The Impact Of Self-controlon Creativity

From individuals to school, from enterprises to country, creativity has become a vital factor for success in today’s society. As an important component of self-consciousness, self-control is involved in many mental phenomena and behavior. Self-control help individual achieve goals, failure of self-control can lead to cognitive decline. But it is little know the relationship between self-control and creativity, so this study focus on how self-control influence creativity.Study 1 aims to test the influence of self-control traits and state self-control on creativity. In the experiment, the 2(high trait and low trait) * 2(high self-depletion and low self-depletion) between-subject experimental design were adopted, and select 68 participants. Self-control trait is measured by scale, self-depletion is induced by self-control task. Creativity problem solving and creative ideas generation are dependent variables.Study 2 aims to test the regulation effect of motivation and emotion on self-control and creativity. Study 2 contains two experiments.Experiment 1 takes 2(high ego-depletion and low ego-depletion) * 2(autonomous motivation and controlled motivation) between-subject experiment design, and select 90 participants. Ego-depletion is induced by self-control task, the type of motivation is independent variable, induced by experimental instruction. Creative generation is the dependent variable testing by plan formulation task.Experiment 2 takes 2(high ego-depletion and low ego-depletion) * 3(positive emotion, negative emotion and neutral emotion) between-subject experiment design, and select 119 participants. Ego-depletion is induced by self-control task, emotion is independent variable, induced by recall method. Creative generation is the dependent variable testing by plan formulation task.The results showed that:1. Self-control revealed a significant effect on creativity. In creative ideas generation and creative problem solving,high self-depletion group were significantly lower than low self-depletion group. In creative ideas generation, high self-control trait group were significantly higher than low self-control trait group; while increativeproblemsolving, it isno significant difference between high and low self-control trait group. For individuals with high self-control trait, there are no significant difference in creative problem solving and creative ideas generation.2. Motivation moderated the relationship between self-control and creativity. For individuals under autonomous motivation, the negative effect of self-depletion on creativity is overcame; but it made no significant positive efficiency on creative problem solving under controlled motivation.3. Emotion moderated the relationship between self-control and creativity. For individuals under positive emotion, the negative effect of self-depletion on creativity is overcame; while for individuals under negative emotion, it exacerbated the negative effect of self-depletion on creative problem solving.At last, The implications, limitations and future directions of the study were discussed.