Although prior work has characterized creativity as a primarily agentic endeavor, we diverge from this perspective and argue for agentic and communal pathways to creativity that offer unique advantages to each gender. We draw from social role theory to predict that risk-taking and empathic tendencies-as agentic and communal mechanisms, respectively-help explain how gender influences creativity. We also identify contextual moderators that can strengthen the communal pathway-predicting a more positive relationship between empathic tendency and creativity as well as a stronger indirect effect via empathic tendency when the tasks demand perspective-taking and when usefulness is explicitly incorporated in creativity assessment. With a meta-analysis of 753 independent samples (265,762 individuals), we find support for a communal pathway (i.e., women are creative via empathic tendency) and for an agentic pathway (i.e., men are creative via risk-taking tendency). We also find that the communal pathway is stronger when usefulness is explicitly incorporated in creativity assessment. Task demands for perspective-taking did not show a moderating effect. Taken together, our findings provide a more balanced account of the gender-creativity relationship, demonstrate why men and women differ in creativity and when women can leverage the communal mechanism to enhance creativity, and inform theory and practice towards a more gender-equitable workplace. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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探究创造力中性别差异的黑匣子：双过程模型和荟萃分析。


尽管之前的研究将创造力描述为一种主要的能动性努力，但我们与这个观点相悖，并主张通往创造力的能动性和公共途径为每个性别提供了独特的优势。我们根据社会角色理论预测，冒险和共情倾向（分别作为代理机制和公共机制）有助于解释性别如何影响创造力。我们还确定了可以加强公共路径的情境调节因素——预测共情倾向和创造力之间更积极的关系，以及当任务需要换位思考以及当有用性被明确纳入创造力评估时，通过共情倾向产生更强的间接影响。通过对 753 个独立样本（265,762 人）的荟萃分析，我们发现了对公共途径（即女性通过共情倾向而具有创造力）和代理途径（即男性通过冒险倾向而具有创造力）的支持。我们还发现，当创造力评估中明确纳入有用性时，公共途径会更强。对换位思考的任务要求并没有显示出调节作用。总而言之，我们的研究结果对性别与创造力的关系提供了更平衡的解释，证明了为什么男性和女性在创造力方面存在差异，以及女性何时可以利用公共机制来增强创造力，并为理论和实践提供信息，以实现更加性别平等的工作场所。 （PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2024 APA，保留所有权利）。