A study has proven that everyday creativity helps to increase happiness by producing an upward wellbeing spiral. For the study, 658 university students were instructed to keep an everyday journal for 13 days of their experiences in addition to their emotional states.1✅ JOURNAL REFERENCE
DOI: 10.1080/17439760.2016.1257049
A pattern was discovered after analyzing the journals, the individuals were more enthusiastic and higher “flourishing” was experienced than usual immediately following the days that were “more creative”. Flourishing is a psychological notion that’s best identified as the increase in the positive growth of an individual.
Even though the individuals were not asked to precisely record the kind of creative activity, such information had been obtained in an earlier study. The most typical kinds of creativity documented by the individuals were:
- Knitting and crocheting
- Musical performance
- Graphic and digital design
- Painting, drawing, and sketching
- Making new recipes
- Song writing
- Creative short fiction and poetry writing
The researchers wished to assess if individuals felt emotionally better after having partaken in everyday creative activities. There’s growing proof that creativity is associated with emotional functioning. Most of these studies are however aimed at how emotions limit or help creativity as opposed to whether creativity limits helps or emotional wellbeing.
“Positive affect” includes feelings such as joy, enthusiasm, pleasurable engagement, excitement, and happiness. It was found that positive affect on a specific day did not predict creative activity on the following day.
Previous studies have revealed that positive affect increases creativity throughout the same day, but these study results indicate that there isn’t any cross-day effect. It’s actually the preceding day’s creative activity which predicts the following day’s wellbeing.
After considering next-day creative activity, flourishing and energized positive affect was still significantly predicted by the creativity of the preceding day. This result indicates a specific kind of upward spiral for creativity and wellbeing.
An increase in wellbeing the following day is triggered from participating in creative activities, and this wellbeing increase will likely help increase creative activity on that day.
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