Associations between happiness, attitudes towards creativity and self-reported creativity in Lithuanian youth sample

Abstract

For the last decades, scholars agree that happiness is a complex phenomenon depending on different internal and external factors. The purpose of our research is to investigate the associations between happiness and self-reported creativity; to compare self-reported creativity in groups of subjectively happy and unhappy individuals. The leading methods of researching the issues of the paper include the analysis of theoretical sources, opinion poll method, analysis of statistics, and comparison. The analysis method allows to comprehensively consider the twofold sources of happiness, i.e. external and internal ones, which reflects interrelated objective and subjective natures of human reality. The opinion poll method aimed at evaluating various attitudes, preferences and cognitive abilities of youth. Our sample consisted of 722 Lithuanian gymnasium students. This research suggested that if a person perceives himself as creative and his behavior as creative, then these evaluations are statistically significantly related to life satisfaction, psychological flourishing, positive emotions, but the significant relationship with negative emotions was not found. It was found that there are statistically significant associations between happiness and creativity. Next, this study demonstrated that self-reported creativity is different in groups of subjectively happy and unhappy individuals. Finally, the research revealed that happiness levels differ in groups of subjectively creative and not creative individuals.