How Combining Opposite, Near-Opposite, and Irrelevant Concepts Influence Creativity Performance

This research article aims to add new findings to the realm of conceptual combination and also present new ideas of designing theoretically based activities for fostering creativity. Composed of two studies, this research examined how combining two antonyms, near-antonyms, and irrelevant words affect research participants' performance on the fluency score and the originality score. One hundred seventy-three college students from southern Taiwan were recruited to participate in Study 1 and 151 college students from southern Taiwan in Study 2. Both of Study 1 and Study 2 used the repeated-measures design. The fluency score was modified to accommodate the special design of Study 2. According to the results of Study 1, the participants' fluency scores became significantly higher as the level of antonymy of the stimulus word pair increased. Their originality scores were also slightly enhanced when they responded to the stimulus words of higher levels of antonymy. Study 2 replicated the results of Study 1. In addition, the participants of Study 2 tended to choose the words more aligned with stimulus words to respond to stimulus words in the earlier time. Alignability increases with levels of antonymy. For creativity performance, high antonymy has advantages over low antonymy in production quantity, quality, and reaction time. Antonymy improves the efficiency and effectiveness of creativity performance.