Pleasantness of creative tasks and creative performance

To examine the impact of emotion on creative potential, experimental studies have typically focused on the impact of induced or spontaneous mood states on creative performance. In this report the relationship between the perceived pleasantness of tasks (using divergent thinking and story writing tasks) and creative performance was examined. Overall perceived pleasantness did not differ between tasks. However, results indicate that the perceived pleasantness of the story writing task increased during task completion whereas the perceived pleasantness of divergent thinking tasks remained stable during task performance. The number of generated ideas in a divergent thinking task (fluency) was significantly related to overall perceived pleasantness of the task. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.