How Creative Self‐Concept Leads to Happiness: A Multilevel Chain Mediating Model

Abstract

Recent research has shown that creative self‐concept might be not only a path to people's creativity but also a path to their positive affect. This study proposed and examined the underlying mechanisms of how creative self‐concept is associated with positive affect through the mediating role of people's daily creative behavior and creative self‐assessment. We recruited 101 Chinese undergraduate students to report their creative behavior, creative self‐assessment, and experiences of positive emotion states each day for 14 days. A multilevel structural equation model was conducted. Results confirmed the mediating role of creative self‐assessment and the chain‐mediating role of creative behavior and creative self‐assessment between creative self‐concept and positive affect. The direct effect of creative behavior on positive affect was not verified. These findings highlight the role that creative self‐concept plays in everyday activities and everyday well‐being and show the importance of creative self‐assessment in creativity education and mental health care.

Young Creators: Perceptions of Creativity by Primary School Students in Malta

“…Since the creative self-concept, which includes creative personal identity, refers to one’s understanding of how able they are to think and act creatively ( Karwowski and Beghetto 2019 ), one may suppose that the rate at which creators engage with the contexts they find themselves in may impinge on the quantity and quality of activities related to little-c/everyday creativity and mini-c creativity. Supporting this argument is a recent study by Li et al ( 2022 ). The authors investigated the link between the creative self-concept, and creative behaviour amongst others and found a positive relationship between the two.…”

Creativity to prompt willpower: Feeling more creative predicts subsequent activated positive affect and increased willpower in daily life.

“…Our study demonstrated that creativity predicted subsequent willpower self-efficacy, with no evidence for the reverse. Yet of course, the decision to engage in creative activity in the first place likely requires willpower-related attributes such as motivation and creative self-efficacy (Li et al, 2022). Indeed, creative activities themselves often require self-regulatory effort to translate into creative achievements (Ivcevic & Nusbaum, 2017; Zielińska et al, 2023).…”

“…Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) and daily diary studies are excellent methods for examining relationships between variables in daily life (Shiffman et al, 2008). For example, higher perceived creativity is associated with greater positive affect (Li et al, 2022). Additionally, lagged analyses from EMA data allow for examination of the effects of one variable on another at a subsequent timepoint, and positive affect at one time point has predicted subsequent creativity in several studies (Amabile et al, 2005; Chi et al, 2021; Karwowski et al, 2017; To et al, 2012).…”