Abstract:

Creative thinking is an important psychological foundation in advancing not only scientific and technological progresses, but also human society and cultural development. The present work reviewed existing investigations on gender difference in creative thinking and mainly discussed those behavioral differences on convergent thinking and divergent thinking as well as its relevant neural manifestations of gender effect. With regarding to gender difference in divergent thinking, the female exhibited relative advantages; however, the male showed significant gender dominance in convergent thinking. These differences in behavioral performance across two genders might originate from the dissimilar processing advantages of brain hemispheres and could be mediated by several factors such as gender role and personality traits. The present study reviewed the findings on these differences and recommended several directions in future studies.

Key words: