Emotional Creativity and Real-Life Involvement in Different Types of Creative Leisure Activities

Abstract

The role of emotional creativity in practicing creative leisure activities and in the preference of college majors remains unknown. The present study aims to explore how emotional creativity measured by the Emotional Creativity Inventory (ECI; Averill, 1999) is interrelated with the real-life involvement in different types of specific creative leisure activities and with four categories of college majors. Data were collected from 251 university students, university graduates and young adults (156 women and 95 men). Art students and graduates scored significantly higher on the ECI than other majors. Humanities scored significantly higher than technical/economic majors. Five creative leisure activities were significantly correlated with the ECI, specifically, writing, painting, composing music, performing drama, and do-it-yourself home improvement. Overall creative capacities are related to various emotional variables, especially to stable emotional characteristics. The significance of stable emotional characteristics is recognizable in experimental creative tasks (Gutbezahl & Averill, 1996), divergent thinking tasks (Zenasni & Lubart, 2008) as well as in creative artistic performance (Agular-Vafaie & Runco, 2008). Ma (2009) classified three main areas of general creativity in his extensive meta-analysis: (a) creativity with less evaluation, including nonverbal and verbal; (b) creativity in problem solving, with more evaluation; and (c) emotional creativity. Emotional creativity (EC) is a pattern of cognitive abilities and personality traits related to originality and appropriateness in emotional experience (Ivcevic, Brackett, & Mayer, 2007). It involves the particularly effective application of an already existing emotion or, at a more complex level, the modification of a standard emotion to better meet the needs of the individual or group (Averill, 1999). Divergence from the ordinary emotional experience is a key feature of EC, because EC involves the ability to diverge from the common and generate novel emotional reactions (Ivcevic, Brackett, & Mayer, 2007). The theoretical conceptualization of EC within other related creativity constructs was previously provided by Gutbezahl and Averill (1996). The most common measurement of EC is a self-report questionnaire, the Emotional Creativity Inventory (ECI; Averill, 1999) developed by James R. Averill.

Emotional Creativity: A Meta-analysis and Integrative Review

“…Therefore, it is not surprising that higher EC has been found to be related to the increased involvement of participants in creative leisure-time activities, e.g. creative writing, painting, composing music, dance improvisation, theatrical improvisation and do-ityourself activities (Trnka, Zahradnik, & Kuška, 2016).…”

Economic Creativity And Economic Education

“…Such influences are not limited to economic knowledge and experience. The subject's emotional and evaluative attitude to the problem also influences creativity, which has already been the subject of special research (Ivcevic et al, 2007;Trnka et al, 2016). "Aesthetic intelligentsia", by Pauline Brown.…”

Women’s Everyday Creative Activities: a Qualitative Study

“…From the study, it was observed that the participants were able to reflect on their own creative abilities and their actions in different contexts. Expressions referred to creativity as potential of all people that can be developed in different contexts, a definition with which most current researchers of creative processes seem to agree (Glaveanu, 2018;Richards, 2010;Trnka, Zahradnik & Kuška, 2016).…”

“…Creativity is a potentiality all people have that can develop in different domains and contexts. The arts, sciences, technology, social relations, emotions and daily life are fields where it is possible to develop original ideas and products (Glaveanu, 2018;Richards, 2010;Trnka, Zahradnik & Kuška, 2016). According to UNESCO, creativity refers to the ability of people to solve problems and transform reality.…”