Abstract Providing stimuli may facilitate idea generation. Creativity theories often suggest that stimuli unrelated to the problem task will improve creativity, but empirical studies have yielded inconsistent results. We propose a Wikipedia-based approach that is able to identify stimuli at different levels of relatedness. Specifically, we use hypertext links in two sections of the Wikipedia article of a focal concept to identify closely related concepts. Repeating this procedure leads to increasingly remote concepts. Using this approach to obtain stimulus concepts, we examine the effect of stimulus relatedness on idea generation. Our results show that stimulus relatedness is positively related to idea quantity and idea usefulness. While creativity theories often suggest using unrelated stimuli to promote idea novelty, results of this experimental study indicate that remotely related stimuli, not unrelated stimuli, tend to improve idea novelty. Because Wikipedia covers knowledge in almost all disciplines, our Wikipedia-based approach can be used to discover appropriate stimuli and thereby support creative work in most domains of knowledge.

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一种基于维基百科的支持创意产生的方法：刺激相关性的作用

摘要 提供刺激可以促进创意的产生。创造力理论通常表明，与问题任务无关的刺激会提高创造力，但实证研究产生了不一致的结果。我们提出了一种基于维基百科的方法，该方法能够识别不同相关性级别的刺激。具体来说，我们在维基百科文章的两个部分使用超文本链接来识别密切相关的概念。重复这个过程会导致越来越遥远的概念。使用这种方法来获取刺激概念，我们研究了刺激相关性对创意产生的影响。我们的结果表明，刺激相关性与想法数量和想法有用性呈正相关。虽然创造力理论经常建议使用不相关的刺激来促进想法的新颖性，这项实验研究的结果表明，远程相关的刺激，而不是不相关的刺激，往往会提高想法的新颖性。因为维基百科涵盖了几乎所有学科的知识，我们基于维基百科的方法可用于发现适当的刺激，从而支持大多数知识领域的创造性工作。