The Effect Of Awe On Creativity And Its Psychological Mechanism

Creativity is closely related to individual emotions.A large number of studies have shown that positive emotions are related to the flexibility of creative thinking,while negative emotions may promote the persistence of creative thinking.In recent years,an emotion of both positive and negative valence,awe,has received widespread attention from researchers.According to the theory of cognitive evaluation tendency,awe will bring new feelings beyond the existing experience,and prompt individuals to reconstruct their previous beliefs to understand the relevant stimuli.This means that there may be a connection between awe and creativity.However,since awe mixes positive and negative valence,it is unclear what form of association between it and creativity.This research uses a series of research methods such as questionnaire surveys,behavioral experiments,virtual reality,and near-infrared spectroscopy to investigate the impact of awe on creativity and its psychological mechanismThis thesis contains three parts and seven studies.In the first part,the researcher reveals the relationship of trait awe and emotional awe with creative idea generation and evaluation through four studies(1a,1b,2a,2b).Study 1a found that trait awe,openness,cognitive closure,and creative idea generation behaviors are significantly related to each other,and openness and cognitive closure mediate the relationship between trait awe and creative idea generation;Study lb found that individuals with high traits awe had higher scores for creative ideas evaluation than individuals with lower traits awe.Study 2a and 2b induced awe in the laboratory through virtual reality technology and investigate the effect of awe on creative performance.It was found that individuals in the awe and neutral emotion groups performed differently on creative tasks.Although the individuals in the awe group did not show an advantage in graphic creative tasks,the novelty of thinking in hypothetical tasks and insight tasks was significantly higher than that of the neutral emotion group,indicating that awe has a certain role in promoting creativityThe second part of the thesis is based on the creative dual-process theory.Through a near-infrared spectroscopy study(Study 3),the effects of different valences of awe-induced emotions on individual creative performance and the activation characteristics of their brain regions are discussed.Behavioral results show that there is no significant difference between negative awe and positive awe on creativity.The novelty score of an individual's creative task under awe is significantly higher than that under a neutral condition.The near-infrared results show that when watching awe videos,the deactivation of individuals in the default network is significantly higher than when watching neutral videos.In addition,when an individual performs creative tasks after watching the awe video,the activation on the brain area related to semantic processing is significantly higher than the activation of the brain area when performing creative tasks under neutral conditionsThe third part of the thesis is based on the two theoretical frameworks of self-awareness and psychological distance(Research 4a,4b),and further explores the cognitive mechanism in which awe experience affects creative performance.Study 4a carried out emotional manipulation in a real natural environment and found that the perceived self-size mediated the relationship between awe and creativity.In other words,awe can affect an individual's creative performance by reducing awareness of the self.Research 4b aims to explore whether the awe experience will prompt individuals to adopt more abstract thinking to influence creative ideas.The study manipulated different psychological distances and found that the individuals in the awe group performed better at distant future and specific tasks condition than the neutral emotion group,indicating that the awe experience will indeed induce more abstract thinking and then promote subsequent creative performanceBased on the above series of studies,we draw the following main conclusions(1)Trait awe is positively correlated with self-reported creative idea generation behavior,while the need for cognitive closure and openness play an intermediary role;individuals with high trait awe evaluate the ideas more creative.(2)Awe can promote the creative performance of individuals in divergent thinking and convergent thinking tasks.(3)Compared to neutral emotions,the default network(self-related processing)under awe conditions are significantly deactivated;in subsequent creative tasks,compared to neutral emotions,the individual's angle(semantic processing)under awe conditions have significant activation.(4)The awe experience will reduce perceived self-size,and promote the outward expansion of cognition,thereby promoting creative performance.(5)The awe experience is accompanied by a far psychological distance,which can lead to more abstract thinking,thereby making the individual perform better on creative tasks.This study initially revealed some relationship between awe and creativity,thus providing a basis for interfering in awe and then improving individual creative performance.