Verena Krause

Verena Krause is an Assistant Professor (Lecturer) at the UCL School of Management, in the Organizations and Innovation group. She earned her B.A. in Psychology from Boston University and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University.

Prior to earning her doctorate, Verena was a researcher at the Psychology Research Laboratory at McLean Hospital, Belmont, MA. Verena studied the cognitive and physiological traits that may identify carriers for schizophrenia genes.

At UCL, Verena researches the conditions necessary for employees to be creative, as well as the expected and unexpected consequences of engaging in creative work. Her research has been published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. Verena is a member of the Academy of Management and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.

Research

Verena Krause researches the antecedents and consequences of creativity. Creativity involves the generation of new and appropriate problem solutions—an effort that is becoming increasingly important as the business environment continues to change rapidly and become more competitive. Accordingly, in Verena’s first stream of research, she investigates antecedents to creative performance. In her dissertation research, she found that creative solutions are most likely to emerge when individuals retain their own, unique point of view, rather than attempt to adopt the perspective of another individual. She shows that people come up with less original solutions when they attempt to take the perspective of another person because doing so triggers a cooperative mindset.

In a second stream of research, Verena turns the tables to think about creativity not only as a dependent variable, but also as an independent variable that might have sweeping consequences for a wide range of psychological, interpersonal, and behavioral outcomes at work. For example, she shows that the opportunity to do creative work might actually feel liberating and serve as an important outlet that mitigates psychological burdens.

Research Projects

The consequences of engaging in creative work

Rather than researching creativity as an outcome, we explore the positive and negative consequences of engaging in creative work.