Social Values and Social Conflict in Creative Problem Solving and Categorization

• Published in: Journal of personality and social psychology 1998-05, Vol.74 (5), p.1300-1309
• Main Authors: Carnevale, Peter J, Probst, Tahira M
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Biological and medical sciences; Classification (Cognitive Process); Cognition & reasoning; Competition; Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Cooperation; Creativity; Expectations; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Human; Individual Collective Relationship; Male; Personality; Problem Solving; Psychology; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Social attribution, perception and cognition; Social Conflict; Social conflicts; Social psychology; Social Values; Task Oriented Groups
• ISSN: 0022-3514; 1939-1315
• DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.74.5.1300

Participants were led to expect either cooperation or conflict, and then performed K. Duncker's (1945) functional-fixedness task (Experiment 1) or E. Rosch's (1975) categorization task (Experiment 2). Those who expected cooperation, compared with those who expected conflict, were more likely to solve Duncker's task and used categories more inclusively, that is, rated low-prototypic exemplars of a category as better members of the category. In Experiment 3, the direct experience of cooperation and conflict had the same effect on categorization. In Experiment 4, participants were classified as having cooperative, competitive, or individualistic social values, and were led to expect either cooperation, conflict, or neither in a control. In the control, cooperators used categories more inclusively than competitors or individualists. Competitors used categories least inclusively in the conflict condition; in the cooperation condition, they used categories most inclusively. These results are interpreted in terms of the possible mediating role of cognitive organization in individual and intergroup conflict resolution.