The effects of shame on creativity

The potentially inhibiting effect of shame, a negative emotion of self-evaluation, on creative cognitive processes was examined in this study. It has been proposed that people with a high level of trait shame may have a tendency to activate, through associational processes, a collection of memories and action plans that are related to shame. Associational processes that are activated by shame also may interfere with and may inhibit the associational processes of creativity. Two hypotheses were tested in this study. The first hypothesis was that shame interferes with the generative processes of identifying and specifying a problem to be solved by inhibiting interest and insight. The second hypothesis was that shame may interfere with the creative processes of exploring a problem, which includes insight and problem redefinition, by influencing associative processes. Also, shame may inhibit creativity by activating negative self evaluations, which divert cognitive resources away from exploratory processes and direct those resources to defending the self.; Paper and pencil tests of cognitive creativity and a test of shame were administered to 142 college students. Female participants scored higher on the internalized shame scale and had a wider variation of scores than did male participants. Thus, the effects of shame on creativity were analyzed separately for male participants and for female participants. People were divided into three groups of low, medium, and high shame for male and for female participants based on scores on the Internalized Shame Scale. Female participants with medium shame performed significantly better than did female participants with low or with high shame on creativity tasks that involve problem identification and specification. Performances on creativity tasks in which exploratory processes were assessed as a function of shame were not significantly different for the shame groups. However, trends in which participants with medium shame performed best on creativity tasks were observed. Shame may affect creative cognitive processes of problem identification and specification by inhibiting problem awareness and by activating defenses against unpleasant emotion.