ABSTRACT Creativity is increasingly recognized as an essential skill for higher education to prepare students for the workplace. As the world is becoming increasingly globalized with international trades, study abroad programs, and communication technologies, higher education faces the challenge of enhancing creativity skills while making sense of individuals' multicultural experiences (MCEs). Previous studies have highlighted the roles of both MCE and empathy, but few have examined how their interaction may influence creativity. The present study investigated whether empathy moderates the relationship between Taiwanese University students' multicultural experience and two dimensions of creativity: everyday creativity and creative ideation. Path analysis indicated significant moderation effects for everyday creativity ( β = −0.175, p = 0.045) and creative ideation ( β = −0.202, p = 0.021). Simple slope and Johnson–Neyman analyses suggested that empathy was more strongly associated with the two facets of creativity primarily among students with limited multicultural experience. The findings indicated that empathy may function as a potential compensatory resource on which students who lack MCE may rely when engaging in creative behaviors and generating novel ideas. The study contributed to current research on creativity by providing an exploratory perspective on the interaction between social–emotional skills and multicultural experiences in influencing creativity.
Wu et al. (Thu,) studied this question.
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