Bertrams Alex, Englert Chris
Department of Educational Psychology, Institute of Educational Science, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland.
Department of Sport Psychology, Institute of Sport Sciences, Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2019 Aug 28;10:1999. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01999. eCollection 2019.
Previous research has reliably found that self-control strength moderates the anxiety-performance relationship for cognitive and perceptual-motor tasks that involve executive functioning. In the present preregistered experiment ( = 200; https://aspredicted.org/a775h.pdf), we investigated whether the interaction of anxiety and self-control also predicts creative flexibility performance. According to the Attentional Control Theory, anxiety can impair executive functioning. In the case that creative flexibility relies on executive functions, anxiety should therefore interfere with creative flexibility performance. However, self-control strength has been demonstrated to serve as a buffer against the negative effects of anxiety on executive functioning. Therefore, we assumed that there will be a negative relationship between anxiety and creative flexibility performance, and that this negative relationship would be more pronounced for participants who are low compared to high in momentary self-control strength. Analogous to the previous studies, we manipulated the participants' self-control strength (ego depletion vs. no depletion) and subsequently induced a potentially threatening test situation. The participants then completed a measure of their state anxiety and a standardized test of creative flexibility. Contrary to our expectation, self-control strength, state anxiety, and their interaction did not predict creative flexibility performance. Complementary Bayesian hypothesis testing revealed strong support for the null hypothesis. Therefore, we conclude that, at least under certain conditions, creative flexibility performance may be unrelated to resource-dependent executive functions.
先前的研究已经可靠地发现，自我控制能力会调节涉及执行功能的认知和感知运动任务中的焦虑与表现之间的关系。在本项预先注册的实验（N = 200；https://aspredicted.org/a775h.pdf）中，我们研究了焦虑与自我控制的相互作用是否也能预测创造性灵活性表现。根据注意控制理论，焦虑会损害执行功能。倘若创造性灵活性依赖于执行功能，那么焦虑就应该会干扰创造性灵活性表现。然而，自我控制能力已被证明可以缓冲焦虑对执行功能的负面影响。因此，我们假设焦虑与创造性灵活性表现之间会存在负相关，并且与瞬间自我控制能力高的参与者相比，这种负相关在自我控制能力低的参与者中会更明显。与先前的研究类似，我们操纵了参与者的自我控制能力（自我损耗组与无损耗组），随后营造了一个可能具有威胁性的测试情境。参与者随后完成了一项状态焦虑测量以及一项创造性灵活性的标准化测试。与我们的预期相反，自我控制能力、状态焦虑及其相互作用并不能预测创造性灵活性表现。补充性贝叶斯假设检验为零假设提供了有力支持。因此，我们得出结论，至少在某些条件下，创造性灵活性表现可能与依赖资源的执行功能无关。
