Analysis of Collaboration in Creative Problem Solving Based on Thinking Styles

In this study, we analyze the process of collaborative problem solving from the viewpoint of thinking styles. Thinking styles are defined as a preferred way of thinking; here, we focused on three styles: Legislative, Executive, and Judicial. In this study, we created groups whose members displayed different thinking styles, and asked the groups to solve a creative task collaboratively. If thinking style were effective, we expected that distributed collaboration would be successful. The results are summarized as follows: (1) It was difficult to effect distributed collaboration based on thinking styles. Instead of that collaboration, dominative collaboration by Legislative thinking as the leader was observed. (2) Only with the Legislative style could we anticipate the degree of activity in Proposing. That is, Legislative thinkers actively participated in Proposing, whereas Executive and Judicial thinkers did not actively participate in Doing and Evaluating, respectively. (3) However, Executive and Judicial thinkers contributed to some subtasks following their thinking styles.