Journal of Creative Behavior最新文献

This study aimed to understand the factors predicting creative activities and creative achievements among university students. Based on a recently proposed framework of 10 creative spaces, we hypothesized that exploring those creative spaces, alongside the personality trait openness to experience and divergent thinking abilities would predict creative activities and achievements in specific domains. Using the Inventory of Creative Activities and Achievements (ICAA) to evaluate eight domains of creativity, two divergent thinking tasks, and one associative task, we analyzed a sample of n = 300 university students. The results of Structural Equation Models revealed that the creative spaces significantly predicted creative activities and creative achievements in the eight domains assessed. The model explained in average 27% of the variance in creative activities and 17% in creative achievements. Openness significantly predicted creative activities in music, literature, and arts and crafts. Intellect did not significantly predict any domain. Lastly, fluency in divergent thinking was positively associated with all domains (average coefficient of β = .15), despite not always reaching significance. We discuss the roles of the recently proposed creative spaces, as well as openness to experience, and fluency in predicting creativity across various domains.

The comprehension and appreciation of poetry are inherently subjective, involving both creativity and aesthetic appeal. However, do these assessments of aesthetics and creativity rely on identical criteria, or do they vary depending on underlying factors? We addressed this question in this study. Participants (N = 96) evaluated 25 English poems across nine subjective characteristics: reading fluency, vivid imagery, perceived emotions (valence and arousal), surprise, originality, usefulness, aesthetic appeal, and creativity. Linear mixed-model analysis revealed that a poem's creativity was primarily predicted by its originality, followed by its usefulness and vivid imagery. Conversely, the evaluation of a poem's aesthetic appeal followed a different route; it was mainly predicted by a poem's reading fluency, followed by arousal, valence, and vivid imagery. Additionally, the association between creativity and originality was significantly moderated by participants' personality traits, specifically, openness, vividness of visual imagery, and curiosity. The relationship between aesthetic appeal and reading fluency was moderated by the vividness of auditory imagery trait. These findings suggest that a poem's creativity evaluation closely aligns with the standard definition of creativity, relying on its originality and usefulness. The study provides novel insights into the implicit internal models in the evaluation of poetry.

In the last decade, research on the connection between curiosity and creativity has surged revealing a positive correlation. However, these findings are primarily based on cross-sectional studies, which do not establish the direction of the relationship between creativity and curiosity. Is curiosity the driving force behind creativity, or does creativity spark curiosity? The present study addresses this question by examining the potential reciprocal associations between creativity and curiosity within-persons using state-of-the-art methodology and statistics. Self-reported data were collected on a weekly basis from a sample of Greek entrepreneurs (N = 195, 49% female) over a 10-week period. We used the dynamic structural equation modeling (DSEM) framework for data analyses. Results supported the positive relationship between creativity and curiosity within and between individuals. At the within-person level, creativity and curiosity exhibited significant carry-over effects from 1 week to the next. However, we did not find consistent evidence for cross-lagged effects, meaning that curiosity and creativity did not directly cause changes in each other within a 1-week period. We also found significant random effects underscoring the role of curiosity as a catalyst for creativity, particularly when individuals do not have a strong tendency for their creative levels to persist but do have a strong tendency for their curiosity levels to persist. In such cases, curiosity seems to have a more pronounced impact on shaping creative endeavors. We discuss the implications of our findings for theory and practice and suggest directions for future research.

Research on the implications of negative emotions for creativity has yielded mixed findings. To clarify this relationship, we conducted a short-term prospective study with data collected across two time points. We also explored the moderating roles of family expressiveness and gender in the creative process. The sample included 392 Japanese adolescents (54.7% female; age range: 12–13 years old). Adolescents reported on their experiences of negative activating emotion (e.g., fear, anxiety) and the degree to which their family members expressed positive emotions (e.g., expressing gratitude) toward each other. A drawing task and an alternative uses task (AUT) were used to measure adolescents' creativity. For creativity expressed in the drawing task, negative activating emotion enhanced creativity in girls only when their families' emotional expressivity was of low or average levels. For creativity indexed by the AUT, a high level of family expressiveness strengthened the relationship between negative activating emotion and creativity in boys but suppressed such a relationship in girls. Findings suggest that, at least among Japanese adolescents, the associations between negative activating emotions and creativity can depend on multiple factors, including family emotional expressivity, gender, and the nature of the creativity task.

Despite the increasing need for creativity in rapidly evolving markets and work environments, not all employees are able to engage in this crucial behavior at work. The interactionist perspective suggests that creativity in organizations can be predicted by the interplay of individual and situational elements. With this theoretical framework, the study aimed to generate and develop insights into the job autonomy–employee creativity relationship by proposing and testing the joint moderating role of an individual (i.e., openness to experience) and contextual factor (i.e., techno-invasion). The sample (n = 435) drew from three sources (focal employees, their family members, supervisors) concerning the creativity of working professionals and what predicts it in a variety of industries. The findings reveal a curvilinear relationship between autonomy and creative behavior and the moderating effect of openness to experience in this relationship. Support is also found for the three-way interaction of autonomy, openness to experience, and techno-invasion in fostering creative behavior. Important theoretical and practical implications thus arise for establishing the work context of potentially creative individuals given different levels of technology demands and job conditions.