Roy Yong Joo Chua

Existing research on AI cultural biases predominantly focuses on Western models, overlooking critical gaps in non-Western models. We conduct a comparative analysis of AI models—ChatGPT (US developed) and ErnieBot (China developed)—from different cultures to investigate how corresponding cultural biases manifest in their outputs. Additionally, we examine how cultural alignment between human users and AI models impacts their collaborative creative performance and the underlying psychological mechanisms. In study 1, multiple-choice prompt with a zero-shot technique was used to evaluate cultural biases in four widely used AI models—ChatGPT-3.5/4 and ErnieBot-3.5/4—comparing their responses to established cultural psychometric scales. We find that both Chinese and American models largely reflect norms, values, and cognitive tendencies consistent with the cultural context of their training data. In study 2, an experiment showed that when users’ and AI models’ cultural backgrounds align, users demonstrate increased usefulness—but not novelty—in creative solutions for local (but not global) tasks, driven by an enhanced state of “psychological flow.” These results were replicated in study 3, a field study using dyad data from supervisor and subordinate reports. Overall, our findings show that AI models developed in different cultural contexts exhibit distinct cultural perspectives and worldviews. This highlights the importance of cultural alignment between users and AI models, particularly during creative collaborations. We discuss the implications of cultural biases in AI, emphasizing the need for cross-cultural AI literacy to improve user interactions and support more effective global AI integration.

Cultural tightness theory, which holds that “tight” cultures have rigid norms and sanctions, provides unique insights into cultural variations. However, current theorizing has not analyzed gender differences in cultural tightness. Addressing this gap, this research shows that women are more constrained than men by norms within the same society. By recruiting 15,425 respondents, we mapped state-level gender bias in cultural tightness across the United States. Variability in gender bias in cultural tightness was associated with state-level sociopolitical factors (religion and political ideology) and gender-related threats. Gender bias in cultural tightness was positively associated with state-level gender inequality in (business and political) leadership and innovation, two major challenges faced by women professionals. Overall, this research advances cultural tightness theory and offers a cultural norms account on persistent gender inequalities in society.

Collaborating across cultures can potentially increase creativity due to access to diverse ideas and perspectives, but this benefit is not always realized. One reason is that the conflict that aris...

Significance: This study extends existing theories of cultural tightness by mapping cultural tightness and its relationship to innovation across 31 provinces in China. Consistent with prior research, we find that tighter provinces are associated with increased governmental control, constraints in daily life, religious practices, and exposure to threats. However, prior findings about cultural tightness do not fully apply to China. Departing from prior findings that tighter states are more rural, conservative, less creative, and less happy, cultural tightness in China is associated with urbanization; economic growth; better health; greater happiness; tolerance toward the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community; and gender equality. Provinces with tight cultures exhibit lower rates of substantive/radical innovation yet higher rates of incremental innovation.

In the global economy, individuals have to engage in cross-cultural interactions when tasked to develop creative new products or services. Research on the effects of cultural diversity on creativity, however, has been equivocal. One stream of research champions that cultural diversity in relationships broadens ideas and resources for creative thinking, whereas skeptics counter that intercultural tensions and conflicts hurt rather than help. This chapter discusses both sides of the argument. We examine the effects of intercultural relationships on creativity from three perspectives: (a) how a culturally diverse social environment (including social networks) influences individuals’ creativity; (b) how individuals can successfully engage in intercultural dyadic creative collaboration; and (c) how intercultural relationships influence creativity of multicultural teams. In addition, we investigate the underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions of how intercultural relationships impact creative performance. We conclude by integrating ideas from existing research and proposing new research directions.

Innovation typically involves generating multiple novel ideas and selecting the most promising one for implementation. In this research, we examine how gender influences the way innovators select which idea to pursue. We theorize that although women are equally capable as men in generating highly novel ideas, they are less likely than men to pursue and implement their most novel ideas. This effect is in part because highly novel ideas are disproportionately risky and women tend to have lower risk preference than men. Women might also have more concerns than men about potential social backlash when they appear overly ambitious in pursuing extremely novel ideas. Indeed, in an online survey, we found that women generally seek more social validation in pursuing new ideas in the workplace as compared to men. In a laboratory study, we found evidence of greater “novelty avoidance” in women than men - the extent to which individuals refrain from pursuing the most novel ideas they have generated. This effect is explained by women’s conscious choice of selecting their less novel ideas for implementation.

In view of MOR's recent changes to editorial policies (Lewin et al., 2016), this addendum is created to provide greater data transparency and richer discussions of our findings and their implications.

The ability to think and solve problems creatively in a multicultural environment is critical for success in the 21^stcentury. Integrating research on creative cognition and cultural intelligence, we examine the interactional effects of two cognitive capabilities – cultural knowledge and cultural metacognition – on individuals’ creativity in multicultural teams. We propose that although cultural knowledge is useful for creativity, too much knowledge can be detrimental because of cognitive overload and entrenchment. This inverted U-shaped relationship however, is moderated by cultural metacognition. Results of our study support our hypothesis of an inverted U-shape relationship between cultural knowledge and creativity. As expected, we found that the curvilinear effect of cultural knowledge occurs only for individuals with low metacognition. For high cultural metacognition individuals, cultural knowledge has no effect on creativity. These findings offer new insights and practical implications for creativity in today's global environment.

Diversity in social networks is often linked to enhanced creativity. Emerging research on exposure to diverse informational resources (e.g., ideas and knowledge), however, has painted a more complex picture regarding its effect on individuals’ creative performance. This research examines the effects of culturally diverse networks on the flow of ideas and individuals’ creativity. Combining social network analysis with experimental methods, two studies using different samples found that a culturally diverse network increases the likelihood of receiving culture-related novel ideas (but not other types of novel ideas) from network contacts, whether or not these contacts share one’s own culture of origin. Additionally, the creativity effect of network diversity depends on the type of tasks. Networks’ degree of cultural diversity increases creativity on tasks that draw on varied cultural-knowledge resources but not on other types of tasks. These findings highlight that network diversity provides access to specific forms of knowledge and has a domain-specific effect on creativity. Theoretical and practical implications for creativity and social network research are discussed.

This paper advances a new theoretical model to understand the effect of culture on creativity in a global context. We theorize that creativity engagement and success depend on the cultural tightness—the extent to which a country is characterized by strong social norms and low tolerance for deviant behaviors—of both an innovator’s country and the audience’s country, as well as the cultural distance between these two countries. Using field data from a global online crowdsourcing platform that organizes creative contests for consumer-product brands, supplemented by interviews with marketing experts, we found that individuals from tight cultures are less likely than counterparts from loose cultures to engage in and succeed at foreign creative tasks; this effect is intensified as the cultural distance between the innovator’s and the audience’s country increases. Additionally, tight cultures are less receptive to foreign creative ideas. But we also found that in certain circumstances—when members of a tight culture do creative work in their own or culturally close countries—cultural tightness can actually promote creativity success. This finding implies that some degree of convergent thinking as engendered by tight cultures could be beneficial for creativity, challenging the dominant view in creativity research that divergent thinking is a prerequisite for creative performance.