1. The role of instrumental emotion regulation in the emotions–creativity link: How worries render individuals with high neuroticism more creative
- Author
-
Lin Qiu, Chi-Yue Chiu, Shyh-Nan Liou, Jose C. Yong, Angela K.-Y. Leung, and Letty Y.-Y. Kwan
- Subjects
Adult ,Male ,Pleasure ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Emotions ,Happiness ,Taiwan ,Anxiety ,Creativity ,Humans ,General Psychology ,media_common ,Neuroticism ,Motivation ,Recall ,Perspective (graphical) ,Anxiety Disorders ,Anticipation ,Mental Recall ,Female ,Worry ,Psychology ,Social psychology ,Cognitive psychology - Abstract
Based on the instrumental account of emotion regulation (Tamir, 2005), the current research seeks to offer a novel perspective to the emotions-creativity debate by investigating the instrumental value of trait-consistent emotions in creativity. We hypothesize that emotions such as worry (vs. happy) are trait-consistent experiences for individuals higher on trait neuroticism and experiencing these emotions can facilitate performance in a creativity task. In 3 studies, we found support for our hypothesis. First, individuals higher in neuroticism had a greater preference for recalling worrisome (vs. happy) events in anticipation of performing a creativity task (Study 1). Moreover, when induced to recall a worrisome (vs. happy) event, individuals higher in neuroticism came up with more creative design (Study 2) and more flexible uses of a brick (Study 3) when the task was a cognitively demanding one. Further, Study 3 offers preliminary support that increased intrinsic task enjoyment and motivation mediates the relationship between trait-consistent emotion regulation and creative performance. These findings offer a new perspective to the controversy concerning the emotions-creativity relationship and further demonstrate the role of instrumental emotion regulation in the domain of creative performance.
- Published
- 2014
- Full Text
- View/download PDF