Title: Does a tired mind help solve insight problem? The effect of ego depletion on college professors' insight

Authors: Bo Lin; Huimin Li; Jia Yu

Addresses: Faculty of Economics and Management, Dalian University, Dalian 116622, Liaoning Province, China ' Faculty of Economics and Management, Dalian University, Dalian 116622, Liaoning Province, China ' Experiment Center, Dalian University, Dalian 116622, Liaoning Province, China

Abstract: Innovation plays an important role in the operation and management of scientific research institutions. According to behavioural science theory, the human plays an important role in the operation and management of an organisation. As the subject of knowledge innovation, the main undertaker of its innovation performance is college professors. In order to explore the influence of different ego depletion on the solution of college professors' insight problem. This paper uses the eye movement experiment to explore the process of solving the insight problems. It is found that there are significant differences between college professors in solving insight problems under different ego depletion. The difference of ego depletion in gender is insignificant, but the difference in age is significant. At the end, some suggestions are put forward to reduce the ego depletion of college professors, improve their innovative performance, and make the college operation and management more effective.

Keywords: ego depletion; insight problem solving; college professors.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMOM.2019.106887

International Journal of Modelling in Operations Management, 2019 Vol.7 No.4, pp.284 - 296

Received: 29 Jun 2019
Accepted: 23 Oct 2019
Published online: 24 Apr 2020 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article