The Effect Of Distrust On Cognitive Flexibility And Knowledge Transfer

In recent times, more attention in the management and educational psychology literature has been devoted to understanding how and why creative potential is not being achieved, despite the pressing need for innovative thinking and an increased capacity to transfer knowledge more adaptively. Scholars have argued that creativity and the capacity to use knowledge adaptively is often minimal, unless cognitive flexibility (Day & Goldstone, 2012), variability and cognitive incongruity is introduced (Hatano & Inagaki, 1992). Related to these ideas, recent research has demonstrated that distrust serves as a processing influence that enables individuals to think more flexibly and creatively (Mayer & Mussweiler, 2011). The goal of the current research was to investigate whether distrust effects the capacity to process information in more flexible ways, leading to an increase in knowledge transfer. Across three experimental studies, I primed a psychological mindset by having participants complete a scrambled sentence task made of words synonymous with distrust, trust, or neutral meaning. Study 1 measured the effect of distrust on the capacity to solve an immediate analogical transfer problem. Study 2 measured whether distrust aids in discrediting irrelevant information, when solving an immediate analogical transfer problem. Study 3 measured the effect of distrust on the capacity to solve an analogical transfer problem over a delay of time (4 days)