Expats At Work

[sabaijai]

Expats at work

May 14th 2009

From The Economist print edition

Living abroad gives you a creative edge

ANECDOTAL evidence has long held that creativity in artists and writers can be associated with living in foreign parts. Rudyard Kipling, Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, Paul Gauguin, Samuel Beckett and others spent years dwelling abroad. Now a pair of psychologists has proved that there is indeed a link.

As they report in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, William Maddux of INSEAD, a business school in Fontainebleau, France, and Adam Galinsky, of the Kellogg School of Management in Chicago, presented 155 American business students and 55 foreign ones studying in America with a test used by psychologists as a measure of creativity. Given a candle, some matches and a box of drawing pins, the students were asked to attach the candle to a cardboard wall so that no wax would drip on the floor when the candle was lit. (The solution is to use the box as a candleholder and fix it to the wall with the pins.) They found 60% of students who were either living abroad or had spent some time doing so, solved the problem, whereas only 42% of those who had not lived abroad did so.

A follow-up study with 72 Americans and 36 foreigners explored their creative negotiating skills. Pairs of students were asked to play the role of a seller of a petrol station who then needed to get a job and a buyer who would need to hire staff to run the business. The two were likely to reach an impasse because the buyer had been told he could not afford what the seller was told was his minimum price. Nevertheless, where both negotiators had lived abroad 70% struck a deal in which the seller was offered a management job at the petrol station in return for a lower asking price. When neither of the negotiators had lived abroad, none was able to reach a deal.

To check that they had not merely discovered that creative people are more likely to choose to live abroad, Dr Maddux and Dr Galinsky identified and measured personality traits, such as openness to new experiences, that are known to predict creativity. They then used statistical controls to filter out such factors. Even after that had been done, the statistical relationship between living abroad and creativity remained, indicating that it is something from the experience of living in foreign parts that helps foster creativity.

Merely travelling abroad, however, was not enough. You do have to live there. Packing your beach towel and suntan lotion will not, by itself, make you Hemingway.

http://www.economist.com/science/displayst...ory_id=13643981

[bkkjames]

Given a candle, some matches and a box of drawing pins, the students were asked to attach the candle to a cardboard wall so that no wax would drip on the floor when the candle was lit. (The solution is to use the box as a candleholder and fix it to the wall with the pins.) They found 60% of students who were either living abroad or had spent some time doing so, solved the problem, whereas only 42% of those who had not lived abroad did so.

Perhaps, just - those who lived overseas - were already more creative before they moved overseas. Perhaps, just - it was this inherant creativity (born with it?) played apart in their moving overseas in the first place.

[noahvail]

Given a candle, some matches and a box of drawing pins, the students were asked to attach the candle to a cardboard wall so that no wax would drip on the floor when the candle was lit. (The solution is to use the box as a candleholder and fix it to the wall with the pins.) They found 60% of students who were either living abroad or had spent some time doing so, solved the problem, whereas only 42% of those who had not lived abroad did so.

Perhaps, just - those who lived overseas - were already more creative before they moved overseas. Perhaps, just - it was this inherant creativity (born with it?) played apart in their moving overseas in the first place.

Well said. I was going to suggest that some of the foreign students had much experience using that technique to study at night at in their home country, but nah, that wouldn't be nice

[GuestHouse]

I reckon it would be easier to demonstrate that expats are on the whole prone to a few less 'attractive' attributes on the basis of "ANECDOTAL evidence"

[meom]

Well I've been working in Saudi now for 17 years and am just about to reach the limit of my creativity. Problem solving no problem but more often than not a simple fvk off does the trick

[bkkjames]

Well I've been working in Saudi now for 17 years and am just about to reach the limit of my creativity. Problem solving no problem but more often than not a simple fvk off does the trick

17 years in Saudi - you should get a lifetime achievment award for patience nevermind creativity.

[meom]

Thank you James. I've become very creative at masturbation so maybe that's a plus

[bkkjames]

Thank you James. I've become very creative at masturbation so maybe that's a plus

after 17 years in Saudi, I guess you have had alot of practice. Begs the question though, when you do this, do you keep one eye on one eye and another on the window?

you see if the FT had spent more time interviewing people like you instead of students, I am willing to guess that creativity factor would have gone up.

[meom]

Sure

Regarding creativity more often than not I find the Asian expat to be way more creative than their western counterpart. This is not always a good thing though. For example we bought a high tech piece of equipment last year from Europe and told the supplier we could commission it ourselves. That was not a clever move. Real men don’t need a manual so within no time the whole thing was rewired, gadgets removed etc. We got it working but you don’t want to know how

Anyway recently a service rep. was in the region so he passed by to check how the equipment was doing. The guy nearly started crying, pulled out a few hairs and sort of exasperated requested for the manual because he couldn’t make sense anymore of all the creative changes which were made to the thing.