Department of Psychology, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., USA.
Department of Psychology, University of San Francisco, San Francisco, USA.
Sci Rep. 2023 Oct 10;13(1):17095. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-39188-1.
Identifying ways to enable people to reach their creative potential is a core goal of creativity research with implications for education and professional attainment. Recently, we identified a potential barrier to creative achievement: creativity anxiety (i.e., anxiety specific to creative thinking). Initial work found that creativity anxiety is associated with fewer real-world creative achievements. However, the more proximal impacts of creativity anxiety remain unexplored. In particular, understanding how to overcome creativity anxiety requires understanding how creativity anxiety may or may not impact creative cognitive performance, and how it may relate to state-level anxiety and effort while completing creative tasks. The present study sought to address this gap by measuring creativity anxiety alongside several measures of creative performance, while concurrently surveying state-level anxiety and effort. Results indicated that creativity anxiety was, indeed, predictive of poor creative performance, but only on some of the tasks included. We also found that creativity anxiety predicted both state anxiety and effort during creative performance. Interestingly, state anxiety and effort did not explain the associations between creativity anxiety and creative performance. Together, this work suggests that creativity anxiety can often be overcome in the performance of creative tasks, but likewise points to increased state anxiety and effort as factors that may make creative performance and achievement fragile in more demanding real-world contexts.
发现能够使人发挥创造力潜能的方法是创造力研究的核心目标，这对教育和专业成就有重要意义。最近，我们发现了一个创造力实现的潜在障碍：创造力焦虑（即，与创造性思维相关的焦虑）。初步研究发现，创造力焦虑与较少的现实世界的创造性成就有关。然而，创造力焦虑的更直接影响仍未得到探索。特别是，要了解如何克服创造力焦虑，需要了解创造力焦虑可能会或可能不会影响创造性认知表现，以及它与完成创造性任务时的状态焦虑和努力之间的关系。本研究通过在测量创造力焦虑的同时测量几种创造性表现的指标，同时调查状态焦虑和努力，试图解决这一差距。结果表明，创造力焦虑确实可以预测较差的创造性表现，但仅在部分任务中如此。我们还发现，创造力焦虑既可以预测创作表现时的状态焦虑，也可以预测创作表现时的努力。有趣的是，状态焦虑和努力并不能解释创造力焦虑与创造性表现之间的关系。总的来说，这项工作表明，在进行创造性任务时，创造力焦虑通常可以克服，但同样也指出，在更具挑战性的现实环境中，状态焦虑和努力可能会使创造性表现和成就变得脆弱。
