The Effects of Individualism-Collectivism Orientation on Brainstorming: A Comparison of Canadian and Taiwanese Samples

Little research has investigated cross-cultural differences in brainstorming performance. The current work addresses this paucity by exploring differences between Canadians (individualists) and Taiwanese (collectivists) along five dependent measures: (1) number of generated ideas; (2) originality of the generated ideas; (3) number of negative verbalizations during the brainstorming sessions; (4) the valence of the negative verbalizations; (5) self-perceptions of performance. As predicted, the Canadian sample generated a greater number of ideas, uttered a greater number of negative verbalizations, yielded more valenced verbalizations and were more confident regarding their perfomance. Contrary to expectations, the Taiwanese provided more original ideas.