The role of creativity in generating options for value-based decisions

Understanding creativity requires understanding memory. According to one influential theory, creativity arises from forming novel connections between ideas stored in memory. There is substantial evidence supporting this view: highly creative individuals are better at making remote associations, able to traverse further across semantic memory networks, switch between more subcategories, and make larger associative leaps. Taken together, these findings suggest that creativity could be characterized as the ability to efficiently and flexibly navigate memory space. This ability may not only underlie creativity but also play a central role in decision-making. When generating options for open-ended, value-based decisions, people typically retrieve ideas that are high in value, high in probability, and easily accessible from memory. While such retrieval may promote efficiency, it could also impose limits. Research shows that the choices individuals make when they self-generate options tend to differ from the choices they would make when provided with options. This discrepancy suggests that self-generated options may reflect a narrower search and exploration of memory space. The present study will investigate the role of creativity in option generation and decision-making through construal level theory. Specifically, it will examine whether adopting a high-level construal (which has been shown to foster divergent thinking) enhances creativity and, in turn, facilitate the generation of more diverse and adaptive options in open-ended value-based decision making. In other words, this study examines creativity as the mechanism through which people broaden their memory search space and generate optimal options.