The present article aims to answer the question of whether creativity is universal or culture-specific. We develop a conceptual framework that expands the existing knowledge in two ways. First, it distinguishes between the two dimensions of creativity – novelty and usefulness, and their relationship to culture. Second, it clarifies how the social context moderates the relationship between culture and creativity. We focus on the social context where cultural differences are likely to be more salient because of the presence of others, relative to the private work context where no one observes whether a person performs in a normative or a unique way. In addition, we propose that task structure, whether a task is tightly or loosely structured, is an important contextual characteristic that moderates the relationship between culture and creativity. Lastly, we offer several propositions to guide future research.

What are the fundamental factors that promote highly influential creativity? How do these factors differ in Western and Far Eastern civilizations? Many researchers have addressed these questions using historiometrics, a method that tests nomothetic hypotheses about human behaviour by subjecting historical and biographical data to objective and quantitative analyses. These investigations may entail either aggregate-level analyses (e.g., generational time series of creative activity) or individual-level analyses (e.g., cross-sectional studies of creative achievement). Moreover, the empirical findings in each of these two approaches fall into two categories of East-West comparisons: (i) shared variables and convergent results and (ii) shared variables and divergent results. After reviewing representative findings in each of these categories, we discuss what the results imply about the nature of high-impact creativity in the East and West and also explore areas of potential future historiometric research.

Bicultural individuals vary in the degree to which their two cultural identities are integrated. Among Asian-Americans, for instance, some experience their Asian and American sides as compatible whereas others experience them as conflicting. Past research on judgments finds this individual difference affects the way bicultural individuals respond to situations that cue their cultures. Asian-Americans with high bicultural identity integration (BII) assimilate to norms of the cued culture (e.g., they exhibit typically American judgments when in situations that cue American culture), whereas Asian-Americans with low BII do the opposite, contrasting against the cue (e.g., they exhibit typically Asian judgments when in American situations). We investigated whether this dynamic similarly affects creative performance, which differs cross-culturally in that novelty is encouraged more by American than East Asian norms. In two experiments, we found that cues to American (vs. Asian) culture increase the novelty of solutions in divergent thinking tasks for Asian-Americans with high BII (assimilative response) yet decrease it for Asian-Americans with low BII (contrastive response). We discuss theoretical implications for culture and creativity research and practical implications for firms seeking to foster creativity.

This Editors' Forum – ‘Creativity East and West’ – presents five papers on the question of cultural differences in creativity from the perspective of different research literatures, followed by two integrative commentaries. The literatures represented include historiometric, laboratory, and organizational studies. Investigation of cultural influences through country comparisons and priming manipulations, focusing on how people perform creatively and how they assess creativity. This introduction notes parallels in the findings across these research perspectives, suggesting some cultural universals in creativity and some systematic differences. Many differences can be explained in terms of the model that creativity means a solution that is both novel/original and useful/appropriate, yet that Western social norms prioritize novelty whereas Eastern norms prioritize usefulness – an account which predicts cultural differences would arise in contexts that activate social norms. The commentaries elaborate this argument in terms of processes – at the micro cognitive level and at the macro societal level – through which creativity occurs.