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Positive affect facilitates creative problem solving.
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Abstract
Four experiments indicated that positive affect, induced by means of seeing a few
minutes of a comedy film or by means of receiving a small bag of candy, improved performance
on two tasks that are generally regarded as requiring creative ingenuity: Duncker's
(1945) candle task and M. T. Mednick, S. A. Mednick, and E. V. Mednick's (1964) Remote
Associates Test. One condition in which negative affect was induced and two in which
subjects engaged in physical exercise (intended to represent affectless arousal) failed
to produce comparable improvements in creative performance. The influence of positive
affect on creativity was discussed in terms of a broader theory of the impact of positive
affect on cognitive organization.