The Stimulation Impact Of Homogeneous And Heterogeneous Visuals On Nominal And Interactive Group Brainstorming

Abstract

The present study provides a theoretical extension of the main propositions of the SIAM model by testing visual stimuli on both nominal and interactive groups. Compared to previous studies, this study provides a more dynamic comparative analysis between nominal and interactive groups under various visual stimulation conditions, building on the existing SIAM model by extending a comparison of two group types (nominal vs. interactive) into a comparison between two sets of visual stimuli (homogeneous vs. heterogeneous) and between two different lab settings (physical or virtual). As expected, all nominal groups in the present study generated more ideas, expressed more idea categories, and had higher inter-category fluency than interactive groups. The SIAM model suggests two strategies to assist brainstormers with generating unconventional ideas: stimulating diverse idea categories to increase the breadth of ideas generated, stimulating relevant homogeneous categories to increase the depth of ideas generated. In general, groups exposed to visual stimuli generated more ideas and produced a greater number of idea categories than groups given no visual stimuli. As hypothesized, groups exposed to task-irrelevant, heterogeneous stimuli generated relatively more idea categories, but task-relevant, homogeneous stimuli did not affect group performance as expected. There was no major difference in inter-category fluency between homogenous and heterogeneous stimulation conditions across nominal and interactive groups.