The role of instrumental emotion regulation in the emotions-creativity link: How worries render neurotic individuals more creative

• Main Authors: LEUNG, Angela K.-Y., KWAN, Letty, LIOU, Shyhnan, CHIU, Chi-Yue, QIU, Lin, Yong, Jose C.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2013
• Subjects: Instrumental emotion regulation; creativity; neuroticism; emotions; Cognition and Perception; Social Psychology
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/1423; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/2679/viewcontent/p332_leung.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

Based on the instrumental account of emotion regulation, 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 some trait-consistent experiences for neurotic individuals and experiencing these emotions can facilitate performance in a creativity task. In two 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 had better performance in a creativity task (Study 2). 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.