Divergent but not Convergent Thinking Mediates the Trait Emotional Intelligence-Real-World Creativity Link: An Empirical Study

ABSTRACT

The current research looks at creativity as a construct resulting from a blend of interacting individual resources and investigates, in a sample of 63 young adults, the extent to which real-world creative production is supported by trait emotional intelligence (EI), through creative thinking, including both divergent thinking (DT) and convergent thinking (CT). This study hypothesizes a parallel mediation model, with trait EI as the independent variable, DT and CT as the mediators, and creative production as the dependent variable. Trait EI is evaluated using the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire-Short Version, DT and CT are assessed by the Alternative Uses Task and the Remote Associates test, respectively, whereas real-world creative production by the Visual Creative Synthesis Task. Results reveal that only DT fully mediated the relationship between trait EI and real-world creativity. These findings suggest that trait EI, encompassing well-being, self-control, emotionality, and sociability, involves a better DT ability, which in turn increases the likelihood of producing a creative invention. The failure of the mediating role of CT is explained considering the different demands of flexibility, exploration of alternatives, and attentional resources between DT and CT. Future directions are also discussed.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. We performed five mediation analyses in which the sub- and total scores of trait EI were entered as independent variables. All mediation analyses revealed that only DT fully mediated the interplay between every trait EI sub- and total scores and real-world creativity, whereas CT, was only directly related to real-world creativity. Thus, the mediation analysis with trait EI total score, which encompasses the four dimensions of trait EI, is reported in detail.