Distant Temporal Distance and Creative Thinking: The Mediating Role of Promotion Motivation.

The present study examined the effect of distant temporal distance on creative thinking and the underlying motivation mechanism. We tested our hypotheses in four studies. In Studies 1–4, participants in the distant temporal distance opposed to the proximal temporal distance performed better on a series of creative thinking tasks: the Verbal Divergent Thinking Test (Study 1), the Chinese Remote Associates Test (Study 2), the Toy Design Task (Study 3) and the Ad Evaluation Task (Study 4). Moreover, Studies 2 and 3 found that promotion motivation mediated the beneficial effect of distant temporal distance on the performance of the two creative thinking tasks. In conclusion, distant temporal distance facilitated creative thinking, and promotion motivation mediated this beneficial effect.

本研究考察了远期时间距离对创造性思维的影响以及潜在的动机机制。我们通过四项研究检验了我们的假设。在研究1 - 4中，与近期时间距离相比，处于远期时间距离的参与者在一系列创造性思维任务中表现更好：言语发散思维测试（研究1）、中文远距离联想测试（研究2）、玩具设计任务（研究3）以及广告评估任务（研究4）。此外，研究2和3发现，促进动机在远期时间距离对两项创造性思维任务表现的有益影响中起中介作用。总之，远期时间距离促进了创造性思维，并且促进动机介导了这种有益影响。