Creativity can be seen in many facets of our lives, from experimenting with your dinner recipes or using ingenuity to resolve problems to inventing a new technology or working as a professional artist. Researchers are increasingly moving beyond investigating creativity in the lab to examine how and when creativity occurs in people’s everyday lives and environments. This chapter provides an overview of ecological momentary assessment techniques (i.e., daily dairy and experience sampling methods) commonly used in creativity research. To illustrate how ecological momentary assessment methods have featured in creativity research, I review several exemplars of research focused on creativity in daily life.

Creativity researchers often use experiments to better understand the relation between emotion and creativity. This requires the effective induction of emotional states and suitable measures of creativity. This chapter reviews the requirements and possibilities for the design of experiments that examine the effect of emotion on creativity. After briefly reviewing the terms affect, mood, and emotions, this chapter describes and evaluates existing affect elicitation procedures, along with general methodological considerations. This chapter also briefly discusses how the reversed link can be studied using experimental research: How creative thinking may alter affective experience. In doing so, this chapter provides methodological and practical guidelines for designing experimental research into the relation between emotion and creativity.

The arts have long been tied to various emotional processes, both as a way for artists to express their emotions, and for audiences to understand the emotions of themselves and others. Therefore, engaging in the arts across childhood and adulthood is often hypothesized as a way to foster emotion abilities. While there is burgeoning evidence of various emotional skills such as emotional intelligence, emotional control, and empathy being fostered through artistic engagement, many questions remain. These include questions about the exact skills and behaviors within emotional processing and functioning that are affected; whether each art form (i.e. dance, music, theatre, visual arts, cinema, etc.) differentially affects emotion abilities; whether there are critical periods for engagement throughout the developmental trajectory of childhood and the lifespan; and the possible psychological, neurological, and environmental mechanisms for these changes. This chapter presents recent empirical evidence for what we know about engaging with the arts as a producer and consumer, particularly focused in middle childhood, and the development of various emotion abilities. As a whole, the literature points to inconsistent findings and large gaps in knowledge; future directions are proposed.

The chapter summarizes the role of interpersonal relationships in all forms of creativity: creative self-beliefs, abilities, activities, and achievements. We analyze the problem from two perspectives: processual and developmental. In the beginning, we characterize social emotions’ role in self-regulation of the creative process. Further, we describe the influence of significant others across lifespan. We present the meaning of parents and siblings for creativity in the early stage of life. Next, we move to the importance of romantic relationships and parenthood for adulthood creativity. Finally, we focus on the role of predecessors and successors in professional creativity with particular attention to their meaning for creative self-beliefs. In summary, we discuss the role of interpersonal relationships and social emotions through the journey from creative potential to creative behavior.

In the introductory chapter to the Cambridge Handbook of Creativity and Emotion, we define basic terms in the study of creativity and emotions. We argue about the need for specification of different aspects of creativity under investigation and caution scholars to make conclusions about specific aspects studied, rather than “creativity” in general. This Handbook examined three groups of affective processes: affective states (relatively short-lasting reactions to internal or external stimuli), emotion-related traits (typical ways of feeling), and emotion abilities (capacities to reason about and with emotions, such as in the case of emotional intelligence). Next, we describe the organization of this Handbook into five parts, each addressing a different aspect in the study of creativity, including methodological issues, creative process, creative person, creative product, and creative contexts (school and work). The concluding chapter presents an integrative model of the role of affective processes across aspects of creativity.

At the heart of creativity is the unknown and the new, the breaking from conventions and conformity, and the challenging of existing norms and ideas. Those essential parts of creativity come with the threat of failure, rejection, embarrassment, exclusion, and non-conformity. However, the experience and intensity of this threat and the resulting anxiety and fear is likely different for each of us. So, where does fear of failure, and the anxiety it may produce, fit into the creative process? Are fear and anxiety barriers we should try to remove to become more creative? Are they catalysts for creative risk-taking and the enhanced alertness that help us recognize an opportunity for innovation, invention, and growth? This chapter explores features of creativity and the creative process that relate to the affective states of anxiety and fear of failure with the goal to illustrate the research on how these states can be managed, and even leveraged, to enhance creativity.

Affective states play a key function in creative performance, such that both positive and negative feelings can foster, or inhibit, creativity due to their information processing and motivational correlates. In this chapter, we survey and integrate theory and empirical research in this field, identifying core and robust findings focused on the association of affect with creativity, and unanswered questions requiring deeper investigation. Based on this work, we finally propose several valuable directions for future research.

Research has shown that motivation plays an important role in guiding the creative process – why a person creates likely influences how they do so. This chapter summarizes existing evidence regarding motivational factors affecting the creative process and its outcomes. In doing so, this chapter also discusses existing research describing the interplay between motivations and emotions that precede, accompany, or result from the creative process for creators and audience members. To date, a large body of research has demonstrated that intrinsic motivation and associated positive affect predict greater creativity; creative individuals for example report enjoying their work because it satisfies their intellectual curiosity, or simply because the process of creation itself is pleasurable. Related, creative individuals may be driven by the desire to address emotional difficulties, though little research to date has examined this question using a motivational lens. Finally, recent research suggests that extrinsic motivations may also benefit the creative process under certain conditions. Creative individuals may often be motivated by the desire to meaningfully contribute to the lives of others. Accordingly, recent research has shown that prosocial motivation may increase creativity by enhancing the ability to consider the viewpoints of possible beneficiaries of one’s work.

This chapter discusses the dynamic interplay of peer relationships and affect: factors that serve as drivers and consequences of creativity in the classroom. A particular focus is put on three problems inspired by research conducted in creativity and educational psychology literature. First, it is analyzed how creative students are perceived by their peers, i.e., whether being creative means being interpersonally attractive in the classroom. The benefits and risks of creative potential and behavior for peer relationships are overviewed based on sociometric and network studies. Second, school and class-based conditions of creative self-concept are analyzed. Drawing on the classic “big-fish-little-pond effect,” which shows that students tend to underestimate their potential in selective classroom environments, this chapter explores the extent to which this effect generalizes to creativity. Third and finally, the role of classroom creative climate, particularly teachers’ support and classroom interaction, to make creativity effective is emphasized.

Engaging in everyday creative activities improves affect, health, and well-being. In this chapter, we examine the affective benefits of both artistic and non-artistic creative activities and the emotion regulation strategies used to achieve these benefits. Considerably more research has examined the affective benefits of artistic than non-artistic activities. The existing studies reveal several distinct emotion regulation strategies used in creative activities – approach, avoidance, and self-development – with the use of these strategies differing by activity. The studies also reveal a clear difference in the affective goals for artistic versus non-artistic creative activities. Artistic activities are used to reduce negative affect whereas non-artistic activities are used to enhance or maintain positive affect. Further research is needed to determine whether this difference is genuine or an artifact of study design. Additional work is also needed to determine the underlying mechanisms accounting for how these activities improve affect and thereby regulate our emotions. We conclude with recommendations for further research in this area.

Emotions are part of the creative process, and emerging research shows the emotions and creativity association extends well beyond simply the enhancing effects of pleasant emotions in laboratory studies on divergent thinking. More and more, researchers are recognizing that how the creator interprets, channels, and manages their emotions matters. So, are emotionally intelligent people more creative? The short answer is, it depends on who you ask. In this chapter, we will first describe prominent models of emotional intelligence (EI) and creativity and then review what evidence exists for the connection between the two constructs. We next describe our own conceptualization of EI and creative achievement grounded in the ability model of EI and actual creative performance. We conclude with examples of training programs and educational initiatives that can support both the development of EI and creative abilities.

Creative endeavors are inherently uncertain. Consequently, it is not surprising that when engaging in such efforts one will encounter obstacles, setbacks, and failures along the way. Such setbacks are emotionally laden and can elicit such profoundly negative emotions that people may experience a state of creative mortification. Creative mortification results in people abandoning or indefinitely suspending their creative efforts and aspirations. The aim of this chapter is to explore an alternative and more adaptive outcome to creative setbacks, even emotionally painful setbacks. Specifically, this chapter will outline how creative curricular experiences can serve as a vehicle for students to learn how to navigate uncertainty and difficult emotions toward creative expression and development. In particular, we will introduce a process model that can help researchers and educators conceptualize the roles creative self-beliefs and emotions play in shaping different pathways that students can take when they encounter uncertainties and setbacks and in their movement toward creative expression and development. Implications and future directions for research and practice will also be discussed.

Pretend play is a creative act and an essential part of childhood. Both imagination and affect are expressed in pretend play. Affective processes that occur in both pretend play and creativity are: positive affect and joy in the task; pretend affect states; affective ideation; and integration of affect. Theories of the role of affect in creativity are discussed. Empirical support for the association between affect in pretend play and creativity and the facilitation of affect in pretend play is reviewed. Future research should investigate neurological correlates of pretend play.

We consider the important roles played by creativity and emotional intelligence in enhancing the success of older persons in dealing with stressors and adaptive tasks of later life. These cognitive and interpersonal skills can maximize late life adaptations, including competent functioning in the face of chronic illnesses, social losses, and care-getting needs.

The Creative Arts Therapies (CAT) is an umbrella term covering several specialized disciplines: art therapy, dance movement therapy, drama therapy, psychodrama, music therapy, and poetry / bibliotherapy. In these healthcare professions, arts-based creative and expressive processes and their products are used to improve health and well-being within a therapeutic relationship. The first part of this chapter will provide an overview of the CAT disciplines, training requirements, and the field’s history. The second part will describe the therapeutic change factors shared by all CAT disciplines. Part three will discuss evidence-based findings from CAT studies on emotional well-being including regulating and processing emotions, stress relief, depressive symptoms and grief processing. Finally, in part four, future directions for CAT research will be suggested, with an emphasis on change process research, including mechanisms of change.