The Facilitating Role of Task Alternation on Group Idea Generation

During group idea generation, group members often first retrieve typical ideas from common categories. The sharing of these typical ideas is likely to lead to fixation on them preventing subsequent creative idea generation. Two experiments were conducted to examine whether a task-alternation approach can reduce such fixation and facilitate idea generation. Dyads were asked to work on idea generation tasks (Experiment 1) or category-exemplar generation tasks (Experiment 2). In both experiments, dyads had to perform the tasks in either a continuous or an alternating condition. The continuous dyads worked on one task continuously before proceeding to another. The alternating dyads switched between tasks. Both experiments found a positive role of task alternation. Moreover, the performance gap between the alternating and continuous dyads increased over time. We conclude that task alternation facilitates group idea generation, most likely via overcoming fixation.