An Empirical Study On The Influence Of Musical Emotional Information On Creative Thinking

Emotion is one of the most important factors influencing an individual’s creative thinking.The factors associated with creative thinking include emotional pleasure,arousal,and emotional motivation.As music is better at evoking and expressing human emotions,attempts have been made to explore the relationship between emotions and creativity through the lens of the relationship between musical,emotional information,and creativity.Both emotions and musical emotions are complex variables,and the more consistent view of their relationship with creativity suggests that emotional pleasure and arousal are the main factors influencing creative thinking.However,there has been more controversy over the specific dimensions.Both emotion and musical emotion can influence creative thinking through the presentation of integrated multichannel emotional information,the theoretical basis for the integration is the theory of emotional coherence,and there are differences in emotional coherence between different sensory channels.Musical emotions are good emotion-evoking auditory material and can influence creativity by evoking emotions in the form of musical performances or combining music with pictures.In addition,pure music and music with lyrics can also influence individuals’ cognitive processing through differences in emotional processing.However,the findings are also controversial,and whether different types of music presented through different sensory channels impact creative thinking has yet to be explored.Based on this,the present study examines the relationship between the emotional valence of music,the integration of multichannel emotional information and musical genres,and their effects on creative thinking to clarify further the mechanisms by which emotional information in music improves and facilitates divergent thinking.The AUT multi-purpose experiment,which has been widely used in previous studies,was used as the testing tool in this study.-The experimental paradigm of "self-assessment of emotional state-creative thinking test" was adopted.There was a pre-experiment on the materials and subjects and two formal behavioral experiments.Experiment 1 explored the differences between two evoked emotions(positive and negative)affecting creative thinking under different sensory channels(visual,auditory,audiovisual)stimuli.The results found that evoking specific emotions significantly promoted divergent thinking and that negative emotions improved individual originality.In addition,the audiovisual channel emotional information can promote originality,and the emotional potency and sensory channel can jointly improve flexibility.Experiment 2 further examined the effects of music with different emotional potencies(positive and negative)on creative thinking presented through two sensory channels(auditory and audiovisual)in different music genres(instrumental and vocal).The results found that instrumental background music facilitated divergent thinking,fluency,and flexibility and that emotional potency and music genre improved individuals’ creative thinking.It was found that music of two emotional potencies(positive and negative)could enhance creativity by influencing different dimensions of divergent thinking.Positive mood music had a significant effect on fluency,flexibility,and divergent thinking,while negative mood music had a significant effect on originality;the integration of emotional information in the audiovisual channel was most conducive to originality;and instrumental music of both mood potencies had a significant facilitative effect on creative thinking.This study helps clarify the relationship between music,emotion,and creativity and finds effective ways to promote creative thinking through music and emotion.