The FNIRS Study Of Anger Affects Creative Cognitive Processes

In the studies of emotion and creativity,most studies showed that positive emotions enhance creativity,negative emotions hinder creativity(Baas,De Dreu,&Nijstad,2008;Hirt,Devers,and McCrea,2008),but researchers also pointed out that negative emotions improving creative performance(Gasper,2003;Madjar,Oldham,and Pratt,2002),such as promoting the fluency of creativity and creative problem solving(Akinola&Mendes,2008;Gasper,2003)?Ashby and his colleagues(1999)argued that negative effects on cognition are more complex and difficult to predict than positive emotions.Many achievements had been made in the study of negative emotions and creativity.Compare to sadness or fear,researchers focused fewer attention to anger.Moreover,among the studies they prefer to investigate the divergent thinking or creative problem solving.This study focus on the novelty and appropriateness of creativity,investigating the relationship and neural mechanisms between anger and creative cognitive.Both the two experiments use 6 mins' video clips evoking anger emotion and aim to explore the relationship between anger the creative cognition process including creative idea generation and creative evaluation through two experiments.Experiment 1 explores the relationship between anger and creative idea generation.Subjects watch the clam video first and then complete Alternate uses task,when the tasks are completed there was a short break.After the break,subjects watch the anger induced video and complete two AUTs.Results show that novelty under the anger rising,suitability of decline.fNIRS' result shows that there are increased activation of the inferior frontal gyrus,temporal pole,superior temporal gyrus,Middle temporal gyrus,frontal pole and the dorsolateral prefrontal.Compare to the serenity,anger in the idea generation promote the concept of extensions and semantic association,but limited the cognitive control,narrowed the attention and cognition scope,cognitive flexibility,and reduce the inhibition of irrelevant information.Therefore,subjects generate ideas more novel than appropriate.The second experiment explores the relationship between anger and creative evaluation.Experimental procedures similar to experiment 1,subjects view calm video,and complete evaluation tasks as required.After a short-time rest,they watch the angry video and complete assessment tasks.Results showed that under the anger,their novelty show no significant difference between the two moods,but appropriateness performances significantly and show lower with anger mood.fNIRS' result shows that frontal pole and dorsolateral prefrontal are activation increased,middle temporal gyrus and superior temporal gyrus are activation reduced,The increased activation of frontal pole and dorsolateral prefrontal enhance the ability of integrating and processing information,the activation reduction of superior temporal gyrus and temporal lobe impair the information processing,memory and knowledge processing,which is not harmful to idea evaluation creativity.This study shows that the anger acts differently in different stage of cognitive processes;anger reduces the appropriateness in whole creative cognition process and varies in novelty.And anger influences neuroscience mechanism differently in the two stages of creative cognition process.