Abstract
Among the first manuscripts submitted to this Journal was one titled “Rome and Boston: A Tale of Two Cities and Their Differing Impact on the Creativity and Philosophy of Southern Italian Immigrants.” Its authors were social psychologist Frank Barron of the University of California at Santa Cruz and Harben Boutourline Young, a Yale University pediatrician who was interested in the effects of immigration on children (Barron & Young, 1970). It was the lead article in the second issue of Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology (JCCP), making it the eighth article to appear in our fledgling journal, because the inaugural issue contained seven articles as well as my editorial explaining the launching of the Journal 3 months earlier. It was also the first article (but certainly not the last) in JCCP that had anything to do with creativity. I was particularly pleased with the submission and, as I recall, the quick acceptance of the manuscript because Barron was at that time a leading researcher in creativity. He and E. Paul Torrance of the University of Minnesota (whose seminar on creativity and personality I took in the summer of 1964) were probably the top two U.S. researchers in that area. Torrance had been called the “father” or “dean” of creativity research in psychology, and Barron was apparently not far behind in receiving such accolades.
Quoting liberally from the article, the authors reported that a sample of young men in Boston whose grandparents had emigrated there from southern Italy around 1900 was compared with a sample of young men in Rome whose parents or grandparents originated in southern Italy. Using psychological tests and questionnaires, the comparison was made in terms of personal philosophy and creativity.
There were marked group differences in both personal philosophy and creativity. In creativity, the Rome group scored significantly higher in tests of ideational fluency, originality, and adaptive flexibility, but showed no differences in general intelligence.
I mention this study for one major reason: Barron and Young, in their research about half a century ago, had few methodological guidelines to follow. Books, especially, or book chapters and journal articles dealing with cross-cultural research methods, were virtually nonexistent. They mainly used certain extant psychological tests and various procedures they created to measure creativity. And they used both locale (Rome and Boston) and emigration/immigration status as “independent” variables. They could have used other frameworks that were popular at the time, but didn’t. For example, McClelland’s need for achievement, Rotter’s locus of control, Rokeach’s scale of values, and Witkin’s field dependence–field independence were available as possible guidelines, but were not incorporated into the design. Nor need they have been. It is instructive to read the article and, in historical hindsight, marvel at the advances made in conceptualizing research and employing various frameworks that have evolved during the past 50 years.
In short, the guest co-editors of this special issue—Letty Kwan, Angela Leung, and Shyhnan Liou—and the authors of the nine articles comprising this welcome special issue had an impressive array of methodological and theoretical devices and frameworks at their disposal. Moreover, those involved with the articles in the special issue benefited from the relative luxury of the Internet to plan and implement teamwork. Half a century ago, the Internet was but a psychedelic dream, and cooperation among and between researchers was much slower because “real” mail was the only option. As a mixed and productive bag of developments during the past five decades, think of the numerous ways that Barron and Young could have benefited in their culture-comparative research on creativity—ways that the authors of the nine articles in fact used effectively, and other existing frameworks that might also have been used. They include, but certainly were not limited to, a variety of scales to measure values, including the popular Schwartz scales, the Five-Factor (“Big Five”) personality inventory, the concept of cultural tightness-looseness, independent-interdependent self-construal, individualism-collectivism, analytic (Western) versus holistic (Eastern) modes of thought, and of course the ubiquitous Hofstede dimensions. It seems that a pervasive penchant of psychologists (perhaps led by culture-oriented psychologists) has developed sundry ways to categorize, scale, rate, dichotomize, dimensionalize, taxonomize, and otherwise pigeon-hole human talents, proclivities, and a great variety of mental activities including, of course, creativity (Lonner, 2011). And it seems to be a proclivity of culture-oriented psychologists to use these efforts to explain behavior at both the individual and societal level. As the guest editors point out in their introduction, this special issue “recognizes creativity and innovation as a cultural and social process.” Those who continue this line of research will be involved with another facet of creative thinking: How can a team of researchers create a design that will take advantage of societal and cultural variations and their possible interaction with a great assortment of ways to guide the strategies? In other words, how creative can researchers on human creativity be in designing further research in this important area?
This issue advances the study of culture, creativity, and innovation well beyond those who broke ground in the area many years ago. Barron and Torrance are mentioned very briefly in some of the articles to follow. If they were still alive and active, they would certainly join me, Debbie Best, and several other members of JCCP’s editorial board in applauding this special issue, and congratulating everyone involved.