The Impact of Collectivist Self-Identity, Collectivist Social-Identity on Creative Self-Identity and Creative Self-Efficacy from a Japanese Context: Implications on Creativity Education

Abstract: A quick search in Google Scholar for documents containing both keywords “Japan” and “collectivism” revealed 28,100 results. This fact alone is enough to support the notion that collectivism is a commonly reoccurring descriptive in discussions about Japanese society. This is also enough to give serious consideration to the impact of collectivism when thinking about the development of educational programs that foster the development of creativity. More specifically it raises the question: if some people within Japan believe in the collectivist nature of themselves and their society how does that belief influence creative self-identity and creative self–efficacy? Since creativity and innovation require the ability to think divergently, understanding the impact of the alleged pressure towards conformity on creativity should be a top priority. Furthermore, understanding this relationship becomes important when considering methodologies and potential barriers to learning in the creativity classroom or workshop. With this in mind, a questionnaire was given to 50 Japanese participants of various ages and backgrounds. Using open-ended questions and a Likert scale, the questionnaire examines the collectivist self-identity, the collectivist social-identity, creative self-identity, and creative self-efficacy. Through narrative qualitative analysis of the open-ended questions and quantitative analysis of the scaled questions the relationships between the four categories were examined to see if any influenced the others. From this study we can see that the quantitative data and the qualitative data both showed the similar findings. Within the group the majority did not identify as having a collectivist self-identity, the results on collectivist socialidentity were split down the middle, and a majority of the participants did identify with having a creative self-identity. It is also clear from both the qualitative and quantitative data that creative self-identity and creative self-efficacy are linked. It appears that if the person does not believe that he or she is a creative person then that same individual is very likely to believe they do not have the capacity to do creative things.