| Student-life stress is the psychological tension resulting from exposure to demanding academic demands and personal circumstances. Student-life stress is known to cause mental, emotional, and physical problems that lead to increased dropout rates and burnout (Beiter et al., 2015; Smith & Moss, 2009). The current study assesses creative thinking and its relationship with student-life stress. Research that assesses and defines creative thinking strongly suggests that fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration are ways to test creativity through a cognitive approach (i.e.divergent thinking) (Almeida, Prieto, Ferrando, Oliverira, and Ferrandiz, 2008). Researchers surveyed 56 undergraduate students at a mid-size private university and assessed their creative thinking ability and perceived stress. The hypotheses are that high levels of creative thinking predicts lower scores of perceived stress in students, flexibility has the strongest relationship with perceived stress in students, and elaboration has the weakest relationship with perceived stress. The results supported the hypothesis that originality, an element of creative thinking, predicts student stress. However, no other form of divergent thinking predicted student stress. These findings are discussed in relation to existing literature on creative thinking and considerations for future research. |
