Krause, V; (2016) The Effect of Perspective-Taking on Original Idea Generation. In: Academy of Management Annual Meeting Proceedings. (pp. pp. 428-433). Academy of Management

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Abstract

Employees in organizations often have to generate original products, services, and even entire business ideas that will appeal to their customers. One seemingly prudent way to gauge what these customers will like is by attempting to take their perspective, and thus look at the world from their point of view. However, in this paper, I argue that taking another person’s perspective seems to have detrimental rather than beneficial effects on original idea generation. I demonstrate in two studies that taking the perspective of someone of the other gender decreases the originality of the ideas generated for that gender (Study1), and that this effect holds, even under counter-stereotypical conditions, which are generally conducive to original idea generation (Study 2). Additionally, even when taking a creative person’s perspective (same or other gender), original idea generation is stifled (Study 3). Last, it seems that this effect is due to the cooperative mindset that is activated by perspective-taking because a competitive mindset was able to mitigate the stifling effects of perspective-taking on originality (Study 4). Since perspective-taking tends to occur more often in cooperative, rather than competitive, situations in naturalistic settings, I conclude that taking another person's perspective might most often be detrimental to original idea generation.

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