Everyone's Health

Are you creative, or just plain screwed up?

Conflicted? It's a sign of creativity

If you experience positive and negative emotions simultaneously at work, you may be a more innovative thinker than others, according to the Academy of Management Journal.

Researchers in Seattle conducted two studies: In the first, 102 college students were asked to write about emotional experiences and were immediately given a test measuring creative thinking. Students who expressed ambivalent emotions in their writing tested significantly better on the creativity scale than those who were just happy, just sad or neutral.

In the next study, students took the same creativity test after either watching a clip from the movie “Father of the Bride” (intended to evoke contradictory emotions) or looking at a neutral screen saver. Those who viewed the neutral image (the less ambivalent group) performed less well on the creativity test. The authors concluded that emotionally conflicted employees generate creative ideas.

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