Enhance Creativity

Creativity is often believed to be limited to people in the arts and creative fields, but more than 1500 CEOs from 33 industries in 60 countries ranked creativity as the top quality they seek in managers.  Creative capacity allows organizations to adapt to challenges and manage complex environments in a knowledge-based culture.

Researchers were interested in the relationship between emotion regulation strategies and creativity.  Emotion regulation, an element of emotional intelligence, is the ability to monitor and control emotional experiences.  One strategy, cognitive reappraisal, means to reinterpret the meaning of emotional events.

Prior research has indicated that the characteristic of openness indicates the degree of flexible thinking a person can apply to problem-solving.  High-openness individuals exhibit intellectual curiosity, and an interest in new experiences, ideas, and perspectives.

Researchers theorized that the strategy of reappraisal could foster cognitive flexibility and creativity, especially in low-openness conventional thinkers, because high-openness individuals likely already deploy this kind of thinking.  Training for reappraisal may unlock the creative potential of conventional thinkers with important domain knowledge.

Researchers ran two experiments with 512 participants testing 3 approaches to emotion regulation during a scenario designed to elicit an emotional response: suppressing emotion, distraction from emotion, and reappraisal.  There was a 4th control group that was given no instructions.  The participants were then asked to develop creative ideas to solve a problem at work.  The conventional thinkers who were encouraged to reinterpret their experience developed more creative solutions than the groups that used emotion suppression, distraction, or no strategy.

Takeaway:  Creative thinking is a skill that can be strengthened.  Reinterpreting an obstacle or frustrating situation can enhance creative thinking and problem-solving.  Try challenging your perspective on a hardship, reframing the narrative, or viewing a setback through a different lens to enhance creativity.

Well-being is a journey, not a quick fix

Sources

Lily Yuxuan Zhi, et al., Unlocking Creative Potential: Reappraising Emotional Events Facilitates Creativity for Conventional Thinkers, 174 Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 104209, Jan 2023, Unlocking creative potential: Reappraising emotional events facilitates creativity for conventional thinkers - ScienceDirect.

NeuroscienceNews, How to Unlock your Creativity, Even if you see Yourself as a Conventional Thinker, Jan 12, 2023, How to Unlock Your Creativity, Even if You See Yourself as a Conventional Thinker - Neuroscience News.