Abstract
Throughout the course of the pandemic, it has become clear that the strictures of social isolation and various levels of lockdown constraints have impacted people’s well-being. Here, our aim was to explore relations between trait dispositions associated with boredom proneness, self-regulation and well-being using data collected early in the pandemic. Specifically, we explored whether the tendency to engage in everyday creative pursuits (e.g., making your own greeting cards) would act as a prophylactic against poor well-being. Results showed that well-being was higher for those individuals who increased engagement with creative pursuits during the early stages of the pandemic. That is, people who engaged more in everyday creative activities also reported higher levels of self-esteem, optimism, and positive affect. In contrast, those who pursued fewer creative outlets had higher levels of depression and anxiety, were higher in boredom proneness, and reported experiencing more negative affect. As we emerge from the pandemic, these data provide a clue as to how people might plan to cope adaptively with the restrictive circumstances this extreme world event engendered. More generally, these data provide support for the notion that everyday creativity (and not necessarily creative expertise) has positive associations for well-being.
Highlights
The constraints imposed on our daily lives in the service of limiting the spread of coronavirus has resulted in individuals being confined to their homes and a marked disruption of normal activities. The imposition of these extraordinary restrictions on human movement and activity presents an opportunity for psychologists to examine the influence of various trait dispositions and behaviours on the capacity to adhere to these rules and to cope with their consequences
Psychologists can contribute to public health policy by better understanding the extent to which such factors interact in the dynamic reality of human experience
Individual trait measures are generally assumed to be stable over time, we included several trait measures that would be considered relevant to well-being. The first of these was the Rosenberg Self-esteem Scale (RSES) [37], on which higher levels of self-esteem are assumed to be related to better well-being, e.g., [38]
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Boredom proneness—the tendency to experience boredom more frequently and intensely—has been shown to be related to poor adherence to the strictures of social isolation [5,6] Taken together, these results suggest that the constraints imposed by the pandemic place a burden of self-regulatory capacities which in turn is likely to have negative impacts on well-being [7–9]. While an individual’s pre-existing mental health challenges, socioeconomic barriers [1], and certain individual traits (e.g., boredom proneness, self-control) [5,6] represent clear obstacles to well-being in these times, less is known about factors that might promote wellbeing One such factor may be one’s level of engagement in creative outlets or pursuits. We expected that engaging in more creative outlets would be associated with better well-being
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