How much does culture influence creative thinking? For a study out next month in The Journal of Business Research, a team of scholars led by Gad Saad of Concordia University in Montreal showed how an identical brainstorming exercise produced very different results in two distinct cultural contexts.

The experiment pitted a so-called “individualist” culture that prizes free thinking and personal expression (Canada) against a collectivist culture that emphasizes humility and group harmony (Taiwan).

Dr. Saad, an evolutionary behavioral scientist, said the idea for the experiment was suggested by one of his graduate students, Louis Ho, who co-wrote the paper with Dr. Saad and Mark Cleveland of the University of Western Ontario. Mr. Ho, a Canadian, was raised in a family of immigrants from Taiwan. “He had anecdotally noticed that there was something inherent about the Taiwanese culture that he grew up in that seemed to hinder thinking outside of the box,” Dr. Saad said.