How does emotion influence different creative performances? The mediating role of cognitive flexibility

Abstract

Cognitive flexibility is proposed to be one of the factors underlying how positive emotions can improve creativity. However, previous works have seldom set up or empirically measured an independent index to demonstrate its mediating effect, nor have they investigated its mediating role on different types of creative performances, which involve distinct processes. In this study, 120 participants were randomly assigned to positive, neutral or negative affect conditions. Their levels of cognitive flexibility were then measured by a switch task. Finally, their creative performances were calibrated by either an open-ended divergent thinking test or a closed-ended insight problem-solving task. The results showed that positive emotional states could reduce switch costs and enhance both types of creative performances. However, cognitive flexibility exhibited a full mediating effect only on the relationship between positive emotion and insight problem solving, but not between positive emotion and divergent thinking. Divergent thinking was instead more associated with arousal level. These results suggest that emotions might influence different creative performances through distinct mechanisms.

Keywords:

• Emotional state
• Cognitive flexibility
• Divergent thinking
• Insight problem solving

We thank Professor Rothermund and other anonymous reviewers for their extremely helpful comments on the draft. We also thank Chao-Yuan Tseng for helping with the data analysis. This research was supported by grants to the first author from the National Science Council of Taiwan [grant number 99-2410-H-431-015] and to the fourth author from the “International Research-Intensive Center of Excellence Program” of National Taiwan Normal University [grant number NSC102-2911-I-003-301] and the Ministry of Education, Taiwan, under the Aiming for the Top University Plan at National Taiwan Normal University.

We thank Professor Rothermund and other anonymous reviewers for their extremely helpful comments on the draft. We also thank Chao-Yuan Tseng for helping with the data analysis. This research was supported by grants to the first author from the National Science Council of Taiwan [grant number 99-2410-H-431-015] and to the fourth author from the “International Research-Intensive Center of Excellence Program” of National Taiwan Normal University [grant number NSC102-2911-I-003-301] and the Ministry of Education, Taiwan, under the Aiming for the Top University Plan at National Taiwan Normal University.

Notes

¹ The contents of each affect induction film are positive (a mischievous monkey plays tricks on a tiger), neutral (the fabrication process of Michelin tires) and negative (conflict on a football field).

² According to Dreisbach and Goschke (2004), results of the switch task demonstrate a compatibility effect in which RTs in incompatible (incongruent) trials, where targets and distracters map to different response keys, are longer than in compatible trials. We conducted a three (affect induction: positive/neutral/negative) × 2 (rule switch: before switch/after switch) × 2 (response compatibility: compatible/incompatible) three-way ANOVA to inspect compatibility effects. Neither the main effect of compatibility nor interactions between compatibility and other variables were significant. We therefore combined RTs of compatible and incompatible trials for later analyses. Possible reasons for the lack of compatibility effect in our study are that our participants had fewer blocks of trials than in the previous study in order to preserve their emotional states for further creativity tests. Another possibility is that our participants followed instructions well and focused on the targets, which would also explain their lower error rate. Our study collecting two blocks of trials from another independent sample also showed no compatibility effect and a lower error rate (1.82%, Li & Lin, 2013).

³ The two-way ANOVA analysis with affect induction and creativity type as independent variables showed no interaction effects.

⁴ The results might be due to a relatively large variance in separated affect conditions.

⁵ The β value of cognitive flexibility for predicting insight problem performance seemed smaller than that of positive affect. However, the t-test showed a significant result for the former and a marginally significant result for the latter, possibly because of different variances.