Abstract
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 (N = 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.
Highlights
The quality and duration of our lives are oftentimes based on people’s creativity—think, for instance, of the inventions of the light bulb or aseptic techniques
Individuals only displayed the typical anxiety-related performance decrements in cognitively demanding mental tasks during the state of ego depletion; anxious students with intact self-control strength were able to perform at the same level as non-anxious students (Bertrams et al, 2013; Bertrams and Englert, 2014). These findings have been found in the field of sport psychology: In evaluative, anxiety-provoking test situations, athletes in the state of ego depletion performed significantly worse than their non-depleted counterparts in sports-related tasks that depend on executive functioning (Englert and Bertrams, 2012; Englert et al, 2015)
Previous research has suggested that the negative effects of anxiety on certain types of performance can be reduced by engaging in self-control
Summary
The quality and duration of our lives are oftentimes based on people’s creativity—think, for instance, of the inventions of the light bulb or aseptic techniques. Previous research has suggested that creativity is (to some degree) reliant on cognitive abilities (Cropley, 1966), motivation (Collins and Amabile, 1999), or certain personality components (Feist, 1998). These variables can only explain a small amount of variance in creative performance, which raises the question of which other processes are behind creativity (Batey and Furnham, 2006). Earlier research viewed creativity as an aspect of intelligence, but today, many researchers agree that creativity requires a basic level of intelligence (Barron, 1969), creativity and intelligence are not identical constructs (Guilford, 1967; Carroll, 1993). This conclusion is further supported by a recent meta-analysis, that only found a moderate relationship between creativity and intelligence (Kim, 2005)
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