The Relationship Between Cognitive Reappraisal And Creative Thinking:the Moderating Effect Of Cognitive Control

Creativity,as an indispensable prerequisite for today’s social and personal development,is bound to be affected by emotional,cognitive and other factors.Previous studies on emotion and creativity reveal the influence of positive and negative emotions on individual creativity through the dual channel theory of emotion.As an important variable affecting emotion,emotion regulation is also very important to explore the influence of creative thinking.Individuals with higher level of cognitive control have advantages in maintaining goal related information to serve the cognitive activities that need to be performed.Previous studies have found a close relationship between cognitive control and creative thinking.The purpose of this study is to find out the relationship between emotion regulation strategies and creative thinking,and the possible role of cognitive control.Classical psychoanalysis is an important precursor of contemporary emotion regulation research.Freud’s psychodynamic theory first expounds the role of emotional process in adult creativity,and then influences the expression of creativity through emotional intervention.Nowadays,researchers of emotion regulation still focus on reducing negative emotional experience through behavioral or mental regulation,and then explore the relationship with other activities.The purpose of study 1 is to explore the relationship between emotion regulation strategies and creativity.Creativity is mainly measured by creative personality and creative thinking.In this study,1033 college students were investigated online by using emotion regulation strategy questionnaire and creativity questionnaire.There is a significant correlation between individual emotion regulation strategies and creative thinking and creative personality;there is a significant difference between the creative thinking and creative personality of the individuals who use cognitive reappraisal or expression inhibition,which shows that the level of creative thinking and creative personality of the individuals who use cognitive reappraisal is higher than that of the individuals who use low cognitive reappraisal;in addition,individuals with high cognitive reappraisal have higher levels of creative thinking and creative personality than those with low cognitive reappraisal.Based on Study 1,study 2 further verified the differences of creative thinking and cognitive control among individuals using cognitive reappraisal to different degrees,and explored the role of cognitive control in the relationship between high and low cognitive reappraisal and creative thinking.167 college students completed the emotion regulation questionnaire test.The subjects with high and low cognitive re evaluation scores of 27% were regarded as the high and low cognitive re evaluation groups.The results show that the cognitive inhibition of individuals can play a moderating role in the high and low cognitive reappraisal and the abstract title of picture creative thinking.From the above two studies,it can be concluded that the emotion regulation strategies used by individuals are closely related to their creative performance,and this relationship will be partially affected by cognitive control.In the future,in order to stimulate individual creativity,we can start with guiding individuals to use emotion regulation strategies flexibly,and explore more emotion regulation strategies of cognitive reappraisal,such as meditation,executive control training,and participating in emotion regulation training groups.