Research indicates that an affective state's valence (positive/negative), orientation (approach/avoidance), and activation level (activated/deactivated) can influence people's ability to make creative associations. Unfortunately, how these features influence associative thought has not been fully tested because researchers typically do not examine deactivated states. In three studies, respondents in either elated (positive, approach, activated), relaxed (positive, avoidance, deactivated), bored (negative, approach, deactivated), or distressed (negative, avoidance, activated) states completed measures of associative thought. Consistent with the orientation hypothesis, respondents in approach-oriented states (elated/bored) performed better on two measures of associative thought than those in avoidance-oriented states (distressed/relaxed). These effects stemmed from the approach states promoting a desire for new experiences, as sensation seeking mediated these results (Study 3). The data indicate that not only can deactivated states alter thought, but their effect depends on whether they are associated with approaching or avoiding new experiences.
People's feelings influence their ability to make creative associations (Ashby et al., 1999 and Baas et al., 2008). A recent meta-analysis on affect and creativity, for instance, identified 102 different effect sizes that examined this issue (Baas et al., 2008). However, very few of these effect sizes focused on how deactivated (low arousal) states, like feeling relaxed or bored, altered the creative process. This oversight is surprising given that relaxation and boredom are key achievement-related emotions (Pekrun, 2006). Additionally, these deactivated affective states play a critical role in testing extant theories for why and how affect influences creative thought. The purpose of this paper is to examine how states that vary in valence, activation, and orientation (specifically, elation, distress, boredom, and relaxation) shape the way that affect alters the process of making novel, broad, unusual, and useful associations between concepts – a key component of creativity (Mednick, Mednick, & Mednick, 1964) – which we refer to as associative thought.
Theories on how affect alters creativity differ in terms of whether they argue that an affective state's valence, activation, or orientation are important. Valence refers to whether the affective state is positive (e.g., elation, happiness, or relaxation) or negative (e.g., distress, sadness, boredom). Activation refers to the degree to which the states produce attention, alertness, and arousal (Baas, De Dreu, & Nijstad, 2011). These two dimensions can be combined to form a circumplex model of affective experience (Russell, 2003), depicted in Fig. 1. The diagonal lines in the circle depict the valence (top left to bottom right) and activation (top right to bottom left) dimensions. Orientation is reflected in the vertical and horizontal dimensions, and it indicates whether the state focuses on approaching rewards or avoiding threats. The placement of the orientation dimension stems from Watson, Wiese, Vaidya, and Tellegen's (1999; see also Remington, Fabrigar, & Visser, 2000) research. They argue that instead of focusing on valence and activation, the circumplex should be turned 45° and focus on positive activation (PA): a state both positive and activated, which indicates an approach orientation; and negative activation (NA): a state both negative and activated, which indicates an avoidance orientation, depicted as the horizontal and vertical axes in Fig. 1 (Watson et al., 1999). PA or approach-oriented states arise when people are focused on whether obtainable rewards are present, which can produce elation (a high PA state), or absent, which can produce boredom (a low PA state).1 NA or avoidance-oriented states arise when people focus on whether threats that should be avoided are present, which can produce distress (a high NA state), or absent, which can produce relaxation (a low NA state). With these definitions in mind, we now discuss how these dimensions may explain the role that affective states play in associative thought.
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Fig. 1.
Three affective dimensions: Valence, orientation, and activation. Adapted from “Toward a Consensual Structure of Mood,” by D. Watson and A. Tellegen, 1985, Psychological Bulletin, 98, p. 221. Copyright 1985 by the American Psychological Association
