Five Cultural Barriers to Creativity

Living in this melting pot of cultures that is the United States deeply affects people and their ability to be successful. Many times there are cultural barriers due to the fact that ones persons culture does not promote but rather looks down upon on certain aspects of ones character that is needed in order to succeed in the United States. In many cultures, conforming is importartant and standing up or fighting for your ideas is not good. This hinders creativity because one becomes submissive and therefore is less likely to give creative ideas, or add to someones idea, but rather conform to other peoples ideas. Another barrier is a culture that promotes competition. Obviously, competition obstructs creativity because the environment of sharing freely is not able to occur and therefore people fight over each other and compete rather than create on creative solution out of all the ideas. Conversely, and expectation of politeness that some cultures put high regard on is also detrimental to group creativity. Being polite means not going against what someone else says and if someone shoots your idea down, then conforming. Not everyone knows everything though and though one may not be and expert per se, their ideas are still valuable. Some cultures though, do not promote this and they rely on expert knowledge. Lastly, an expectation of practicality and efficiency does not allow the creative juices to flow. When a groups is strict and to the point/ mechanical, group members can not be creative.

My person experience is with conforming and expectation of politeness. I do not like to go against people because as a female and Mexican-American, I was socialized that it was rude and looked down upon.