In two experiments, we investigated whether the feeling of lacking control can foster creative thinking, which we operationalized as the ability to produce associative and dissociative combinations of either related and unrelated concepts. Participants were asked to think about an incident in their life wherein they felt either to be in control or to lose control of the situation. Immediately afterwards, they had to perform five different creative (divergent) thinking tasks. In both experiments, we observed higher scores in all creativity tasks for participants who recalled loss-of-control events than for those recalling in-control events. Our findings suggest that compensatory processes, triggered by loss of control, can promote divergent thinking.

Lacking control increases creativity / Mulatti, C; Treccani, B. - (2019). (Intervento presentato al convegno 21st Conference of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology tenutosi a Tenerife nel 25th - 28th September 2019).

Lacking control increases creativity

Mulatti, C;Treccani, B
2019-01-01

Abstract

In two experiments, we investigated whether the feeling of lacking control can foster creative thinking, which we operationalized as the ability to produce associative and dissociative combinations of either related and unrelated concepts. Participants were asked to think about an incident in their life wherein they felt either to be in control or to lose control of the situation. Immediately afterwards, they had to perform five different creative (divergent) thinking tasks. In both experiments, we observed higher scores in all creativity tasks for participants who recalled loss-of-control events than for those recalling in-control events. Our findings suggest that compensatory processes, triggered by loss of control, can promote divergent thinking.
2019
Abstracts of the 21st Conference of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology
Lacking control increases creativity / Mulatti, C; Treccani, B. - (2019). (Intervento presentato al convegno 21st Conference of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology tenutosi a Tenerife nel 25th - 28th September 2019).
Mulatti, C; Treccani, B
File in questo prodotto:
File Dimensione Formato  
ESCoP2019-ABSTRACTS.pdf

accesso aperto

Descrizione: libro abstract
Tipologia: Abstract
Licenza: Creative commons
Dimensione 8.06 MB
Formato Adobe PDF
8.06 MB Adobe PDF Visualizza/Apri

I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione

Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11572/242907
Citazioni
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.pmc??? ND
  • Scopus ND
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.isi??? ND
social impact