Choosing to Be Creative

Creativity research is good at understanding what psychologists call the “cognitive” aspects of creativity—coming up with ideas, combining and developing concepts, and thinking through problems in rational ways. But creativity researchers tend to neglect another very important part of the human experience: emotions, attitudes, and mindsets.

Generative AI is pretty effective at imitating the cognitive abilities of people, but no one would claim that ChatGPT gets angry, or that an AI could be “self-critical” or have a “growth mindset.” People’s brains do more than just think. We’re emotionally rich. We can reflect on our actions; we have attitudes, experiences, and moods. For example, researchers know that being in the flow state of peak experience is associated with greater creativity. That’s not cognitive; that’s a kind of spiritual awareness. And research shows that having creative self-beliefs—believing in your own creative potential—leads to greater creativity.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle

Source: Zorana Ivcevic Pringle / Used with permission

There are plenty of creativity books about the cognitive side of creativity, including my book Explaining Creativity. Along with these books, we now have an exciting new book that adds to the cognitive approach by focusing on the emotions and mindsets of creativity. Dr. Zorana Ivcevic Pringle is a Senior Research Scientist at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. She’s just published The Creativity Choice: The Science of Making Decisions to Turn Ideas into Action. I loved the book, so I invited her to join me for an interview. If you’d like to hear our conversation, you can listen to our podcast interview on The Science of Creativity.

Keith Sawyer: What are some common misconceptions about creativity?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle: We talk about creativity as coming up with ideas and solving problems. Yes, that’s part of the story. But sometimes it makes creativity seem too easy. Breakthroughs like new medical treatments take time and sustained effort. They involve many small ideas coming together over time. This is hard work; it’s challenging, and the process is full of emotions. That’s why my research focuses on this hidden side of creativity.

KS: I enjoyed reading your story about Pixar, the digital animation studio. Their movies have been incredibly successful. But you say that most of their movies started out as bad ideas. What process do they use to get from a bad idea to a great movie?

ZIC: Up was going to be a story about two brothers on an alien planet vying for their father’s kingdom. It ended up being about an elderly widower who ties balloons to his house and flies to South America to fulfill a promise to his late wife, and is joined by a Boy Scout by accident. It seems that the only detail that survived the development process was a colorful flightless bird around which a lot of the plots revolves. We marvel that the original idea was unrecognizable in the final movie. But it turns out that this is common to creative work. For ideas to reach their potential, we have to explore them from different angles and stay open to them evolving. The theme of escaping when life becomes overwhelming—this continued as part of the movie. The Pixar team continued playing with the problem of how to communicate “escape” and “following dreams” until the pieces fell into place. The alien planet and the floating city did not make it into the movie; instead, a house flew.

KS: How can we manage our emotions to be more creative?

ZIC: One way is to be aware of how your emotions influence your thinking. The creative process swings between coming up with new ideas, and criticizing and evaluating ideas. Research shows that when you’re in a positive mood, when you’re feeling energized, you’re better at broad, playful thinking. And you’re better at thinking critically when you’re in a lower-energy, more subdued mood. So if you’re happy, then it’s a good time to start brainstorming for new ideas. When you’re feeling down or pessimistic, that’s a good time to critically reflect and revise your ideas.

But what if you don’t get to choose what to do when? For example, perhaps you’re feeling tense, but you’re scheduled to have a brainstorming meeting about a new project. The problem is that in a low-energy mood, you tend to see problems, not opportunities. Inversely, you might be in a great mood right when you need to give critical advice to a colleague. But in that mood, you’re not as good at providing helpful critical feedback. This is when you need to manage your emotions and nudge them in a more helpful direction by using different emotion regulation strategies.

To ease tension, you might do a breathing exercise and then boost your mood by listening to an upbeat song. At other times, when an emotion is overwhelming, you can consider what is the meaning of a situation for you. If you interpret your anxiety before pitching an original idea in a meeting as a sign that you really care about it, your experience will be different and you will be more successful than if you interpret it as putting in question your ability to do well.

KS: What can you do about feeling discouraged when you fail or hit a big obstacle?

ZIC: Emotionally, obstacles are frustrating and make us doubt ourselves. Remind yourself that creativity is a long process; it’s not only about this one idea or this one obstacle. It’s a temporary setback. One technique that I like is to ask yourself, what would you tell a friend in this situation? Try to show kindness to yourself as you would to a friend. In turn, this can ease the frustration sufficiently to help you return to what you were doing with a fresh perspective.

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The most important thing to remember is that creativity is a choice. It starts when you choose to be creative, but the choice continues throughout the process. You will encounter obstacles and you must choose to do the hard work to work around them. You’ll often encounter negative emotions and stress, and once again, you have to choose to do the emotional work to manage those emotions. This is why I called my new book The Creativity Choice.