Positive affectivity, positive psychological states, and positive moods are believed to stimulate creativity and innovativeness
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Take a moment and try to remember the last time you had an exceptional idea. How did you feel in that very moment, just before the spark of creativity hit you? Did this emotional state influence you in your creativity? And do you have a general tendency to feel this emotion?
These are essential questions for understanding the connection between emotions and creativity. Organizations in need for creative employees are interested in finding answers to them. Because if it holds true that certain emotions make us more inventive, then companies would certainly be eager to have their employees experience them. They could then foster an organizational climate prone to such beneficial emotions. Accordingly, there is need to for more insights on the emotional conditions under which employees tend to be particularly innovative.
Most research on this topic has answered by pointing towards positive emotions. Positive affectivity, positive psychological states, and positive moods are believed to stimulate creativity and innovativeness. The practical implications become obvious when you take a look at modern organizations in creative industries. Google, Facebook, and other Silicon Valley companies have tried to set up workplaces that establish fun and happiness at work. Similarly, followers of the positive psychology movement have stressed the positive effects of happiness at work and condemned negative emotions.
Positivity has been praised all around. Only few and more recent studies build notable exceptions to this view and show the advantageous effects of negative emotions. Some of my research work at the EDHEC Family Business Center[1] questions the generally pessimistic view most research has drawn of negative emotions. In five studies, the purpose was to learn more of what some specific negative feelings can do with us. The effects of the so-called self-conscious emotions were examined, such as guilt, shame, embarrassment. Different from basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise), self-conscious emotions relate to our sense of self and our conscious of others’ reactions to our behavior. They are ‘social’ emotions and particularly interesting as they come to existence only relatively late in the development during our childhood. Their emergence differs across cultural settings.