Florence Lawrence, besides being considered the first Hollywood star at the beginning of the 20th century, was also a driving lover. This also led her to be one of the pioneers in the invention of brake indicators and turn signals: the former in the form of a STOP sign that appeared when the brake pedal was depressed, and the latter in the form of an arm that indicated the direction in which the vehicle was going to head. Instead of worrying about acceleration, the focus was on safety. Today, statistically, women account for only a quarter of driving fatalities and are generally considered to drive more cautiously. Are they less likely to take risks than men? Do they approach innovation differently? And, most importantly, is all that immovable?
We are utterly creative beings. Our creative capacity allows us to evolve and, with this creativity, to live (usually) with more comfort and quality of life. Creativity is therefore an unavoidable necessity for evolution. This creativity is found in all fields (we can think, for example, of medicine, music and architecture). So, first of all, studies show that there are no significant differences in creativity between men and women; however, there’s a significant difference in the implementation of this creativity.
Harvard professor Teresa Amabile distinguishes between creativity, understood as the generation of novel and useful ideas, and innovation, understood as the implementation of these ideas[1] . Innovation is the materialisation of the creative process, and it’s in this impasse, between the intermediate steps of creativity and innovation, where there are major differences in how men and women experience the process.
Therefore, gender differences lie not in the ability to generate new ideas, but in the process of selecting those ideas. This is why new studies have sought to better understand this process, such as the new article by Mengzi Jin, professor at Peking University, and Roy Chua, professor at Singapore Management University, which we present below .
The authors of the article assume that when women select a highly novel idea, as has been shown in other studies, they may suffer social consequences, and therefore women may experience a greater aversion to choosing the most novel idea among all the ideas they have generated. If this is true, there may be a more radical novelty avoidance among women. To demonstrate this, Jin and Chua conduct three studies, which they present in the same article.
Gender differences lie not in the ability to generate new ideas, but in the process of selecting such ideas.
In the first study, 107 undergraduate students at a Singapore university, aged between 21 and 30, were asked to generate as many novel ideas as possible without a time limit. On average, each person generated about 6 ideas. Once all the ideas were generated, each person was asked to rate their own ideas on two dimensions: novelty (how new and unique the idea is) and usefulness (how well it solves a real problem). After this, the same participants were again asked to choose one from all their ideas and prepare a video to present it to an anonymous audience. In turn, a questionnaire was administered to find out their personality, level of intelligence and avoidance of novelty.
As each person rated their own ideas, each person's novelty avoidance was operationalised by knowing the maximum novelty value of all the ideas generated and the novelty score of the chosen idea. For example, if a person rated the most novel of their ideas a 95 out of 100, and ultimately chose a 75, they were assigned a novelty avoidance score of 20. In turn, over 10,000 participants, aged 18-30, were asked to rate each video. Overall, each video was rated by more than 100 participants.
In a second study, Jin and Chua asked 306 freelance designers to generate a name and logo for an eco-hotel and then, as in study 1, to rate each idea in terms of novelty and usefulness and choose one of their proposals. Similarly, novelty avoidance was calculated by comparing the most novel idea with the selected idea, and a new variable was added: fear of social rejection. That is, the feeling of being perceived negatively for proposing ideas that are too innovative.
This second study showed that this difference was explained, above all, by a greater fear of social rejection when faced with very novel ideas.
In this study, ideas were rated by more than 30,000 people. Similar to study 1, women tended to avoid novelty more than men when choosing an idea. In addition, this second study showed that this difference was mainly explained by a greater fear of social rejection of very novel ideas. Similarly, the success of the idea followed an inverted U: the most valued ideas were neither the most extreme nor the most conservative, but the most balanced. Opting for safer ideas, women were below the optimal point, to which men were closer.
One of the principles of quantum physics is the influence of the observer on the event. That is, by analysing the behaviour of a particle we modify it. In a sense, one could say that women's novelty management would be aligned with this principle: when men observe or judge, the results change.
This is the conclusion of the third study, in which 404 students at a university in Singapore were asked to make a photo collage to promote the university on social media. As in the previous two studies, they were asked to rate each idea for its novelty and usefulness, and choose one of their own ideas to develop. In this third study, the novelty was that the composition of the panel that would evaluate each proposal was announced, with four options: men only, women only, mixed group or no information. 33,000 participants re-evaluated the proposals.
When women knew that their work would be evaluated only by men, they were more likely to avoid novelty.
The results of this third study show that when women knew that their work would be evaluated only by men, they were more likely to avoid novelty. In contrast, when they knew they were women, this tendency to avoid novelty was reduced or disappeared. The equilibrium relationship between the proposals presented also continued to be confirmed.
All these findings lead to the following implications for employees and organisations:
For organisations:
- Focus not only on the generation of ideas, but also on their selection. Organisations need to understand that some good ideas from their own employees may be hidden or made invisible by the employees themselves due to the risks and circumstances explained in the article.
- Facilitate a safe environment for the proposal of novel ideas. The studies presented reveal that the context is not neutral; therefore, if you want to be a creative and innovative organisation, you need to facilitate a safe environment where ideas can be shared freely, without fear of social rejection.
Some good ideas from their own employees may be hidden or rendered invisible by the employees themselves due to the risks and circumstances explained in the article.
For professionals:
- Understanding the impact of social fear. As the study shows, some people may avoid novelty for fear of social rejection. It’s important to manage this fear, both individually and collectively, to prevent brilliant ideas from never seeing the light of day.
- Finding the sweet spot between novelty and utility. The study is also very broad in the number of participants rating ideas and, in all three cases, the most highly rated ideas fall somewhere between the uninnovative and the radically innovative. Balance seems to be key.
Ultimately, if we revisit the example of Florence, we understand that what was really crucial was her ability to innovate and the fact that, if she made a mark, it was precisely because in her early days the motoring world was not yet conditioned by a male bias, nor did she fear rejection.
Dr Marc Grau is Professor of Social and Family Policy at the Education Sciences Faculty, UIC Barcelona, and Coordinator of the Joaquím Molins Figueras Chair for Childcare and Family Policies. He was research fellow at Harvard Kennedy School (2016-2022) and has a Master in Business Administration from ESADE Business School, as well as a Master in Social and Political Science from the University Pompeu Fabra and Doctorate in Social Policy from Edinburgh University. He has published several books, including The Work-Family Balance in Light of Globalization and Technology (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017), The New Ideal Worker (Springer, 2019), Engaged Fatherhood (Springer, 2022) and Human Flourishing (Springer, 2023). He is currently Co-Editor of the magazine Community, Work and Family.