John OMalley

BLEDOW, R., ROSING, K., & FRESE, M. (2013). A DYNAMIC PERSPECTIVE ON AFFECT
AND CREATIVITY. Academy Of Management Journal, 56(2), 432-450.
doi:10.5465/amj.2010.0894

Introduction:
In the study titled A Dynamic Perspective on Affect and Creativity from the Academy
of Management Journal, the authors discuss the role positive and negative affect have on
creativity. The topic of creativity is significant because creativity is a critical function in the
human adaptation process and, given the complexity of todays organizations, a thorough
understanding of how creativity can be stimulated is crucial for effective managerial practices.
Creativity is one of the most complex mental functions, and the researchers argue that creativity
draws from the whole spectrum of affective experiences, both negative and positive, as well as
the cognitive processes they elicit. To illustrate their point, the researchers use the analogy of the
phoenix, a mythological bird that burns to ashes and subsequently resurrects from its own ashes
to once again become a colorful bird- repeating this cycle over and over again. Just as the
phoenixs rebirth is dependent on a preceding phase of decline, the authors argue that the
emergence of new ideas is often proceeded by a phase of negative affect (the burning to ashes),
which is subsequently left behind as the person attempts to and eventually achieves a state of
positive affect (the rising from the ashes), ultimately leading to the creation of new ideas. In this
study, the researchers examined the relationship between creativity and the dynamic interplay of
positive and negative affect, seeking to answer the question of whether or not a state of negative
affect, followed by a transition to a state of positive affect, leads to increased creativity and the
formation of new ideas. This question is important because if managers can develop a more
insightful understanding as to the role both positive and negative affect have on creativity, it will
allow them to make decisions that benefit both their employees and their organization as a
whole, potentially leading to increases in production, the creation and free flow of new ideas, and
the relative level of job satisfaction.

Method:
In order to test the relationship the dynamic interplay of positive and negative affect had
on creativity, the researchers conducted two studies. In the first study, the researchers began by
working with a group of students to create a list of professionals across a variety of industries
that held jobs that demanded creativity. Of these different fields, the most frequent were
business, psychology, engineering, and teaching. The average age of the participants was 34,
42% of which were women and 58% of which were men. Data collection for this study was
divided into two parts. For the first part, the participants filled out a questionnaire that measured
personal characteristics and control variables, including: age, gender, education level, and
organizational size. For the second part of data collection, as participants were asked to complete
a short online survey both in the morning before work and at the end of the workday in order to
measure both positive and negative affect and creativity. Positive and negative affect were
measured as mental states using the PANAS inventory, originally created by Watson, Clark, and
Tellegen in 1988 (Bledow, Rosing & Frese, 2013, 437). Positive affect was measured using six
items: excited, interested, strong, active, inspired, and alert. Negative affect was measured using
seven items: scared, guilty distressed, afraid, nervous, hostile, upset, and angry. For the morning
survey, participants were asked to indicate their state for each category of positive and negative
affect using a five-point scale (1 = not at all, 5 = extremely). For the end of the day survey,
participants responded using the same categories of positive and negative affect, this time,
indicating how they felt, on average, during the workday. Additionally, for the end of day survey,
participants reported their level of creativity for that workday. Creativity was measured on a
similar five-point scale using five measurements originally developed by Tierney, Farmer, and
Graen in 1999 (Bledow, Rosing & Frese, 2013, 439), and included items such as: Today, I

generated novel, but operable work-related ideas and Today, I served as a good role model for
creativity.
The second study was conducted in order to address the limitations of the first study, and,
unlike the first study, was done in a controlled laboratory setting. For this study, eighty masters
students of psychology were studied, 75% of which were female. The experiment was
administered in group sessions with ten participants. In each group, the participants were
randomly assigned to either the experimental or control condition. Participants were then asked
to participate in three independent, paper-and-pencil tasks for about eight minutes each. The first
two tasks were about autobiographical memory and the third task involved brainstorming. For
the experimental condition, participants were first asked to write a short essay about a situation
that made them feel afraid, distressed, or nervous, using as much detail as possible to describe
their feelings. For the control condition, participants were asked to write down in detail their
activities from the previous day. They were then asked to rate how negative and positive the
activities made them feel using two five-point rating scales. The next task was the same for both
conditions. The participants were then asked to write a short essay about a situation that made
them feel happy, inspired, or enthusiastic, again using as much detail as possible. Once again, the
participants were asked to rate how negative or positive they felt using two five-point rating
scales. For the final task, participants were asked to write down in bullet points as many ideas,
solutions, or suggestions they could come up with on how to improve teaching at their university.
Their ideas were then measured using three different dependent scales: originality, creative
fluency, and cognitive flexibility. There results were measured by two raters, who were blind to
experimental conditions, and used a seven-point scale (1 = not original at all, 7 = very
original.)

Results:
In the first study, the researchers believed that an initial state of negative affect would
moderate the relation between positive affect and creativity. This interaction in shifting from
negative to positive affect proved to be significant, as the results showed that the highest levels
of creativity resulted if feelings of negative affect in the morning were followed by both a
decrease in negative affect and an increase in positive affect during the day. This was in line with
expectations, as the sequence of negative affect in the morning of a workday followed by
positive affect during the day proved to correlate most positively with creativity (0.33). At the
same time, there was also a positive correlation between participants who had reported feeling
moderately positive affect at both the beginning and end of the day, level of creativity (.30),
although it was slightly less.
In the second study, the results were once again true to expectations, as participants in the
experimental condition, in which a shift from negative to positive affect was induced, showed
higher levels of originality, cognitive flexibility, and creative fluency compared to participants in
the control condition. In the originality dimension, participants in the experimental condition had
an average score of 4.12 (out of 7), while participants in the control condition had an average
score of 3.53. In the cognitive flexibility dimension, participants in the experimental condition
had an average score of 3.48 (out of 7), while participants in the control condition had an average
score of 2.87. Finally, in the creative fluency dimension, participants in the experimental
condition had an average score of 9.19 (out of 10), while participants in the control condition had
an average score of 8.79. These results gave further credibility to the researchers belief that a
combination of and interplay between both negative and positive affect would have the greatest
positive effect on creativity.

Interpretation:
From these results, we can conclude that feelings of positive and negative affect, both
separately and jointly, play a huge role in the creative process. While past evidence has
consistently shown a relationship between positive affect and creativity, this study was unique in
that it also addressed the role negative affect has in the creative process. The study showed that,
while yes, positive affect does lead to increased creativity, there was an even greater increase in
the level of creativity exhibited by the participants when they had feelings of negative affect,
followed by positive affect, giving evidence that the dynamic relationship between both positive
and negative affects has a greater influence on creativity than just positive affect.
In the first study, there were two main limitations. The first is that plausible alternative
explanations cannot be ruled out for the increase in the participants creativity. The second
limitation is that only overall change in affect and its relation to the overall level of creativity
were studied over the course of a day, however, during a typical day, there are many short-term
changes in affect and varying levels of creativity. Another potential methodological limitation
occurred in the first study when the participants used self-report measures to assess their
creativity levels. While this may be a potential limitation, the researchers argued that selfreporting was actually the most valid means of measurement for a persons creativity, due to the
fact that ideas that were developed by the participants may not always have been expressed to
others or implemented the same day they were thought of, meaning that creativity on a given day
is not easily observed by others or reflected by objective outcomes. At the same time, both
studies were limited in that the researchers did not measure the cognitive processes that link
changes in affect to creativity. More specifically, this means that the researches did not determine

the extent to which the information people processed during the negative affect part of the study
influenced subsequent levels of creativity.
Some questions left unanswered by the researchers included: what other mental
functions, besides creativity, were either improved or hindered by the shift from negative to
positive affect? And what role does the level of information processed have on the transition
from negative to positive affect, and in turn levels of creativity? These questions leave the topic
open for future researchers to discuss.

Implications:
These findings relate to the real world because if managers are able to develop an indepth understanding into the role positive affect and negative affect have on creativity, it will
allow them to make decisions that are to the benefit of both their employees and the organization
as a whole, as employees with higher levels of creativity are going to be more productive than
those with lower levels of creativity. While making organizational decisions, the researchers
recommend that people should not view negative and positive affect as two sides of one
dimension, but rather as two separate dimensions. They argue that a one-sided focus on positive
affect is insufficient for leaders who intend to increase creativity, and leaders will be more
effective in stimulating creativity if they understand the influence of the dynamic interplay of
positive and negative affect. This means that manager should not only focus on ways to increase
feelings of positive affect, but, when appropriate, feelings of positive affect in order to stimulate
creativity as well. While they caution that inducing too much negative affect may not lead to an
increase in creativity from all employees, the results of these studies indicate that a balance
between both positive and negative has the greatest positive influence on creativity. Truly,

creativity draws from all dimensions of activity and only when managers have developed a
thorough understanding of both these dimensions and the mechanics that cause them can they
come close to maximizing employee creativity.