Does Sadness Make Us More Creative? An fNIRS Study on the Impact of Emotional States on Creative Thinking
Zhino Ebrahimi, Center for Cognitive Science, University of Kaiserslautern-Landau (RPTU) Kaiserslautern, Germany
Thomas Lachmann, Center for Cognitive Science, University of Kaiserslautern-Landau (RPTU) Kaiserslautern, Germany
Daniela Czernochowski, Center for Cognitive Science, University of Kaiserslautern-Landau (RPTU) Kaiserslautern, Germany
Torsten Wüsternberg, Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg Core Facility for Neuroscience of Self-Regulation (CNSR)
Our study investigated the effect of emotional states (neutral/sad) on creativity on behavioral and brain functional level. To this end, we used the Alternative Uses Task (AUT) to assess divergent thinking and the Common Uses Task (CUT) to evaluate convergent thinking skills. In the AUT, participants generated multiple uncommon uses for an object, while the CUT required them to identify the common uses for an object. Before each CUT and AUT period, a neutral or sad IAPS picture was used for emotion induction. Afterward, participants rated the pictures for valence and arousal. We measured brain activity using fNIRS across 40 optical channels covering frontal, parietal and posterior temporal brain regions. Forty-five native German-speaking participants from Heidelberg University (ages 19–30) took part in the study. We conducted 2x2 (task × emotion) Bayesian rmANOVAs to assess evidence for differences or equivalences in ratings and channel- wise brain response during CUT and AUT. Our analysis founf very strong evidence (log10(BF10) > 2.0) supporting differences in valence and arousal ratings between neutral and sad IAPS pictures. Regarding brain activity, we observed strong evidence (log10(BF10) > 1.0) for increased bilateral activation in DLPFC during the AUT compared to the CUT. Additionally, in 22 out of 40 channels, encompassing DLPFC, the entire parietal region, and the posterior temporal cortex (bilaterally), we found moderate evidence (log10(BF10) < -0.5) indicating the absence of task and emotion interaction effect. Our data provide first evidence for the absence of an effect of emotional state on creativity related brain activity.
Upward Spiral or Creative Hangover? Comparing the Emotional Aftermath of Creative Activity in Creative and Non-Creative Individuals
Kaile Smith, The Graduate Center, The City University of New York
Jennifer E. Drake, The Graduate Center, The City University of New York, Brooklyn College, TheCity University of New York
Creativity-emotion research has primarily focused on positive emotions, while the relationship between negative emotions and creativity is not well understood. This study investigated the cross-day temporal patterns of creativity and emotions using a daily diary approach with a sample of 355 adults (204 creative professionals/serious hobbyists, 153 non-creative individuals) who completed 13 daily surveys assessing creative engagement and emotional experiences. Lagged multilevel modeling revealed distinct cross-day patterns between the groups. Creative individuals experienced a “creative hangover” characterized by significantly elevated anger, hostility, irritability, and dejection the day following creative engagement. In contrast, non-creative individuals showed no such negative aftermath and instead experienced an “upward spiral” (Conner et al., 2018) experiencing increased energy, enthusiasm, and pleasant emotions the day after creating. Examining emotions and next-day creativity also showed distinct patterns: non-creative individuals demonstrated increased creative engagement following states of tension, anxiety, and dejection, while creative individuals showed minimal emotional prediction of next-day creativity. These findings reveal previously unexamined emotional costs of creative engagement and suggest fundamental differences in how creative and non-creative individuals process and recover from creative activity. The discovery of the contrasting creative hangover and upward spiral effects has important implications for understanding the psychological demands of sustained creative practice and developing targeted interventions for creative professionals.
Investigating the causal link between creative idea valuation and creative performance: a training study
Sarah Moreno, Paris Brain Institute
Gino Battistello, Paris Brain Institute
Alizée Lopez-Persem*, Paris Brain Institute
Emmanuelle Volle*, Paris Brain Institute
*equal contribution
Past research has shown that effective evaluation is critical to achieving greater creative performance (see Guo et al., 2022 for a meta-analysis). However, there is still no consensus in the literature regarding what constitutes effective evaluation. Our previous work showed that the evaluation and selection of an idea involves monitoring both its originality and adequacy, and combining these two dimensions into a subjective value. Interestingly, people differed in how much they weighed each dimension in their valuation process, and those favoring originality achieved greater creative performance (r=0.52, p=0.03, n=38). However, this relationship was only correlational. In the current study, we test the causal relationship between one’s valuation pattern and one’s creative performance. We developed a new training targeting (e)valuation processes, designed to increase one’s preference for originality and facilitate creativity. Participants completed creativity tasks before and after this training (test group, n=50), or before and after a control activity (control group, n=50). Ongoing analyses aim to confirm the training’s effectiveness: trained participants should increase their preference for originality during and after the training, while controls should not. More importantly, trained participants should show a significant boost in creative performance post-training, whereas controls should show no significant change. This study’s goal is to demonstrate the causal link between valuation and creative performance at a mechanistic level, and to provide a foundation for future personalized interventions to enhance creativity with implications in various domains.
The Art-Creativity Paradox: Understanding Creativity's Role in Affect Improvement
Jennifer E. Drake, Brooklyn College and The Graduate Center, CUNY
Kaile Smith, The Graduate Center, CUNY
Aaron Kozbelt, Brooklyn College and The Graduate Center, CUNY
James C. Kaufman, University of Connecticut
Affective states can enhance creative thinking; however, it is less clear what role creativity plays in affect improvement. Given that engaging in creative activities is associated with increased well-being, it seems plausible that being creative may be related to enhanced affect. Participants were 90 undergraduates who had participated in two previous studies examining the affective benefits of drawing (Drake, 2019; Forkosh & Drake, 2017). This work found that drawing to distract (drawing from observation or creating a design) improved affect more than drawing to express. In our study, we asked 17 experts to rate the participants’ drawings on overall creativity, originality, skill, and emotional valence using a 6-point scale from not at all to very much. We examined whether there were differences by condition and whether creativity was related to affect improvement, enjoyment, and flow. Four findings emerged. First, drawings from the design and express conditions were rated higher in creativity and originality (but not skill) than drawings from the observation condition. Second, drawings from the express condition were rated more negative in valence than drawings in the design and observation conditions. Third, affect improvement was unrelated to ratings of creativity, originality, skill, and emotional valence. Finally, participants’ enjoyment of the activity (but not experience of flow) was positively associated with ratings of creativity, originality, and skill but not valence. Our study suggests that being creative may be unrelated to affect improvement and future work should examine other factors such as creative self-efficacy that may be related to affect.
Listen to your heart: The dynamic interplay of creative abilities, cardiac interoceptive skills, and self-regulation in everyday life.
Christian Rominger, University of Graz
Alice Polz, University of Graz
Bernhard Weber, University of Graz
Andreas Fink, University of Graz
Corinna M. Perchtold-Stefan, University of Graz
Mathias Benedek, University of Graz
Andreas R. Schwerdtfeger, University of Graz
People's creative abilities fluctuate from moment to moment, much like self-regulation abilities and interoceptive skills, which involve perceiving sensations from the body such as the own heartbeats. Studies often measure interoceptive skills in the cardiac domain as the correspondence between the perceived and the recorded heartbeats – capturing people’s interoceptive accuracy. Although a link between interoceptive skills, self-regulation, and creative abilities is reasonable, systematic empirical research is rare. In this ecological momentary assessment (EMA) study we assumed that in moments with better access to the own body signals people might produce more creative ideas (via better self-regulation). We studied 77 participants with a mean age of 23.26 years (SD=4.92) over 4 days working on up to 10 alternate uses tasks and cardiac interoception tasks in everyday life situations, while wearing devices to assess participants heartbeats. Consistent with our preregistered hypotheses, we found that creative abilities were higher in situations individuals showed higher interoceptive abilities. Furthermore, self-regulation was also higher in these situations, showing positive associations with interoceptive accuracy and creative abilities. The present study confirms that a state of better interoceptive access to the own body signal goes along with better creative abilities. This relationship was partly mediated via higher self-regulation in these very moments in everyday life. Study findings indicate that moments with higher body-mind coherence might benefit creative thoughts (and vice versa), partly due to situations with better self-regulation abilities.