The (Hidden) Advantages of Creativity
We assume creativity is valuable, but it is worth examining what exact advantages it provides. Some benefits of creativity are obvious, especially in the case of what scientists call Big-C creativity—inventions like treatments for once-incurable diseases, works of art that start new styles or movements, discoveries that help us understand the world. Other creative achievements may have a less profound influence but still enrich our lives. We delight at the new installment of favorite TV shows (any Trekkies out there?) or enjoy new consumer products (e.g., new airpods).
But what about psychological and social benefits of creativity? James Kaufman, psychology professor at the University Connecticut, addressed this question in his book The Creativity Advantage. He summarizes three key benefits of creativity:
Creative activities and creative thinking can improve mood.
When we consider well-being, we tend to first think of feeling good (and not feeling bad). This is the hedonic aspect of well-being. In a series of studies, Jennifer Drake and her colleagues compared how people who are sad, anxious, or angry feel after they are asked to draw for a while. The researchers found that both children and adults experience less unpleasant emotions when they draw something that is not related to their feelings than when they try to express their feelings through drawing. Drawing can be a way to distract ourselves from unpleasant emotions and provide distance that helps us cope with them.
Another way creativity can help improve our moods is by being a tool for emotion regulation. For us to experience an emotion, it is not enough to encounter a triggering situation. Rather, we attach meaning to our experiences and the resulting interpretations shape how we feel.
Imagine you are taking part in a brainstorming session. You share an idea. But someone else jumps in and takes it in a new direction. What you say to yourself that just happened will determine what you feel. Do you think the person is disrespectful? Or that they got carried away by the excitement of ideas?
Reframing potentially unpleasant experiences is one of the most effective ways of changing what we are feeling. Researchers have found that our ability to creatively think about the meaning of emotionally charged experiences is related to how well we cope with them. In other words, creative thinking can help us actively process emotional situations and find different ways of interpreting them.
Creativity helps us gain meaning in life.
Psychologists distinguish three aspects of our sense of meaning: (1) coherence—understanding our decisions, actions, and their consequences and realizing why our life has evolved in a certain way, (2) purpose—having goals or personal strivings that keep us going, and (3) significance—a sense of one’s life having value and mattering.
Creativity can boost each of these. Expressive writing, for instance, helps us confront and reason about emotionally difficult events. This is likely at the root of the sense of growth that many people describe after traumatic events, such as surviving natural disasters, accidents, assaults, combat, or serious illness. Those who take part in a broad range of creative activities tend to look back at these events and see that they made them stronger.
We can find purpose in personal growth and in specific goal pursuits. Little acts of creativity in our everyday lives, such as original ways of enriching our relationships (e.g., making a birthday card or a funny gift) and creative hobbies (amateur photography or cooking), are a source of new experiences that enhance our sense of personal growth. Also, passion that drives creative individuals pushes them toward long-term goals, makes them determined to persist, and becomes a source of purpose by making people identify with a pursuit (e.g., people don’t think of themselves just as a someone who writes but see themselves as a writer, or scientist, business founder, dancer etc.).
People experience being significant when they accomplish something that goes beyond themselves or something that outlives them. Again, this can be something small, like passing favorite recipes on to subsequent generations in a family, or something bigger, such as creative teachers and mentors influencing students’ lives or medical researchers making incremental improvements in treatment of serious diseases over the course of their work. Both little everyday creativity and professional creativity can contribute to a sense of symbolic immortality, keeping a part of ourselves alive even after we are gone.
Creativity can be a tool for equity.
Traits and abilities that boost creativity also can boost reasoning and action toward achieving greater inclusion and equity. Social interactions and creative work are alike in that they involve much ambiguity. In creative work we often have to make choices and act although we don’t have all the information we want or need (e.g., how critics or audiences going to react to our work).
The same is true when we are trying to relate to others who are in some ways different from us. We might not be clear how to read their expressions or know the intentions behind their words. Those who are more tolerant of ambiguity can accept such uncertainties without having to resort to rigid categorization (e.g., believing that gender is strictly binary) or structures (e.g., planning work in a way that does not allow for reframing the problems and reimagining solutions).
Creativity involves perspective-taking—imagining ourselves in someone else’s shoes in order to better understand how they feel, think, and act. When people are motivated to work on a problem because they are curious and enjoy the challenge, they end up being more creative if they also consider the perspectives of those for whom they are designing solutions. Similarly, perspective-taking is essential in trying to bridge divides and building mutual respect.
In these ways, taking part in creative activities, thinking creatively about everyday situations and problems, and approaching work creatively can both build personal well-being and contribute to greater social well-being.
References
Drake, J. E., & Winner, E. (2012). Confronting sadness through art-making: Distraction is more beneficial than venting. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 6(3), 255–261. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0026909
Forgeard, M. J. C. (2013). Perceiving benefits after adversity: The relationship between self-reported posttraumatic growth and creativity. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 7(3), 245–264. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0031223
Grant, A. M., & Berry, J. W. (2011). The necessity of others is the mother of invention: Intrinsic and prosocial motivations, perspective taking, and creativity. Academy of Management Journal, 54(1), 73–96. https://doi.org/10.5465/AMJ.2011.59215085
Ivcevic, Z. (2007). Artistic and everyday creativity: An act-frequency approach. Journal of Creative Behavior, 41, 271-290. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2162-6057.2007.tb01074.x
Ivcevic, Z., Grossman, E., & Ranjan, A.* (2022). Patterns of psychological vulnerabilities and resources in artists and nonartists. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 16(1), 3–15. https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000309
Ivcevic, Z., Bazhydai, M., Hoffmann, J. D., & Brackett, M. A. (2017). Creativity in the domain of emotions. In J. C. Kaufman, J. Baer, & V. Glaveanu (Eds.), Cambridge Handbook of Creativity Across Different Domains (pp. 525-548). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Kaufman, J. C. (2023). The creativity advantage. Cambridge University Press.
Weber, H., de Assunção, V. L., Martin, C., Westmeyer, H., & Geisler, F. C. (2014). Reappraisal inventiveness: The ability to create different reappraisals of critical situations. Cognition and Emotion, 28(2), 345–360. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2013.832152
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