Re-analysing a published set of five brainstorming experiments, the authors found ChatGPT-aided idea sets less diverse than comparison sets in all five (significantly in four), and lower on all of their alternative diversity metrics, with 37 of 45 comparisons statistically significant; in one task 6% of ChatGPT-only ideas were unique against 100% of human-only ideas.

SocioLens project,

Claim LD09-SL-C12 (v1.0)

Research opportunities this claim motivates

What this claim leaves open for research. Each is a hypothesis about a gap, not a finding.

In science, is it the wording that converges or the ideas?Idea sets were less diverse on most alternative measures in a brainstorming re-analysis.

Provenance and status

Claim type: Estimate
Publication status: Eligible for publication, with qualifiers: version
Verification state: Checked against the primary source; the source is a preprint. Who checked this claim is not recorded for it; claim checks so far were AI-led, and no person has checked claims against their sources.
Does not license: That individual ideas are worse; the original study rated them more creative
Limitations: Read in the authors’ manuscript; the journal version and its venue were not confirmed; a re-analysis of one team’s experiments
Source (as cited): Meincke, Nave & Terwiesch, “ChatGPT Decreases Idea Diversity in Brainstorming,” author manuscript, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Source type: Working paper (recorded as “Author manuscript”)
Institutional position: Independent academic (The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania)
Maturity of the evidence: Emerging evidence
Recorded date: 15 October 2026
Currentness / correction: This is the current version. No correction or concern is recorded on its sources.

Sources this version cites

Meincke, Nave & Terwiesch, “ChatGPT Decreases Idea Diversity in Brainstorming,” author manuscript, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania (Working paper)
No checked link to the original yet.

Version

This is the current version, v1.0. Earlier versions stay available, and their records never change.

Versions: v1.0 · current

Raw record: every recorded field, with its coded values

All 25 canonical Claim fields, verbatim, with the coded values derived from them. The plain-language labels above are read from these.

Claim type (coded): ESTIMATE (as printed: “ESTIMATE”)
Publication status (coded): ELIGIBLE (VERSION) (as printed: “ELIGIBLE WITH VERSION QUALIFIER”)
Verification state (coded): CONTENT_VERIFIED_PRIMARY (PREPRINT)
Source type (coded): WORKING_PAPER
Maturity (coded): EMERGING

#	Canonical field	Canonical value (verbatim)	Normalized (Claim Value Vocabulary v1.0.2)
1	CLAIM ID	LD09-SL-C12	—
2	PUBLIC-FACING CLAIM	Re-analysing a published set of five brainstorming experiments, the authors found ChatGPT-aided idea sets less diverse than comparison sets in all five (significantly in four), and lower on all of their alternative diversity metrics, with 37 of 45 comparisons statistically significant; in one task 6% of ChatGPT-only ideas were unique against 100% of human-only ideas.	—
3	CLAIM TYPE	ESTIMATE	base_types: ESTIMATE
4	RESEARCH STRAND	B — Creative work, writing and ideas	—
5	MATURITY	EMERGING	states: EMERGING
6	SOURCE	Meincke, Nave & Terwiesch, “ChatGPT Decreases Idea Diversity in Brainstorming,” author manuscript, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania	source_ids: SRC-SL-MEINCKE-NAVE-TERWIESCH-CHATGPT-IDEA-DIVERSITY
7	SOURCE TYPE	Author manuscript	classes: WORKING_PAPER
8	INSTITUTIONAL POSITION	Independent academic (The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania)	—
9	SCOPE	Brainstorming tasks such as gift ideas and toy designs	—
10	DESIGN	Re-analysis of another team’s public experimental data; diversity as the share of unique idea concepts (pairwise similarity threshold 0.8) plus alternative measures	—
11	SAMPLE / DATASET	The five experiments of Lee and Chung (2024)	—
12	MODEL / TOOL / VERSION	ChatGPT, compared with web search and unaided people	—
13	COMPARATOR	Idea sets from web-search-aided and unaided participants	—
14	MAIN RESULT	Less diverse in all five experiments, significant in four (the fifth likely a ceiling effect); 37 of 45 comparisons significant; study 2b: 6% of ChatGPT-only ideas unique against 100% human-only; 20 of 96 ChatGPT-aided ideas in one experiment used the word “sprinkler” (7 web-search, 12 human)	—
15	INFERENTIAL TARGET	Whether ideas that are individually rated creative form a less diverse set	—
16	DOES NOT LICENSE	That individual ideas are worse; the original study rated them more creative	—
17	VERIFICATION STATE	CONTENT VERIFIED PREPRINT	state: CONTENT_VERIFIED_PRIMARY · qualifiers: PREPRINT · verified_by: UNKNOWN
18	LIMITATIONS	Read in the authors’ manuscript; the journal version and its venue were not confirmed; a re-analysis of one team’s experiments	—
19	CONTRADICTORY / SUPPORTING SOURCES	Diversity restored by prompting and pooling: LD09-SL-C17	—
20	GEOGRAPHY / LANGUAGE	Not checked / English	—
21	DISTRIBUTIONAL LEDGER	Not recorded	—
22	R01 / FIELD-MAP LINKS	LD-09, D3	—
23	WHAT WOULD CHANGE THIS CLAIM?	Replication with newer models or with diversity-oriented prompting	—
24	PUBLICATION STATUS	ELIGIBLE WITH VERSION QUALIFIER	state: ELIGIBLE · qualifiers: VERSION
25	RECORDED DATE	2026-10-15	—

Field 22 references resolved against Field Map v0.2: LD-09 (LIVING_DEBATE); D3 (DOMAIN)

The sources as recorded, with their record IDs and coded source types:

Pinned Sources (field 6, version-specific)

“Meincke, Nave & Terwiesch, “ChatGPT Decreases Idea Diversity in Brainstorming,” author manuscript, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania” → Meincke et al., “ChatGPT Decreases Idea Diversity in…” (SRC-SL-MEINCKE-NAVE-TERWIESCH-CHATGPT-IDEA-DIVERSITY--v1.0) — Meincke, Nave & Terwiesch, “ChatGPT Decreases Idea Diversity in Brainstorming,” author manuscript, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; class WORKING_PAPER (explicit public provenance pin)

Cited by Living Debate versions

Individual gain, collective narrowing? Does AI make science, creative work and shared knowledge more alike? (v0.1) LD-09

Cite this page

SocioLens project. (2026, October 15). Re-analysing a published set of five brainstorming experiments, the authors found ChatGPT-aided idea sets less diverse than comparison sets in all five (significantly in four), and lower on all of their alternative diversity metrics, with 37 of 45 comparisons statistically significant; in one task 6% of ChatGPT-only ideas were unique against 100% of human-only ideas [Claim LD09-SL-C12, version v1.0]. SocioLens. https://sociolens-web.pages.dev/claims/ld09-sl-c12/v1.0/

@misc{sociolens_ld09_sl_c12_v1_0,
  author = {{SocioLens project}},
  title = {Re-analysing a published set of five brainstorming experiments, the authors found ChatGPT-aided idea sets less diverse than comparison sets in all five (significantly in four), and lower on all of their alternative diversity metrics, with 37 of 45 comparisons statistically significant; in one task 6\% of ChatGPT-only ideas were unique against 100\% of human-only ideas.},
  year = {2026},
  date = {2026-10-15},
  howpublished = {\url{https://sociolens-web.pages.dev/claims/ld09-sl-c12/v1.0/}},
  note = {Claim LD09-SL-C12, version v1.0}
}

The link points to this version, whose record never changes. For a finding, cite the original study as well: SocioLens summarizes research and does not replace it.

Research-of-record provenance

Materialized by sociolens-materializer 0.6.0 at 2026-09-28T20:00:00.000Z; normalization contract SocioLens — Claim Value Vocabulary v1.0.2 — Pre-Spike Materialization Contract (v1.0.2). Content seal SHA-256 a3b3c61bf5ee5f428c9503caa7704252ae8483eb35338979d799fbb6decbcc66.

Repository-authored inputs (not Drive exports)

SocioLens claim — LD09-SL-C12 v1.0 (v1.0) — written in the SocioLens repository by Project Lead (Claude, AI) on 2026-10-15; no Drive identity exists. Authority: AGENTS.md "Authority" (the Project Lead decides research content within the research-integrity rules) and the Owner's choice in the SocioLens project chat on 15 October 2026 to build the LD-09 debate; a new Claim, first version, written from the project's LD-09 source notes, checked against full texts or official abstracts. Block “ENTRY 12 — LD09-SL-C12” SHA-256 85d177dba3cd8333ef6f80be15efc7e40eb8790ff7b085af1403e2805986aca5; fixture fixtures/authored/claims/LD09-SL-C12--v1.0.

Builder decisions (not Drive data)

VERSION = v1.0 — basis: Claim version taken from the repository-authored claim fixture version (SocioLens claim — LD09-SL-C12 v1.0); the first version of a new Claim of the LD-09 debate
CURRENT_POINTER = true — basis: repository-authored claim "SocioLens claim — LD09-SL-C12 v1.0" (Project Lead (Claude, AI), 2026-10-15); basis: AGENTS.md "Authority" (the Project Lead decides research content within the research-integrity rules) and the Owner's choice in the SocioLens project chat on 15 October 2026 to build the LD-09 debate; a new Claim, first version, written from the project's LD-09 source notes, checked against full texts or official abstracts
FIELD_6_SOURCE_REFERENCE = SRC-SL-MEINCKE-NAVE-TERWIESCH-CHATGPT-IDEA-DIVERSITY--v1.0 — basis: field 6 of ENTRY 12 — LD09-SL-C12 cites "Meincke, Nave & Terwiesch, “ChatGPT Decreases Idea Diversity in Brainstorming,” author manuscript, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania"; the only field-6 segment of this ClaimVersion's repository-authored ledger block.
SOURCE_PROVENANCE_PIN = SRC-SL-MEINCKE-NAVE-TERWIESCH-CHATGPT-IDEA-DIVERSITY--v1.0 — basis: explicit version-pinned public provenance of this ClaimVersion (Amendment v1.2 §6): the pinned field-6 Source record "Meincke, Nave & Terwiesch, “ChatGPT Decreases Idea Diversity in Brainstorming,” author manuscript, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania".