Creative Metacognitive Feelings as a Source of Information for Creative Self‐efficacy, Creativity Potential, Intrapersonal Idea Selection, and Task Enjoyment

Abstract

AbstractCreativity scholars try to untangle the commonalities and differences between creative self‐beliefs: creative self‐efficacy, creative self‐concept, creative metacognition, and creative role identity. While these efforts are already contributing significantly, we would like to suggest that for creative metacognition, we need to go beyond the assessment of confidence beliefs and regulation and include creative metacognitive feelings and intrapersonal idea selection as two additional components. To test the validity of our proposition, this study examined the influence of creative metacognitive feelings on creative self‐efficacy, creative potential, accurate intrapersonal idea selection (agreement between individuals’ selection of their most creative idea and two independent judges’ selection of the participants’ best idea), and task enjoyment. To elicit metacognitive feelings, participants were randomly assigned to remember and write down two or six instances in their lives in which they generated novel and useful ideas that helped solve a problem. Participants then completed a questionnaire assessing creative self‐efficacy, ease of recall as a proxy of metacognitive feelings, performance on a divergent thinking task, and task enjoyment. Results showed an indirect influence of recalling fewer examples on creative self‐efficacy through its influence on metacognitive feelings. Metacognitive feelings then had an indirect influence, through creative self‐efficacy, on creative potential and task enjoyment.