A Successful Creative Process: The Role of Passion and Emotions

The creative process refers a sequence of thoughts and actions leading to a novel, adaptive production (Lubart, 2000). It demands love, time, and devotion, and, therefore, creators are passionate toward their creative work. The Dualistic Model of Passion (Vallerand et al., 2003) defines passion as a strong inclination for a self-defining activity that people love and find important, and in which they invest a significant amount of time and energy. Two types of passion are proposed, where harmoniously passionate (HP) individuals engage in the passionate activity with free choice, and obsessively passionate (OP) individuals feel an uncontrollable urge to partake in the activity, leading to positive and negative consequences respectively. This research explored the role of emotions and passion during a successful creative process. Study 1 (N = 82) looked at positive emotions experienced by passionate artists at each phase of their creative process. Study 2 (N = 114) replicated Study 1 and also assessed negative emotions. Results revealed that positive emotions facilitate creativity and that moderate and high levels of activation of positive emotions serve different functions. Negative emotions were relatively absent of the successful creative process. Finally, HP artists presented an emotional experience that was more positive than OP artists.