The Relationship Of Challenge Stressor, Regulatory Focus And Creativity

The impact of challenge stressors to creativity is becoming a research hotspot both in psychology and management these years, while previous research has produced contradictory findings about it. Based on the challenge-hindrance stressors framework and regulatory focus theory, we introduce regulatory focus to go deeply into the discussion of relationship between challenge stressor, regulatory focus and creativity.Three researches are included in this article:in Study l,we discussed the relationship between trait regulatory focus and idea generation/idea implementation in workplace. In study 2 and 3, experiments are applied to discuss the impact of challenge stressors (work demand), trait regulatory focus, and state regulatory focus on creativity.In Study 1, data were collected from 365 employees. The questionnaire included employee creativity, challenge-hindrance stressor, and trait regulatory focus. With statistic methods of correlation analysis and regression analysis, the result is as follows:(1) Challenge stressor and view/point execution are positively correlated. (2) The effect of challenge stressors on employee creativity (idea generation& idea implementation) is moderated by regulatory focus, i.e. promotion focus strengthens a positive relationship between challenge stressors and idea generation/idea implementation, while prevention focus reinforces a negative relationship between challenge and idea generation/idea implementation.Study 2 adopted a combined method of experiments and questionnaires.80 university students are tested with regulatory focus questionnaire. Then they had completed the TTCT task and puzzle task. Analysis on variance of the data indicates: Work demand and trait regulatory focus together influence the fluency, flexibility and specificity dimension:in high work demand, the score of promotion focus is prominently higher than prevention focus, while in low work demand, prevention focus higher than promotion focus. Nevertheless, work demand and trait regulatory focus have no significant impact on the accuracy of target puzzles. Research Three is based on Research Two, further discussing the impact of work demand, trait regulatory focus, and state regulatory focus on individuals.151 university students are tested with RFQ, divided into two groups of high work demand and low work demand with different instructions. After inducing state regulatory focus by writing short passages, they are demanded to complete the TTCT task of multi-use of one thing and picture test. The analysis of data variance shows that state regulatory focus moderates the relationship of work demand, trait regulatory focus and creativity. On the fluency dimension, when induced state promotion focus, the prevention focus (trait) individuals behave better in the high work demand than the low work demand condition. On the specificity dimension in the same condition (state promotion focus) we found promotion focus individuals higher in the high work demand than in the low demand. We didn’t find interaction on the flexibility dimension of work demand,trait regulatory focus and state regulatory focus.In sum, this paper explored the influence of regulatory focus trait, regulatory focus state and challenge stressor to creativity presenting a proposal for research of creativity, which is beneficial for finding out the relationship among challenge stressors, regulatory focus and creativity, and has significance in enhancing individual creativity.