1. The role of instrumental emotion regulation in the emotions-creativity link: how worries render individuals with high neuroticism more creative.
- Author
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Leung AK, Liou S, Qiu L, Kwan LY, Chiu CY, and Yong JC
- Subjects
- Adult, Female, Humans, Male, Motivation, Neuroticism, Pleasure, Taiwan, Anxiety psychology, Anxiety Disorders psychology, Creativity, Emotions, Happiness, Mental Recall
- 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., (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.)
- Published
- 2014
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