NO WORDS FOR EMOTIONS: EMOTIONAL CREATIVITY AND ALEXITHYMIA IN ART

Abstract

The present research investigates emotional characteristics of professional culture – artists, examining the difference between art and non-art faculty students in emotional creativity and exploring the relationship between emotional creativity and alexithymia. Emotional creativity refers to the person’s ability to express and experience authentic, original and appropriate combinations of emotions. Art and non-art faculty students from different universities (34 female and 46 males; M of age=20.41, SD=1.64) were administered with the Emotional Creativity Inventory (ECI) along with the 20-Item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) The result showed that art faculty students have higher scores on emotional creativity than students from other faculties. Emotional creativity aspects are negatively related with the alexithymia. In the interpretation of results, emotional creativity is represented as one of the psychological constructs which is an important characteristic for the individuals working in the field of art. There’s an illustration how differently artistic individuals understand and experience emotions. The results have practical implication for social and emotional learning perspective. According to following research not only cognitive but emotional creativity is an important disposition for creative work. This emotional aspect should be identified at school age to contribute the development of individuals’ artistic skills. Key words: artistic skills, alexithymia, emotional creativity.