Creativity, Culture, and Tolerance of Ambiguity: An Entangled Relation

The present work investigates culture as a social factor and creative cognition. Analysis covers divergent and convergent creative processes and uses a new approach for cross-cultural research by identifying cognitive patterns. In addition, this work focuses on a main predictor of levels of creative potential, Tolerance of ambiguity (TA). Interestingly, Tolerance of ambiguity/uncertainty is also a main cultural dimension. Neither the relations of TA with individual creative cognition, nor how it pertains to cultural differences, is known. A main idea in literature is that culture both impedes and fosters creativity, for example by channeling attention. An empirical study was carried out with children (ages 9 to 11) in Russia, Thailand, France, India, and Luxembourg. This groundbreaking study reveals cultural differences in the creative process as well as in creative cognitive patterns. These are related to lower and higher levels of creativity. I propose a ’Cultural Actuation Theory’ which leads to practical suggestions to foster and teach for creativity. Most importantly this study on cultural differences, gave insights what we can learn from each other, what we have in common.