Creativity Under Crisis

Creativity plays an important role in people's daily life.For example,when people are facing life threatening situation,people need to use creativity to quickly generate and select effective solutions to this situation,and creative solutions can often help people effectively deal with such difficulties.In this context,many factors can impact creativity.This paper focuses on the relationship between approach-avoidance framework of motivation and creativity.Under this approach-avoidance framework of motivation,different kinds of motivation have different influences on creativity.Based on previous research,both kinds of motivation can be divided into situational and long-term based on their different sources.However the impacts on creativity are consistent no matter what kind of source they come from.Namely,on the approach side,both the situational and long-term approach motivation have the same positive influence on creativity because people's flexibility are increased,while on the avoidance side,the situational and long-term avoidance motivation also have the same impacts on creativity,which happens only in situations where it is necessary.However,few previous studies have included both the long-term approach-avoidance motivation and the situational approach-avoidance motivation.And most of the creativity researches focus on idea generation stage,while research on idea selection stage has yet to be developed.Based on the information above,this paper will specifically exam that in the life-threatening situation:(1)whether there will be a "match-effect" between avoidance motivation and creativity since there are situational avoidance motivation clues in dangerous situations;(2)will different types of situational avoidance cues affect creativity;(3)will different types of situational avoidance cues affect “match-effect”;(4)creative ideas include two aspects: originality and usefulness.How do long-term motivations and directions of threatening cues affect those two aspects of creativity? Finally(5)Do those factors have different impacts on creativity between the idea selection stage and the idea generation stage?This article selects the long-term regulatory focuses and the directions of threatening stimulus as independent variables,through three experiments we explore these questions.In experiment 1,we use the “Regulatory Focus Scale” to measure participants' long-term regulatory focus which can be seen as long-termapproach-avoidance motivations,we use visual stimulus to manipulate participants' different levels of situational avoidance motivation.In experiment 2,we use the "mouse-maze paradigm" to induce the situational promotion/prevention focus to investigate their performance in the idea selection stage of creativity when facing different directions of threat stimulus,so as to eliminate the interference of the interaction between the situational approach/avoidance motivations.Experiment 3examines the effects of regulatory focuses and directions of threatening stimulus on the idea generation stage of creativity.Finally,we found that:(1)In the stage of idea selection,people's long-term regulatory focus(long-term approach-avoidance motivation)has a "match effect” with the avoidance cues in the threat scenario.That is,when the long-term motivation tendency is consistent with the avoidance motivation in the situation,the subjects' creative task performance is better.In this stage of creativity,the role of "matching" is shown in the selection of creative ideas,and the subjects under the condition of "matching" prefer to choose the original and creative ideas.At the same time,the "matching effect" was significant regardless of the threat stimulus.(2)In the idea generation stage,only when the threat stimulus in the situation is directed at them,the long-term regulatory focuses will "match" with the avoidance cue in the situation,which is manifested as that the individuals with the prevention focus will produce more original and creative ideas when facing threat stimulus which are directly point at them.At the other level,people's creative performance is still guided by long-term regulatory focus.(3)The direction of threat stimulus in the threat scenario has a significant impact on the performance of creativity in both the idea selection stage and the idea generation stag,but it has a completely different impact.In idea selection stage,the result is support threat rigidity theory,when people facing stimulus directly pointing to them,they choose less creative ideas,while in idea generation stage,the result is support for the motivation focus theory,namely when people face stimulus directly point to them,they can generate more creative ideas.