The Effects Of Ego Depletion,Emotional Type And Emotional Regulation Strategy On Creativity

Creativity is the source of human civilization,has penetrated into almost every field of our daily life,and plays an important role in every field.Creativity is the most complex psychological activity of human beings and the driving force of social development.Self-control is also one of the most important qualities people need to succeed,but it depends on the depletion of limited resources and does not work all the time.After using self-control,people will feel a state of energy consumption,which is called ego depletion.The purpose of this study is to determine how this state of ego depletion affects creativity.In this study,three experiments were conducted to explore the effects of ego depletion,emotional type and emotional regulation strategy on creativity.Experiment 1 explored the effect of ego depletion on different insight problems.In experiment 1,college students and graduate students were recruited online,and 101 pieces of valid data were obtained.They were randomly assigned to the ego-depletion group and the control group,with 47 participants in the ego-depletion group and 54 participants in the control group.The results showed that:(1)The classical insight problem score of the ego-depletion group was significantly higher than that of the control group.(2)The matchstick arithmetic problem score of the ego-depletion group was significantly higher than that of the control group.(3)After the ego-depletion manipulation,the scores of mental demand,effort and frustration of cognitive load indexes were significantly higher in the ego-depletion group than in the control group,There was no significant difference in the scores of physical demand,temporal demand and performance in cognitive load indexes between the ego-depletion group and the control group.(4)After the completion of the creative task,the scores of temporal demand and frustration of cognitive load indexes were significantly higher in the control group than in the ego-depletion group,There was no significant difference in the scores of mental demand,physical demand,performance and effort of cognitive load indexes between the ego-depletion group and the control group.Experiment 2 explored the effects of ego depletion and emotional type on creative tasks.Experiment 2 adopted the experimental design of 2(self-loss:ego depletion group,control group)×3(emotional type:positive,neutral,negative).College students and graduate students were recruited online and 115 pieces of valid data were obtained.They were randomly assigned to 6 groups.The results showed that:(1)The main effect of ego depletion was significant in the score of classic insight problem,and the depletion group was significantly higher than the control group,The main effect of emotional type was not significant and different emotional type had no significant effect on the score of classical insight problem,The interaction between ego depletion and emotional type is not significant.(2)The main effect of ego depletion was significant in the score of matchstick arithmetic problem,and the depletion group was significantly higher than the control group,The main effect of emotional type was not significant,and different emotional type had no significant effect on the score of matchstick arithmetic problem,The interaction between ego depletion and emotional type was not significant.Experiment 3 explored the effects of ego depletion and emotional regulation strategy on creative tasks.Experiment 3 adopted the experimental design of 2(ego depletion:ego-depletion group,control group)×3(emotional regulation strategy:just view group,positive reappraisal-expressive suppression group,detached reappraisal-expressive suppression group),through online recruitment to undergraduate and postgraduate subjects,the effective data is 132.They were randomly assigned to 6 groups.The results showed that:(1)The main effect of ego depletion was significant in the score of classic insight problem,and the depletion group was significantly higher than the control group,The main effect of emotional regulation strategy was significant,The detached reappraisal-expressive suppression group scored the highest on the classic insight problem,followed by the just view group,and the positive reappraisal-expressive suppression group scored the lowest,The interaction between ego depletion and emotional regulation strategy was not significant.(2)The main effect of ego depletion was significant in the score of matchstick arithmetic problem,and the depletion group was significantly higher than the control group,The main effect of emotional regulation strategy was not significant,The interaction between ego depletion and emotional regulation strategy was not significant.Conclusions of this study:Experiment 1 showed that ego depletion increases creativity and consumes cognitive resources.Specifically,to improve classical insight problem solving and matchstick arithmetic problem solving,it showed that the effect of ego depletion on the two types of insight problems is the same.Experiment 2 showed that different emotional type had no significant effect on creativity.Experiment 3 showed that emotional regulation strategy affects creativity,Specifically,the main effect of emotional regulation strategy was significant in the score of classic insight problem,the main effect of emotional regulation strategy was not significant in the score of matchstick arithmetic problem.