Problem Solving and Creativity

As can be seen in Table 1, the majority were female students (50.37%) of the total number of 2009 responses. Regarding age, there is a certain balance between the four grades. In terms of major, the percentage of social science, art, and business accounts for 79.95%.

Table 1. Sample characteristics.

Table 2 reports the means, standard deviations, and inter-scale correlations between all the study variables. Understanding conflict and process conflict were both positively correlated with students' creativity (r = 0.870, p < 0.01; r = 0.570, p < 0.01, respectively). Relationship conflict negatively predicted students' creativity (r = −0.590, p < 0.01).

Table 2. Means, standard deviations, and correlations.

The results of the correlation analysis revealed that all the variables had significant associations, supporting the use of regression and mediating analysis in the following steps.

The results of the hierarchical regression shown in Table 3 (M2) support Hypotheses 1–3. Understanding conflict and process conflict had significant positive effects on students' creativity (β = 0.019, p < 0.01; β = 0.141, p < 0.01, respectively). Relationship conflict was significantly negatively related to students' creativity (β = −0.505, p < 0.01).

Table 3. Hierarchical regression analysis.

Note: ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001 (two-tailed).