The Impact Of Frustration On Scientific Creativity And Literary Creativity

The relationship between emotion and creativity has been widely discussed, but there are many contradictions and unsolved problems. Most researches illuminate that negative emotions are unfavorable to creativity, on the other hand there are some researches also support that negative emotions can facilitate creativity. These contradictory results may be due to different roles emotion plays in different areas of creative activities. Frustration is a kind of common and influential negative emotions.Frustration--aggressive hypothesis and frustration--reversal theory believe frustration will lead to destructive or avoidant behaviors rather than creative behaviors, on the other hand, theory of effects of frustration argues that frustration can produce efficient and creative behaviors. About the relationship between frustration and creative activities, many studies believe that only stable social environment and positive mood are beneficial to scientific creation, but a Chinese classic literature proposition called"qiong er hou gong" suggests that frustration may play an important role in promoting literary creativity. According to theories about relationship between emotion and creativity, responses following frustration, and relationship between frustration and creativity suggest that frustration could have different effects on scientific creativity and literary creativity.In order to study the effect of frustration on scientific creativity and literary creativity, and whether these effects are influenced by tendency of creativity and resilience. Study used Williams Creativity Assessment Packet and Connor - Davidson Resilience Scale Chinese version to measure participants' personality tendency of creativity and resilience. Participants were divided into two groups (experimental group and control group) which have no significant difference in tendency of creativity and resilience. Participants were asked to take part in "comprehensive cognitive ability test"and participants of experimental group were given more negative feedback in this test.Scientific Creativity Test for Adolescent and Hint Fiction Writing Test were used to measure scientific creativity and literary creativity of participants.Results show that frustration induction task was succeeded in inducing the frustration of experimental group. The main effect of experimental grouping and type of creativity are not significant, interaction effect of experimental grouping and type of creativity is significant. Further analysis of the simple effect indicates that on scientific creativity test there is significant difference between experimental group and control group, besides interaction effect of experimental grouping and resilience and interaction effect of experimental grouping and tendency of creativity are not significant. On literary creativity test there is significant difference between experimental group and control group, besides interaction effect of experimental grouping and resilience and interaction effect of experimental grouping and tendency of creativity are not significant. In participants of experimental group,literary creativity is significantly better than scientific creativity. In participants of control group, literary creativity is significantly worse than scientific creativity.Study has shown that frustration promotes literary creativity, inhibits scientific creativity. These effects are stable and would not be affected by personalities like tendency of creativity and resilience. Frustration may improve literary creativity by raising the motivation to create, and restrain scientific creativity by reducing span of attention.