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Study: Mixed Emotions Mean More Creative Workers

A study by University of Washington psychologists shows that people who experience emotional ambivalence, the ability to feel both positive and negative emotions at the same time, are more creative workers than those who only feel sad, happy or neutral.

That's because people who feel mixed emotions interpret the experience as a signal that they are in an unusual environment and thus respond to it by drawing upon their creative thinking abilities, said Christina Ting Fong, an assistant professor at the University of Washington Business School. This increased sensitivity for recognizing unusual associations, which happy or sad workers probably couldn't detect, is what leads to creativity in the workplace, she added.

For her research, Fong performed two studies using a common creativity test measuring the ability to see associations among words called the Remote Associates Test. In the first test, she asked college students to write about an emotionally evocative experience then take Remote Associates Test. While those who felt neutral, happy or sad performed similarly, those who felt ambivalence tested as slightly more creative.

In the second experiment, students were shown either a neutral screensaver or a clip from the movie "The Father of the Bride" in which a young woman discusses both the joys and sorrows of getting married. Both groups then took the Remote Associations Test.

She found that the emotionally ambivalent people who saw the clip showed increased creativity in comparison to those who watched the screensaver, but only when they believed their emotional ambivalence was unusual. Surprisingly, she said, no relationship was found between positive emotions and creativity or negative emotions and creativity.

According to Fong, one implication of this research is that when people feel mixed emotions, they see this as a signal that they are in a situation that might contain lots of unusual associations, and thus will need to respond by using more creative thinking.