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Societal and School Influences on

Student Creativity: The Case of
China

Article in Psychology in the Schools · January 2003

DOI: 10.1002/pits.10072

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Psychology in the Schools, Vol. 40(1), 2003 © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/pits.10072

SOCIETAL AND SCHOOL INFLUENCES ON STUDENT CREATIVITY:

THE CASE OF CHINA
WEIHUA NIU and ROBERT J. STERNBERG
Yale University

Chinese students outperform American students in many international competitions in math-

ematics and the natural sciences. Does this superiority of Chinese students over American stu-
dents also apply in other domains? Our previous research has shown that compared with their
American counterparts, Chinese students’ artwork is perceived as less creative by both Chinese
and American judges. In a new study, we find that Chinese students’ creativity is increased when
given direct instructions to be creative or guidance on how to be creative. Three different factors
are posited to be responsible for the discrepancy in rated creativity between Chinese and Amer-
ican students, namely, social values, school pedagogic practices, and educational testing sys-
tems. This article argues that high-stakes standardized tests could impair the development of
students’ creativity. Although there is a general tendency for school educators in both China and
the United States to overemphasize analytical skills at the expense of the development of cre-
ative abilities, in general, the tendency for the Chinese to do so is stronger than it is for the
American. Suggestions are proposed to educators on how to foster students’ creativity. Further-
more, the article suggests that school and national leaders in the United States and China, as well
as elsewhere, should learn from one another’s educational successes, while maintaining their
unique cultural and educational characteristics. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

How do environmental factors such as societal values and school education affect students’
school success? What can societies and schools do to provide their members the environment that
best facilitates the development of their students’ abilities? These are not just theoretical questions
of interest to psychologists; many people, especially policy makers and educators, are also quite
involved in addressing these questions.
The influences of societal values and school education on students’ academic performance
have been examined for many decades. Some of the research has focused on comparing students’
academic performance between American and Chinese societies—two important societies that
have distinct social values and educational systems. There is considerable evidence showing that
Chinese students outperform American students in the domains of mathematics and other natural
sciences. For example, Stevenson and his colleagues have spent two decades conducting research
comparing American, Japanese, and Chinese educational systems and students’ academic achieve-
ments, particularly in the domain of mathematics (Stevenson, Lee, & Mu, 2000; Stevenson, Lee,
& Stigler, 1986; Stevenson & Stigler, 1987). They found that the scores of American children were
far lower than those of their Japanese and Chinese peers on tests of mathematics, at both the levels
of computation and problem solving. They attributed this discrepancy not to genetic differences
between American and Chinese students, nor to the resources of schools, such as physical facilities
and class size. Instead, they believed that the gap was due to cultural differences in beliefs about
and attitudes toward education and effort, the organization of schooling, school curriculum, the
practice of teaching, and students’ school activities. Their studies, as well as those of some others
(e.g., McKnight et al., 1987; National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983; National
Research Council, 1989), have energized a vigorous debate in American society on whether the
American educational system is in perpetual crisis and on how to reform American schools. Argu-
ably, American schools should learn from the educational success of other countries, such as
China, to remain competitive.

Correspondence to: Weihua Niu, Department of Psychology, Yale University, P.O. Box 208205, New Haven, CT
06520–8205. E-mail: weihua.niu@yale.edu

103
104 Niu and Sternberg

However, school success cannot be limited to academic domains, or measured solely through
high achievement on tests of analytical skills. A person’s abilities in nonacademic domains, such
as creativity and social domains, also contribute to one’s success (Salovey, Mayer, & Caruso,
2002; Sternberg, 1997). In this article, we focus on the cultural comparison between Chinese and
American students in a nonacademic domain to examine how societies and school systems influ-
ence their students’ creativity, an area whose importance is generally overlooked but that could be
of great value in the new millennium.

The Effects of Societies and Schools on Creativity

Societies and schools can have a significant impact on creativity; however, this impact has
not been sufficiently recognized in the first 3 decades of psychologic study of creativity. When
Guilford called for greater attention to the study of creativity in 1950, people were most likely to
think of creativity as a set of special individual characteristics, including aspects of personality,
cognitive abilities, motivation, and divergent thinking skills, as Guilford had suggested. Only in
the last 2 decades have psychologists started to realize the importance of environmental factors,
such as societies, family environment, and schools, on creativity.
Several psychologists have proposed theories to address the effects of societies on creativity.
Amabile (1982, 1983, 1996; Amabile & Conti, 1997), for example, has spent two decades con-
ducting experimental studies of the effect of the environment on students’ intrinsic motivation and
creativity. She has concluded that the social environment, including a society’s educational sys-
tem, overall classroom climate, school and work environment, and family, could be important
resources to facilitate or inhibit a person’s creativity. Her view is that all of these environmental
factors have a cumulative effect, which eventually determines a person’s motivational orientation
(either intrinsic or extrinsic), and subsequently partially determines the person’s creativity. More
specifically, Amabile claimed that a social environment that encourages autonomy or self-directed
learning, or that can provide optimal challenge, competence, or task involvement, should contrib-
ute positively to creative performance.
Simonton (1984, 1992, 1994), through studying historically eminent people across different
times and different societies, also claimed that societies can have a tremendous impact on people’s
creativity. He suggested that it is the historic time and social environment, rather than individual
factors, which are crucial for the generation of creative contributions.
Besides the nurturing effects of societies and schools on their members’ creative perfor-
mance, Csikszentmihalyi (1988, 1996) suggested a second role of societies and schools on cre-
ativity, which is to provide a selective system to decide what or who is judged as creative. In his
systems model of creativity, Csikszentmihalyi proposed that three main factors underlie creative
production: (1) a stable cultural domain, which contains the symbol system of a culture, such as
the domain of art, physics, or psychology; (2) a social institution, or field, that decides which
works will be selected from among the many works created; and (3) the individual, the one who
brings the idea or product into a given field in a given generation or culture. Thus, according to the
systems model, an idea or a product that is judged to be creative in one environment (a domain or
field) might be judged to be mediocre in other environments (another domain or field). Csikszent-
mihalyi concluded that the nature of creativity is context-dependent, and that the interaction among
the three factors—domain, field, and individual—is important in driving a culture’s evolution.
Noticing the influence of societies and schools on individual creativity, Sternberg and Lubart
(1995, 1996) claimed that individuals could also play an active role in shaping their environments.
They metaphorically describe the relationship between the individual and environment as analo-
gous to the relationship between an investor and a stock market. Creative individuals, like good
investors, “buy low and sell high.” Their original ideas or products might not be considered very
 Societal and School Influences on Creativity 105

creative in the market (environment) at first, but creative individuals attempt to change the judg-
ments of the people in the environment. These individuals then sell high. Having convinced other
people of the value of their ideas, they move on to their next, initially underappreciated idea.
The above theories seem to suggest that social environments, including societies and schools,
do influence individual creativity. The relationship between individuals and societies is an inter-
active one. On the one hand, societies and schools can nurture their members’ creative expression
and select what and who is creative; on the other hand, creative individuals can also influence their
societies to such a degree that societies may eventually accept and follow those individuals.
To have a clear understanding of how societies and schools influence individual creativity, it
is useful to compare the characteristics of two particular societies, the United States and China.
They represent two important yet distinct worldviews.

Two Different Kinds of Societies: Independent Self-Society

vs. Interdependent Self-Society
In crosscultural studies, researchers generally examine societies along the lines of the world-
views the people in the societies normally hold. Worldview, also called Core Societal Values,
refers to the difference in social groups with respect to individualism and collectivism (Triandis,
1977, 1996) or with respect to an independent-interdependent perspective (Markus & Kitayama,
1991). For example, as proposed by Markus and Kitayama, people in Western societies (such as
the American society) usually hold an independent perspective of the self, in which one’s behavior
is organized and made meaningful largely by reference to one’s own internal thoughts, feelings,
and actions, rather than by reference to the thoughts, feelings, and actions of others. On the
contrary, people in Eastern societies (such as the Chinese or Japanese societies) hold an inter-
dependent perspective of the self, in which people’s motivation is usually to find a way to fit
themselves with relevant others—to become part of various interpersonal relationships. Thus, in
Western societies, such as the United States, the existence of a person is focused around discov-
ering and expressing oneself and differentiating oneself from others. By contrast, Eastern soci-
eties, such as China, are organized as hierarchies in which everyone exists only as a member of a
larger community, and his or her behavior must be subordinate to the needs of the larger society.
Of course, one cannot sharply dichotomize societies on these variables, which probably are better
represented along continua rather than discrete entities.
How do societal values influence one’s creativity? As we discussed in an earlier section, the
influence of societal values on creativity can be manifested in at least two ways. First, societal
values can influence people’s understanding of creativity; and second, these values can influence
people’s creative performance.

The Influence of Societal Values on People’s Understanding of Creativity

The values of a society can influence its members’ understanding of creativity differently in
different historical periods (Lubart & Sternberg, 1998; Simonton, 1994). For example, in Western
society, people have understood creativity differently at different time periods in history, espe-
cially with respect to the origins of creativity (Albert & Runco, 1999; Niu, 2001; Weiner, 2000).
In the times of the ancient Hebrews and the Middle Ages, people believed that God was the only
source of everything. Human beings could not create, but could only follow in God’s steps. The
word “creativity” came from the ancient Judeo-Christian idea of “God’s creation,” which repre-
sented the source of everything, both good and new. Therefore, the idea of individual creativity
was rare in ancient and medieval Western societies. Only beginning with the period of Enlighten-
ment was individual creativity widely recognized and appreciated. Today, most people believe that
it is not just God who creates, but human beings also. For example, a widely accepted definition of
106 Niu and Sternberg

creativity in psychology refers to people’s ability to devise something that is judged by a certain
field in a certain domain as both new and appropriate. Despite different views of creativity, novelty
has always been the defining feature of creativity throughout the Western societies.
In Chinese societies, the notion of creativity also had different interpretations across different
historical periods (Niu, 2001). Although there has not been a concept of divine creativity identical
to that in ancient Western society, the ancient Chinese did believe that there was an origin of
everything—the universe, which can be called the Heaven (Tian), the Way (Tao), or the Yin-yang
movement (Yi ) (Chan, 1967; Chang, 1998; Hse, 1937; Rutte, 1996). Human beings must experi-
ence the process of the development of the universe, the origin of everything, to achieve greatness,
including a high level of creativity. Therefore, creativity can be nurtured, either through medita-
tion (as Taoist scholars and followers believed) or through self-cultivation (as Confucian scholars
and followers believed). Goodness, including moral goodness, was a crucial element in judging
creativity in ancient Chinese society. However, in contrast to the Western concept of creativity,
novelty was not a defining feature of the ancient Chinese concept of creativity (Berthrong, 1998;
Chang, 1998; Cheng, 1991).
In modern Chinese societies, moral goodness is still an important feature in judging people’s
creativity, and the ancient approaches to achieving creativity are still being adopted by many
modern Chinese, particularly in the traditional Chinese arts (such as Chinese painting and callig-
raphy) and literature (Chang, 1970; Li, 1997). However, unlike the ancient Chinese, the modern
Chinese weigh novelty as the central feature in their conception of creativity (Niu, 2001; Rudow-
icz & Yue, 2000).

The Influence of Societal Values on People’s Creative Performance

To examine how societies and schools influence their members’ creativity, we conducted a
study to compare American and Chinese students’ artistic creativity and adults’ evaluations of
creativity. The primary objective of this study was twofold: (1) to examine cultural differences
in artistic creative performance, and (2) to scrutinize cultural differences in people’s evaluations
of artistic creativity.
A part of this study was published elsewhere (Niu & Sternberg, 2001). However, for the
purpose of this investigation, which is to scrutinize the factors that influence students’ creativity,
we reexamined the data by performing a new comparative analysis within the American sample to
compare the creative performances of Asian American and non-Asian American students. The
result of this new comparison will be discussed after a brief introduction of our previous study.
Our sample included 139 undergraduate students, including 76 American students from Yale
University and 63 Chinese students from Beijing University. Students from these two universities
normally have to pass highly selective admission processes, and are regarded as having very high
levels of intellectual abilities with respect to other students in their respective countries. Thus, the
two samples are comparable in terms of intelligence, an important confounding factor influencing
creativity. Among the 76 American students, 12 were Asian Americans (all Eastern Asian Amer-
icans who are descendents of Chinese, Japanese, or Korean progenitors), and the remaining were
Caucasians, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, or of mixed backgrounds. The subgroup of
Asian Americans shares a similar ethnic background with that of our Chinese participants.
To maximally control the influences of domain knowledge and domain skills on creativity,
two other important confounding factors present in other studies, we made two special provisions:
First, we included only participants who did not have any special artistic training; and second, the
nature of the creativity test did not rely on participants’ artistic technique. In keeping with these
requirements, two different tasks were chosen. One task asked participants to make a collage
design out of colorful stickers with three different shapes to depict one of four emotions (happy,
 Societal and School Influences on Creativity 107

sad, angry, and frightened ); the other task asked participants to draw an extraterrestrial alien using
pencil and paper.
To study societal influences on people’s evaluations, nine graduate students in the department
of psychology from the universities in each society (China and the United States) were recruited
as judges. For tasks such as collage design, in which little artistic knowledge and techniques are
involved, psychology graduate students are appropriate judges (Amabile, 1996). Judges were
instructed to use their own subjective criteria to evaluate all students’ artworks individually along
four dimensions: creativity, likability, appropriateness, and technical quality, using a seven-point
scale, where “1” represents the lowest and “7” represents the highest in each given dimension. The
artworks were coded with numbers and randomly presented on a computer screen (to show all
collage designs) or placed on 5 ⫻ 7⬙ white cards (to show all students’ alien drawings) so that the
raters were blind with respect to the nationalities of the artists.
The study yielded several findings. First, judges from each country reached quite high agree-
ment in judging creativity. Comparing the two groups of judges, we found that the reliability
scores of Chinese judges (all above .80, with a mean reliability of .85) were uniformly higher than
those of American judges (between .70 to .92, with a mean of .79). This result suggests that
Chinese judges, in general, may have greater consensus of what is creative than do American
judges.
Second, compared with the artwork of American students, Chinese students’ artwork was
rated as less creative, less appropriate, less likeable, and technically worse. In general, the Amer-
ican students obtained significantly higher scores (M ⫽ 4.11, SD ⫽ 1.09) than did the Chinese
students (M ⫽ 3.46, SD ⫽ 1.05) on all of the four evaluated qualities, regardless of the type of task
and the nationality of judges. All comparisons on each of rated dimensions between American and
Chinese artworks differed significantly ( ps ⬍ .01).
Third, the difference on rated creativity between American and Chinese students’ artworks
was equally recognized by both American and Chinese judges. In other words, judges from both
societies evaluated the American artworks as more creative, more appropriate, more likeable, and
technically better than the Chinese artworks. This result seems to suggest that American and
Chinese people may adopt similar criteria in judging artistic creativity, and thus have similar
understandings of creativity.
The above findings support the notion that cultures and societies could influence creativity,
mainly through its nurturing effects on its members’ creative expression. More specifically, the
study suggests that an independent self-oriented society facilitates the development of creativity
more than does an interdependent self-oriented society.
To explore to what extent societies and schools could contribute to students’ creative perfor-
mance, which we did not examine in our previous study, we compared the creative performance
among three samples: Chinese in China (n ⫽ 63), Asian Americans in the U.S. (n ⫽ 12), and
non-Asian Americans in the U.S (n ⫽ 64). For this new analysis, a repeated-measure MANOVA
was performed, with task (collage design vs. alien drawing) as a within-subject factor, and ethnic
group of participants (Chinese from China, Asian Americans from the United States, or non-
Asians from the United States) as a between-subjects factor. We found a significant main effect of
group, F(2,75) ⫽ 27.6, p ⫽ .001. Post hoc analyses showed a difference between Chinese and
Asian Americans (mean difference ⫽ 1.03, p ⫽ .001), and between Chinese and non-Asian Amer-
icans (mean difference ⫽ 1.06, p ⫽ .001). In general, the artworks of both Asian and non-Asian
Americans were rated as more creative than those of Chinese. However, no significant difference
was found between Asian and non-Asian Americans (mean difference ⫽ 0.03, ns). No significant
effect of task (collage making vs. alien drawing) was found, nor was there a significant interaction
between task and ethnicity of students (see Figure 1).
108 Niu and Sternberg

Figure 1. Students’ creative performances among Chinese, Asian Americans, and Non-Asian Americans on the tasks
of collage design and alien drawing.

The results seem to suggest that the difference between American and Chinese students’
creativity probably was not due to students’ ethnic background; rather, it is more likely to be
attributable to certain environmental factors, such as societal values and school environments.
Although Chinese students in China are not the same as Asian American students in the United
States, they do share a similar ethnic background. Given the small sample size for Asian Ameri-
cans, we view this result as preliminary, and as deserving attention in future studies.
If societal values and school education can influence creativity, then what can educators do to
improve students’ creativity?

Teaching Creativity
In a previous section, we mentioned that one important characteristic of Chinese culture is its
value of collectivism. Standing out from the crowd generally is not highly appreciated in Chinese
societies. Educators in China tend to overlook the practice of teaching creativity, placing more
emphasis on teaching basic knowledge and basic analytical skills. Chinese students, therefore,
might have few opportunities to engage in creative activities. Presumably, if Chinese students are
permitted to show their creativity and are even coached on how to be creative, they could exhibit
creativity much more easily. Following this line of logic, we designed one study to examine two
ways of enhancing Chinese students’ creative performance. One is to simply tell students to be
creative, and the other is to teach them how to be creative. We predicted that giving participants
permission to be creative would help them break through the limitations of the materials (e.g.,
only three different shapes of stickers were provided). More detailed instructions could also play
an educational role, so that students could quickly learn how to be creative and produce more
creative work.

Method

Participants
Ninety-six high school students in a vocational school in Beijing, China, participated in this
study. Thirty-seven of the students were from an applied arts professional program (including
hairstyling, tailoring, sculpturing). The rest of the students (59) were from other areas, such as
 Societal and School Influences on Creativity 109

computer science and English, for whom art was not a focus in their daily classroom education.
The first author, a female native Chinese, conducted the experiment.

Material
The materials were the same as used in our previous study (Niu & Sternberg, 2001). All
students received the same set of stickers (60 with different shapes and colors). They were instructed
to select one of three topics, “happiness,” “my dream,” or “my home,” as the basis of a collage
design.

Procedure and Experimental Treatment

After receiving consent from the participants, students from both art and other programs
received three different instructions (in random order) to produce three treatment conditions. The
number of students assigned to each condition can be seen in Table 1.
In one condition, students received basic standardized instructions, and no mention of cre-
ativity. The instructions were as follows:
We would like to ask you to help us by making a collage design. Please select one topic you
are interested in from the following three topics, and make a collage to represent this topic. Feel
free to use the materials we provided; you can use as much or as little material as you like in your
design, but please use only these materials.
Your choice of topics is: Happiness, My Dream, and My Future (Circle the one you want to
depict).
In the second, the creative condition, explicit instructions were given to be creative. In addi-
tion to the standardized instruction, one more sentence was added, “ Please try to be creative.” In
the third condition, detailed instructions on how to be creative were given. In addition to the
creative focus instruction, one more sentence was added, “To be creative, you could fold or tear
the stickers when necessary so that the shapes and sizes of the materials would not limit your
creative expression.”

Judges and Judging Procedures

All students’ collage designs were scanned into a computer and translated into PPT files (via
Microsoft PowerPoint software). Three female graduate students in the Psychology Department of
Yale University (one native Chinese and two Americans), worked as judges to evaluate all stu-
dents’ collages. Judges looked at each collage via computer in a prearranged order. The order in
which the collages were presented differed across judges. Judges were then instructed to evaluate
all of the collages subjectively on each of the following five dimensions: originality, appropriate-
ness, aesthetic appeal, humor, and overall creativity. The judges were asked to evaluate all art-

Table 1
Student Distribution in the Three Different
Experimental Conditions

Type of Class

Type of Instruction Art Others

No focus 13 18
Creative focus 12 19
Detailed instruction 12 22
110 Niu and Sternberg

works relative to one another on each aspect and to grade each artwork on a seven-point scale.
They were instructed to look at all the collages before their evaluations.

Results and Discussion

Interjudge Reliabilities
Interjudge reliabilities were measured using Cronbach’s coefficient alpha. The reliability coef-
ficients on five the dimensions ranged from .48 to .79 (M ⫽ .57) for the three judges, which could
be regarded as good or moderate (Cicchetti & Sparrow, 1981). We also calculated the reliability of
the three judges on all five dimensions, and a .91 coefficient score was obtained. We then took the
mean score of the fifteen ratings (three judges across five dimensions) as the overall creativity
score. The following analysis was based on the overall creativity ratings.

Overall Creativity Performance

A 2 (type of class: art vs. other) ⫻ 3 (instruction: standardized, creative, vs. detailed instruc-
tion) MANOVA was performed. We found a significant effect of instruction, F(2,95) ⫽ 3.31, p ⬍
.05, suggesting that the effect of experimental treatment was successful. Specifically, students
made more creative collages when they were told to be creative (M ⫽ 3.19, SD ⫽ .13), and they
made even better collages when they were told how to be creative (M ⫽ 3.25, SD ⫽ .13), in
comparison to students in the standardized instruction condition (M ⫽ 2.82, SD ⫽ .13). Post hoc
analyses showed a marginal difference on students’ creative performance between the standard-
ized and creative instruction conditions (mean difference ⫽ .33, p ⫽ .07), and a significant differ-
ence on creative performance between the standardized and detailed instruction conditions (mean
difference ⫽ .42, p ⫽ .02). However, no significant difference was found between the creative and
detailed instruction conditions (mean difference ⫽ .09, ns). There also was no significant differ-
ence in creativity shown by art students (M ⫽ 3.14, SD ⫽ 0.12) vs. other students (M ⫽ 3.03, SD ⫽
0.09) in this task, nor was there an interaction between the type of class and manipulation of
instructions. In other words, receiving art training did not make students more creative in their
artwork. Only receiving special instructions—either simply a sentence of “try to be creative” or
more detailed instructions—helped the Chinese students make more creative artworks (see Figure 2).

Conclusions
Chinese students outperformed American students in many international competitions in math-
ematics and other natural sciences. Our studies, however, have shown that compared with their
American counterparts, Chinese students’ artwork is generally perceived as less creative by both
Chinese and American judges. It may be, therefore, that Chinese students “lag behind” their
American counterparts in the domain of creativity, even though they generally “excel” in conven-
tional academic tasks. It is important to understand the contributing, if not causal, factors of this
discrepancy. Only then can we design suitable educational or social programs to encourage a
higher level of creative behavior in Chinese students.
To begin with, we can probably rule out two possible factors in the lower levels of crea-
tivity observed in Chinese students in our study. First, the discrepancy cannot be attributed to the
difference between Chinese and American conceptions of creativity, as some researchers (e.g.,
Csikszentmihalyi, 1988, 1996; Niu, 2001) have suggested. Although societies can influence peo-
ple’s conception of creativity, our study of artistic creativity suggests that this influence was, at
best, minimal. Here, people from both the American and Chinese societies used similar criteria in
judging students’ artwork, implying that both the American and Chinese judges generally agreed
on what constitutes creativity and on whom was creative in their work.
 Societal and School Influences on Creativity 111

Figure 2. The effect of instruction on both art and other students’ creative performance.

Secondly, it is also unlikely that ethnic or genetic factors can account for the discrepancy
between Chinese and American students’ creative expressions. In our study, we compared artistic
creativity among three groups, namely, Chinese, Asian American, and non-Asian American stu-
dents. Our results showed a significant difference in creative performance between Chinese and
Asian Americans (two closely related ethnic groups), but no difference between Asian Americans
and their non-Asian American counterparts (two different ethnic groups). Ethnicity, therefore,
seems not to have been a determinant of rated creativity in our study.
What factors, then, could account for the discrepancy in creativity between the Chinese and
American samples? We suggest three possible explanations for this discrepancy, although of course
this list of explanations is not exhaustive.
First, it may be that an individual’s need for autonomy is a critical force driving the individu-
al’s creativity. Generally, a higher need for autonomy has been shown to energize an individual’s
potential for creative production, and vice versa (Amabile, 1982, 1996; Amabile & Conti, 1997).
Drawing from this argument, it follows that Americans can be expected to be more creative than
Chinese, given the fact that American society tends to foster more individual freedom and expres-
sion of individuality, whereas Chinese culture tends to encourage more conformity at the expense
of creative expression.
Second, the comparative lack of creativity among Chinese students may be due to the nature
of Chinese pedagogical practices. It has been shown that children who engage in self-exploratory
activities generally cultivate a strong interest in creative expression (Oreck, 2001). In contrast,
those children who are schooled in a system that values or rewards analytical abilities over self-
exploration may become less creative. Thus, it may be that Chinese students demonstrate a lower
level of creativity because they have been exposed to a school system that predominantly empha-
sizes the learning of basic knowledge and analytical skills. In contrast, the American school sys-
tem prides itself on a tradition of training in self-orientation and self-expression.
112 Niu and Sternberg

Finally, it may be that the difference between groups is due to a difference between the
American and Chinese educational testing systems. Although there is a widespread tendency for
both Chinese and American educators to rely on standardized tests in many decision-making
processes, these tests play a far more vital role in China than they do in American society. In
China, national performance assessments (e.g., the NCEE) can and do decisively determine a
student’s educational destiny (in fact, usually also his or her career). In short, good performance
guarantees college entrance and good career prospects. In contrast, failure in these tests inevitably
spells doom for the student’s educational pursuit, and reduces hopes for a better quality of life.
Thus, students in China are typically concerned predominantly about doing well on standardized
analytical tests, and there is conspicuously less incentive for cultivating creativity. In contrast,
creativity is woven into the fabric of the American dream. In essence, an individual can, and many
do, excel in this society by way of creative achievement, independent of his or her performance on
standardized analytical assessments.
What can, or should, societies and schools do to improve students’ creativity? Our study
suggests one possible approach to fostering Chinese students’ creative performance is to teach
creativity. It should be noted that this study was carried out only in a Chinese context, and we do
not know yet how American students would respond to the same directions. Our results did show,
however, that by simply telling students to be creative, we were able to increase Chinese students’
creative performance. These instructions gave Chinese students permission to break through the
norms and restrictions of the environment. Furthermore, giving detailed coaching on how to be
creative led to increased creative performance. In sum, our study shows that permitting Chinese
students to be creative could at least temporarily enhance their creative performance. Continuing
this kind of practice might lead to increased creativity. At least, encouraging students to exhibit
their creativity freely and giving students more detailed or more effective instruction are the first
steps educators could take to foster their students’ creativity. As such, we recommend that school-
teachers and parents, particularly in China, actively encourage their children to challenge cultural
norms, be critical and imaginative, and engage more in creative self-exploratory activities, and
giving them the desired reward whenever possible or necessary. In addition, educators should also
allow themselves to engage in more creative activities and actively guide their children on how to
be creative. Like teaching basic skills, teaching creativity and creative thinking strategies should
also be included in their educational practice.
By extension, on a broader dimension, schools and societies can also actively encourage
creativity among their members by providing and supporting channels of self-expression. As a
start, we recommend two paths toward this goal. First, societies in general, and schools in par-
ticular, could create environments that protect and nurture individuals’ sense of autonomy, on the
one hand, and discourage blanket conformity, on the other. Second, efforts could be made to
help to relieve students of the burden of unnecessary and excessive academic workloads and
assessments. Instead, teaching students on how to be creative could be built into students’ weekly
schedules.
Overall, we believe that the teaching of basic skills and knowledge is necessary and impor-
tant but not sufficient for the development of individuals and societies. Developing students’
creativity should also be regarded as an important educational goal. We want to warn against the
temptation to dwell on analytical skills at the expense of creative development. Leaders of schools
and societies must be aware of the potential danger of emphasizing analytical thinking at the
expense of creative thinking. Great strides in science and technology have always been driven by
creativity as well as by analytical prowess. We, therefore, exhort school and national leaders to
learn from one another’s educational success, while maintaining their unique cultural and educa-
tional characteristics.
 Societal and School Influences on Creativity 113

Acknowledgments
This project was supported in part by a grant from Council of Eastern Asian Studies at Yale
University to the first author and under the Javits Act program (Grant No. R206R00001) as admin-
istered by the Office of Education Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education to
the second author. Support of this research does not indicate agreement with any of the positions
in the article, and no such agreement should be inferred. Special thanks are to the teachers and
students at Beijing Applied Art High School for their tremendous help in data collection. We also
thank Jean Pretz, Lim How, Wentao Yuan, and guest editors of this special issue, Dr. Zheng Zhou
and Dr. Stephen Peverly, for their helpful comments on our manuscript.

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