Both attentional focus and creativity have been shown to differ depending on the emotional state one is experiencing. We hypothesize that different positive emotions, in this case amusement, enthusiasm and awe, induce characteristically different breadths of attentional focus that are reflective of their respective evolutionary functions and levels of approach motivation. Ultimately we predict that high-approach motivations such as enthusiasm will result in attentional localization and an overall decrease in creativity, whereas low-approach motivations, such as amusement and awe, will result in attentional globalization and overall increased levels of creativity. In this study 105 participants read an emotion inducing story, followed by a globalization attentional focus test, the Alternate Uses Task test for creativity, and an emotion manipulation check. A 1-way ANOVA followed by several t-tests were completed to compare the effects of the different emotion conditions as a whole, and then individually against one another. The experiment was statistically underpowered, and as such there were no significant differences found either for overall emotional affects or those between emotions. However, the patterns suggested by the results of the analyses were not expected and creativity measures differed strongly from predicted results. Data collection is ongoing, and in the future problems with study underpowerment will likely be amended.
Methods: 191 middle-aged adults from a community-based study on resilience were asked to complete 30 daily diaries assessing positive and negative affect. At least 6 months later, participants completed a phone interview that assessed distress (i.e., depressive and anxiety symptoms), well-being (i.e., WHO-5 well-being, vitality, social functioning), physical functioning, and perceived stress.
Results: A three-factor solution with latent factors representing overall, negative, and positive EC was identified. Overall EC significantly predicted enhanced physical functioning, but was not associated with distress or well-being. Contrary to study hypotheses, positive and negative EC were not associated with future distress, well-being, or physical functioning, though a trend toward improved physical functioning was noted for positive EC. In contrast, positive and negative ED were both associated with less distress, and better well-being and physical functioning. Overall ED was unexpectedly related to worse outcomes (i.e., more distress, less well-being, decreased physical functioning). Stress did not moderate the relationship between emotional complexity and the outcome variables.
Conclusions: Different indicators of EC represent distinct aspects of emotional experience. Partial support of the hypotheses found. Physical functioning was the only outcome influenced by EC. The inclusion of stress did not change the results. The discrepancy between the findings and those in the literature may be related to reliability of EC indicators and absence of contextual factors. Further exploration of ED revealed a potentially important construct of emotional experience that is deserving of further inquiry.