter-stereotypicity primes a flexible thinking mindset, in actual close encounters forming impressions of counterstereotypics may lead to resource depletion (Gocłowska & Crisp, 2012; Hutter & Crisp, 2006). Further studies should investigate how these two processes play out in real-life interactions, and whether the overshadowing effects of depletion can be overcome, for instance by inconsistency resolution “training”, or by somehow decreasing participants urge to resolve the categorical inconsistency (e.g., by lowering their need for structure, see Gocłowska & Crisp, 2012). Relatedly, it may also be useful to replicate the current research employing measures stemming from different conceptualizations of cognitive flexibility. The measure employed in Experiment 1 was derived from the creative cognition tradition that assumes our creative endeavors are limited by easily accessible knowledge (such as schemata or stereotypes). Other traditions define flexibility in terms of inclusive categorization (Förster & Danneberg, 2010; Marguc et al., 2010, connecting remote concepts (Mednick, 1962), or easily switching between conceptual categories (Nijstad, Stroebe, & Loedwijkx, 2003). Since it has been argued that all these processes represent a flexible pathway to creativity (De Dreu et al., 2010; Nijstad et al., 2010), it would be interesting to test whether counter-stereotypic thinking will also elicit a global thinking mindset (e.g., Förster

& Dannenberg, 2010; Friedman, Fishbach, Förster, & Werth, 2003), or increase the mental accessibility of remote concepts (Mednick, 1962). Future studies should also consider whether the effects presented here are driven by thinking about counter-stereotypes or, in fact, not thinking about stereotypes. Consistent with a great deal of research on counter-stereotypicity (e.g., Hutter & Crisp, 2005, 2006, 2008; Hutter et al., 2009; Kunda et al., 1990), we believe the effects should theoretically be driven by counter-stereotypic thinking. We argue so because stereotypic thinking is known to be a “default” process (and therefore the baseline) in social cognition (e.g., Fiske & Neuberg, 1990). However, we have not accounted for this possibility in the present experiments, and this could be an interesting and important direction for future research. Finally, in Experiment 1 one might ask whether we should have expected there to be a correlation between the manipulation check items (emergent attributes) and divergent ideas. There is a good reason why we would not expect to see this correlation. Participants generate emergent attributes in order to explain the inconsistent group membership of the target. Studies show that doing so is a function of epistemic motivation: Individuals who like the world to be simple and structured persist more at trying to understand why a female is also a mechanic (e.g., Hutter et al., 2009, Study 3, Gocłowska & Crisp, 2012). So the attributes generated by participants on this task are indicative of the degree to which people elaborate on the counter-stereotypic target. This type of cognitive persistence is a function of motivation and working memory capacity, independent to the flexibility pathway that is the focus of our present paper (De Dreu et al., 2008). So while a counterstereotype increases attribute emergence when impressions are formed, this could occur due to flexibility, but also due to a persistent exploration of the counter-stereotype, making within-cell correlational analysis uninformative. Examining how these epistemic factors interact with the processes revealed in the present research will be an interesting future line of research.


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Implications for policy and practice It is important to stress the applicability of the current findings to answering a broader question: On the consequences of increasing social diversity to the way in which people think of, and construe, the world. In a world where racial and gender boundaries are increasingly broken down (e.g., in political leadership positions—Barack Obama in the U.S., Angela Merkel in Europe), it is important to understand whether perceptions of such individuals could yield benefits beyond greater tolerance, to varied aspects of psychological functioning (for a recent discussion of this potential see Crisp & Turner, 2011). The current research is therefore important for gaining an understanding of the challenges and benefits associated with increasing social diversity. In modern societies people often belong to diverse groups and serve functions that they had previously no access to: For instance 22.4% of US based computer programmers, and 10.3% of aerospace engineers, are female (Women’s Bureau, 2009). Men are undertaking traditionally female roles too, an example of which might be the emergence of childcare agencies specializing in ‘mannies’—male nannies (Gibson, 2003). Understanding how people react to such social changes can inform the actions of scientists, policy-makers, and the public. Our findings add to a growing body of evidence, suggesting that thinking of counterstereotypic individuals is of benefit, not just because it can promote tolerance, but because it can help foster individuals’ capacity for flexible and creative thought. This is an important and perhaps provocative finding, especially in light of the on-going debate over the value (or otherwise) of immigration and increased social mobility (Rudmin, 2003; Verkuyten, 2005). Scholars supporting multicultural policies assert that encouraging individuals to maintain distinct cultural, ethnic, and religious identities can yield considerable social and personal benefits; it can for instance increase tolerance and reduce prejudice (Crisp, Hewstone, & Cairns, 2001; Crisp, Walsh, & Hewstone, 2006; Roccas & Brewer, 2002).

Others are more critical, suggesting that too much diversity can endanger social cohesion resulting in poor intergroup relations (Schlesinger, 1992), stress, distress, and marginalization (Gil, Vega, & Dimas, 1994; Rudmin, 2003). The current research contributes to this debate, showing that diversity defined by the challenging of social stereotypes can have measurable, distinct, and generalized benefits well beyond the sphere of intergroup relations. Notes 1 Following the tradition of social psychology of creativity, we use the word “creativity” to denote a creative product, while the word “flexibility” is used to denote the inclusive/flexible thought processes that aid creative production. Flexibility is important for creative performance, but it not synonymous to creativity: Creative products also require working memory, sustained attention and task motivation (Amabile, 1996; Nijstad et al., 2010). 2 We also tested a second prediction regarding moods. Negative activating moods are known to improve persistence, and positive activating moods to improve cognitive flexibility (De Dreu et al., 2008). To account for the idea that our effects could have been caused by positive activating moods, we ran further analyses and found neither effects on positive activating moods (active, caring, lively, loving, peppy; α = .78; F(1,63) = .619, p = .435, ηp2 = .01) nor on negative activating moods (fedup, gloomy, jittery, nervous, sad; α = .78; F(1,63) = .160, p = .691, ηp2 = .00; scales compiled on factor analytic results of Mayer & Gashke, 1988). 3 A similar line of research (Gocłowska & Crisp, 2012) found that after individuals form impressions of counter-stereotypic targets this leads to resource depletion on more complex and effortful creativity tasks: For instance on a task that requires participants to spend 5 min drawing an alien creature, or on a task requiring to solve ten difficult items of the Remote Associates Test (Mednick, 1962). These effects occur because by employing an effortful, individuating processing manner, people attempt to resolve the inconsistency in the targets’ group membership (Gocłowska & Crisp, 2012, Experiments 2–4; Hutter & Crisp, 2005, 2006). As a consequence, although forming impressions of counter-stereotypes has the potential to prime a flexible mindset (as shown using a



228 relatively easy measure, in Experiment 1, in the current paper), such effects will be confounded with cognitive load, and this will be especially likely when using creativity tasks that are resourcedemanding.

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