Why does Creativity Foster Well-Being? Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness during Everyday Creative Activities

Abstract

The study of creativity in daily life explores creativity as it happens. A consistent finding is that engaging in creative activities predicts greater positive emotions, particularly for activated positive states. To understand why creative activity might foster well-being, we turned to self-determination theory’s (SDT) organismic needs—autonomy, competence, and relatedness. We conducted a seven-day experience sampling study of 125 university students, many majoring in creative fields. We asked about current creative activity, emotional state, and experience of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. At the within-person level, all three needs significantly mediated the relationship between doing something creative and increased positive emotion and reduced negative emotion, with the most consistent effects for high arousal positive emotion and low arousal negative emotion.