Loneliness, Group Relevance, and Creativity

Creative ability;Interpersonal relations;Loneliness

Miller, SamanthaMiron, Anca ;

University of Wisconsin

关键词: Creative ability;    Interpersonal relations;    Loneliness;   

Others  :  https://minds.wisconsin.edu/bitstream/handle/1793/76928/MillerSamantha.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: University of Wisconsin

【 摘 要 】

The main goal of this study was to examine loneliness as an impetus or hindrancefor creativity. In order to do so, loneliness was manipulated. Loneliness was primed byasking participants to visualize themselves as college freshmen, alone in their roomwithout any friends, whereas connectedness was primed by asking participants tovisualize themselves with a supportive friend. Participants were then asked to create aslogan and were informed that they could get money ($25) for creating a creative slogan.Relevance of the creativity outcome was manipulated by asking either what theparticipant would like to spend his or her money on (self-relevance), or to whichorganization he or she would like to donate the money to (group-relevance). It wasassumed that when people are made to feel lonely, they would be more creative, but onlyif they felt that their creativity would not alienate them from a group. Second, if peoplefeel that being creative alienates themselves from a group, they will be less likely toexpress themselves, but only if they feel lonely. It was therefore predicted thatparticipants would be more creative in the group relevance condition than the selfrelevancecondition when they were made to feel lonely because they would want toengage with the group to reconnect to others. Second, it was predicted that participants inthe connectedness condition would not be particularly creative in either the self- or grouprelevance condition due to having their connectedness needs fulfilled, which wouldremove the need to engage with a group and also alleviates feelings of guilt fromattempting individuation. Analyses suggested that loneliness did not have a significanteffect on creativity, while relevance had a marginally significant effect on creativity.Participants in the self-relevant condition tended to produce more creative slogans thanthose in the group-relevance condition. These results go against both hypotheses for thisstudy. A discussion of these effects and ideas for follow-up work are included in thediscussion section.