Reflection on Wang, H. C., Fussell, S. R., & Cosley, D. (2011, March). From diversity to creativity: Stimulating group brainstorming with cultural differences and conversationally-retrieved pictures. In Proceedings of the ACM 2011 conference on Computer supported cooperative work (pp. 265-274). ACM.
Summary:
This paper aims to support group brainstorming by introducing diversity. In particular, the paper tries to do so by two methods: (1) internally: by having multicultural groups and (2) externally: stimulating by showing pictures that are either emerge from the current conversation (“Congruent”) or are rare and somewhat diverse from the ongoing conversation (“Stimulus”). Participants are grouped in three different groups (each of 2): American-American (AA), American-Chinese (AC), and Chinese-Chinese (CC). The paper posits that showing Stimulus pictures helps in enhancing brainstorming. “Help” here implies a growth in productivity i.e. number of ideas that the team of two participants come up with and in the breadth of concepts (measured through semantic distance).
Reflections:
This paper was a nice read to some extent. I like the way the paper takes a simplified approach to an issue as complicated as diversity and creativity (not meant in a sarcastic way!). This gives us a lot to think.
One of the initial questions it raises is what actually is diversity? This paper implicitly states that a Chinese adds diversity to an American group and vice-versa. I agree with the paper that cultural differences such as American and Chinese may introduce a more systematic diversity that arise along many dimensions such as language and, subsequently, cognitive styles. But the fact that all are going to college, are of similar age group, and live in the US does not quite suggest the diversity is as diverse.
I strongly believe that diversity helps when diversity is nurtured. People have to be supported in being their true self and in contributing to projects in a way that imposes little (or no) restriction on their being themselves. Simply stating that Chinese are more adaptable to communication behaviors seems to somewhat blanket the entire 1bn+ Chinese population. Even if it were true, wouldn’t the adaptation level be different between groups? More importantly, simply stating that the Chinese participants had to adapt suggests a structural imposition that restricts the Chinese to be themselves. I agree with the discussion that having the Chinese participants speak in a second language (English) could have made it hard for them to express themselves. But what I do not understand is why were they required to speak in English (even in C-C groups)? They talk about using machine translation but I feel it could have been part of the study from the start.
On a different note, the limitation of not Chinese participants not being able to use their native language and finding it hard to explain rare and diverse concepts in English reminded me of my study participant who felt similarly when he had to express the Nepali website in English.
I am not sure how to address the concerns. But we certainly can begin by acknowledging that identities intersect; that our social categorizations such as race, ethnicity, gender overlap and are interdependent creating a spectrum of advantages and disadvantages. Separating them into rigid categories may not tell us much about the wide range of experiences that makes us humans (who brainstorm and collaborate).
You have every points valid. One of the fundamental premises for diversity is that we need to “differnetiate” (or “evaluate”) people. As stated, a simple solution is to use the characteristic (ethnicity, gender, culture). If not, do we have a way to assess the traits of an individual? If we have one, should we assess? What is the danger in it?