Abstract
As a well-recognized and widely adopted emotional regulation strategy, cognitive reappraisal has generally been proven to be efficient. However, the cognitive mechanism underlying regulatory efficiency, particularly the role of creativity, in cognitive reappraisal is unclear. Although previous studies have evaluated the relationship between creativity and reappraisal from the perspectives of generation (i.e., generating cognitive reappraisals and generating creative ideas involve similar cognitive neural networks) and individual differences (i.e., the ability to generate different cognitive reappraisals can be predicted by scores on creativity-related tests), how cognitive reappraisal’s efficiency can be related to creativity is still unknown. In this research, we assessed the relationship between cognitive reappraisal’s creativity and its effectiveness in regulating negative emotion. In Study 1, participants were asked to generate reappraisals of negative stimuli and then evaluate the creativity and regulatory effectiveness of these reappraisals. The results indicated positive correlation between creativity rating and regulatory effectiveness, but we found that it was difficult for the participants to generate highly creative reappraisals on their own. Therefore, in Study 2, we showed participants well-prepared reappraisal materials that varied in their creativity and asked them to evaluate their regulatory effectiveness and creativity. The results suggested that creativity and appropriateness were significant predictors of the regulating effects of the reappraisal and that creativity was the most dominant predictor. In summary, both experiments found a positive correlation between reappraisal’s creativity and effectiveness, thus implying that creativity plays an important role in reappraisal.
Highlights
The ability to control effective response and to initiate more adaptive behavior has important consequences for our physical and mental well-being (Gross and John, 2003)
We found that it was difficult for the participants to generate truly, highly creative reappraisals by themselves; in Study 2, we showed the participants well-prepared reappraisal materials that varied in their creativity and asked them to evaluate the materials’ regulatory effectiveness and creativity
We assessed the relationship between creativity and cognitive reappraisal by investigating how the regulatory effectiveness of a given reappraisal could be related to its creativity
Summary
The ability to control effective response and to initiate more adaptive behavior has important consequences for our physical and mental well-being (Gross and John, 2003). In the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), a change in sorting strategies is always made among several limited selections (e.g., color, number, or shape), and this type of change is found to be mainly mediated by the neural network for cognitive control and executive function, the prefrontal cortex (PFC) (e.g., Monchi et al, 2001) Another type of mental set or representation change, is made under an ill-defined problem situation, such as the one encountered in divergent thinking, in which the rules and mental operators are highly uncertain and the stepwise application of mental operators based on ordinary reasoning (e.g., to derive the possible applications of an empty can based on its major function) typically cannot result in truly original solutions. It is far more plausible that the change will be a creative or insightful one, given that it essentially requires an individual to search for and find new perspectives, which are not typically implicated by the problem situation, and to adopt new strategies, which can be highly taskspecific for the new problem at hand (e.g., thinking through a new reappraisal of a new affective picture)
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