Creativity to Prompt Willpower: Feeling More Creative Predicts Subsequent Activated Positive Affect and Increased Willpower in Daily Life

Prior research has found that people tend to be more creative when experiencing positive affect, especially when experiencing high activation positive affect (e.g., excitement, joy). In addition, creativity may also boost positive affect. We aimed to extend past work by examining the effect of felt creativity on subsequent positive affect in daily life, and by examining whether felt creativity was associated with greater willpower self-efficacy and decreased stress. The current study was an ecological momentary assessment study (n = 104) where creativity, willpower, and affect were assessed seven times per day for 1 week. Participants also completed nightly prompts where they reported on daily stress, creative activities engaged during the day, and overall perceptions of daily creativity. Using lagged analyses, we found that higher momentary felt creativity predicted subsequent high-activation positive affect, but not low-activation positive affect. Higher momentary felt creativity also predicted greater willpower, even when controlling for positive affect. Lastly, we found that experiencing a higher number of daily stressors was associated with greater total engagement in creative activities, suggesting that people may use creative activities to manage or distract from stress. Results suggest that creativity may be useful as a behavioral activation activity to increase both positive affect and perceived self-control (i.e., willpower self-efficacy). Perhaps feeling more creative can help people feel more confident in exerting self-control and thus approaching challenging activities with a greater chance of success.