Creativity Research Journal

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Creativity on Tap? The Effect of Creativity Anxiety

Under Evaluative Pressure

A. Bullock Muir, B. Tribe & S. Forster

To cite this article: A. Bullock Muir, B. Tribe & S. Forster (26 Mar 2024): Creativity on Tap?
The Effect of Creativity Anxiety Under Evaluative Pressure, Creativity Research Journal, DOI:
10.1080/10400419.2024.2330800

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2024.2330800

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Published online: 26 Mar 2024.

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CREATIVITY RESEARCH JOURNAL
https://doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2024.2330800

Creativity on Tap? The Effect of Creativity Anxiety Under Evaluative Pressure

A. Bullock Muir, B. Tribe, and S. Forster
University of Sussex

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Creative achievement is critical for education, work and wider society. Creativity anxiety – Received June 2, 2023
a distinct, generalizable form of anxiety that emerges at the prospect of having to be
creative – is a newly established trait that varies between individuals and has been linked to
lower creative achievement. This study tested the interaction between trait creativity
anxiety and creative evaluative pressure on a well-established objective measure linked to
creative ability – semantic distance. Participants performed a word association task under
two instruction conditions designed to manipulate creative evaluative pressure. Participants
were first instructed to respond with the first word that came to mind, before repeating the
task with the added information that the task was measuring creativity. The results revealed
that creative pressure increased semantic distance between cues and responses, similar to
the established “be creative” effect. Critically, this “be creative” effect was reduced among
participants with higher levels of creativity anxiety. The findings are hence consistent with
the proposal that creativity anxiety hinders people’s ability to think creatively on demand.
These findings will guide further research on creativity anxiety and inform intervention
strategies to unlock people’s creative potential.

Creativity, defined as the production of novel and Creative pressure – a help or hindrance to
useful ideas to solve problems (Guilford, 1967), plays creativity?
a critical role in education, work, and wider society.
Creative abilities have consistently been found to pre­ Some forms of creative pressure appear to boost crea­
dict academic achievement (Gajda, Karwowski, & tivity. For example, it is well-established that instructing
Beghetto, 2017) and are highly valued across a wide people to “be creative” – which arguably exerts some
range of fields (World Economic Forum, 2016), from level of creative pressure – generally boosts creativity,
the arts to science, technology, engineering, and with this effect having been demonstrated across a wide
mathematics (STEM), where innovation is essential to range of objective and subjective creativity measures
drive progress (Daker, Cortes, Lyons, & Green, 2020). (see Said-Metwaly, Van Den Noortgate, & Kyndt,
As well as entrepreneurial activities, creativity plays 2017, for meta-analysis). While it is unclear to what
a role in long-term economic growth (Amabile, 1997; extent this effect reflects a beneficial impact of pressure,
Simonton, 1998). as opposed to other factors such as simply guiding
A large body of literature has been dedicated to under­ participants toward a particular type of response, the
standing what drives creativity and the barriers that pre­ “be creative” effect nevertheless suggests that people
vent people from achieving their full creative potential – generally find it possible to access creativity on demand.
from genetics (Kéri, 2009), brain structure (Chen et al., On the other hand, studies examining the effects of
2018) and personality (Hoseinifar et al., 2011) to mood various other forms of pressure (e.g., time limits, eva­
(Baas, De Dreu, & Nijstad, 2008), social labeling (Agogué luative pressure, competition) on creativity have pro­
& Parguel, 2020) and rewards (Zhou, Oldham, Chuang, duced more mixed results (see Byron, Khazanchi, &
& Hsu, 2022). A particular focus has been on the impact Nazarian, 2010, for meta-analysis). As noted by Byron,
of creative pressure on creativity, since many real-world Khazanchi, and Nazarian (2010), the perception of pres­
forms of creative achievement are contingent on the sure is rather subjective – what may be perceived as
ability to be creative on demand. In other words, creativ­ a motivating challenge to one person may be an anxiety-
ity may not translate to creative achievement without the provoking threat to another – and as such the mixed
ability to access this creativity “on tap.” findings may reflect individual differences. Byron,

CONTACT S. Forster [email protected] School of Psychology, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9RH, UK
© 2024 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use,
distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted
Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
2 A. BULLOCK MUIR ET AL.

Khazanchi, and Nazarian’s (2010) meta-analysis disciplines (Daker, Cortes, Lyons, & Green, 2020;
included consideration of nine studies (including sev­ UNESCO, 2017).
eral unpublished doctoral theses) that considered the The construct of creativity anxiety in some way par­
impact of individual differences in general anxiety or allels the more well-established construct of math anxi­
test anxiety, but again the picture here is rather mixed. ety – another specific, distinct form of anxiety – which
Byron, Khazanchi, and Nazarian (2010) found that sig­ has been associated with underperformance in math-
nificant beneficial effects of creative pressure were lim­ related tasks (Dowker, Sarkar, & Looi, 2016; Zhang,
ited to low anxious participants, while effects among Zhao, & Kong, 2019). The extensive research around
high anxious participants were non-significant. math anxiety has enabled the development of interven­
Moreover, several direct tests failed to find significant tions to help individuals perform at their full potential
interaction between anxiety and experimental manipu­ in math-related tasks (Jamieson, Mendes, Blackstock, &
lations of creative pressure (e.g., Matthews, 1986; Schmader, 2010; Park, Ramirez, & Beilock, 2014). As
Trentham, 1979). The present research examined such, understanding how and when creativity anxiety
whether the mixed findings regarding creative pressure impacts creative thinking promises to inform interven­
may, instead, be moderated by a recently identified and tion strategies to alleviate such anxiety and unlock peo­
more specific form of anxiety: creativity anxiety (Daker, ple’s creative potential for the benefit of individuals,
Cortes, Lyons, & Green, 2020). organizations, the economy and wider society.
To further this aim, the present study tested the
hypothesis that creativity anxiety could serve as an
The potential role of creativity anxiety important hidden moderator of the effects of creative
pressure on the ability to think creatively. As creativity
Creativity anxiety – anxiety that emerges at the prospect anxiety appears likely to be activated when an individual
of having to be creative – has recently been established feels under pressure to be creative, it could plausibly
as a distinct, generalizable form of anxiety about explain inconsistencies within the literature around the
a particular way of thinking that is unrelated to the non- effects of creative pressure on creativity. Creativity anxi­
creative demands of a situation (Daker, Cortes, Lyons, & ety might make it more likely that creative pressure
Green, 2020). Daker, Cortes, Lyons, and Green (2020) would be appraised as a resource depleting stressor,
developed a Creativity Anxiety Scale (CAS) and con­ rather than a motivating challenge (e.g., see Blascovich
firmed its validity as a measure of creativity anxiety & Tomaka, 1996; Blascovich, Seery, Mugridge, Norris, &
through online and in-lab experiments using a series Weisbuch, 2004; Byron, Khazanchi, & Nazarian, 2010;
of established self-report questionnaires related to the Liu, Li, Taris, & Peeters, 2022).
construct. Daker, Cortes, Lyons, and Green (2020) The present study therefore examined whether crea­
demonstrated that creativity anxiety manifests in multi­ tivity anxiety (measured using the CAS) moderates the
ple fields, including math and science as well as more effect of creative pressure on a key aspect of creativity:
conventionally creative domains such as art and music. associative thinking. Specifically, we used a well-
Critically, Daker, Cortes, Lyons, and Green (2020) established objective measure of associative abilities,
found that creativity anxiety correlated with lower self- applying latent semantic analysis (LSA) to calculate
reported creative achievement over and above the semantic distance values in a word association task
effects of general anxiety, concluding that creativity (WAT) in which participants were asked to respond to
anxiety hinders creative achievement. A subsequent a series of cues with the first words that came to mind.
study by Shimizu, Yomogida, Shijun, and Okada
(2021) provided further, albeit indirect, support for
this conclusion using an objective measure of creativity.
Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA)
Using the Unusual Uses Test, they demonstrated the
cooccurrence of increased creative performance and The use of LSA in creativity research is rooted in
decreased creativity anxiety following a year-long pro­ Mednick’s (1962) associative theory of creativity,
gram aimed at fostering creativity through art. Notably, which proposed that individuals’ ability to make con­
Daker, Cortes, Lyons, and Green (2020) observed that nections between remote concepts that can be combined
creativity anxiety is more common in women than to produce novel ideas is determined by the underlying
men – as is the case for generalized anxiety disorder structure of their semantic knowledge. Individuals with
(Hantsoo & Epperson, 2017). On this basis, it has been flat associative hierarchies are argued to have many
posited as a possible explanation for the underrepresen­ weak associations between concepts enabling them to
tation of women in STEM higher education and make more remote connections and, therefore, think
 CREATIVITY RESEARCH JOURNAL 3

more creatively. In contrast, individuals with steep asso­ manipulation of evaluative creative pressure. In the
ciative hierarchies have fewer, more common associa­ first condition, participants were instructed to
tions that dominate their thought processes and impede respond to each cue with the first word that came to
them from making new connections. High semantic mind. In the second condition, participants were
distance values are considered to represent Mednick’s given the same instruction and told that the task was
(1962) flat associative hierarchies, signifying a loosely designed to measure their creativity. This manipula­
structured knowledge base. tion is similar to the established “be creative” manip­
LSA has been applied to a range of creative tasks, ulation, with the slight change of focus on the
including WATs, as an objective assessment of associa­ knowledge that creativity is being evaluated rather
tive ability (Beaty, Silvia, Nusbaum, Jauk, & Benedek, than a direct instruction to be creative. In this respect,
2014; Green, Fugelsang, & Dunbar, 2006; Prabhakaran, it parallels the form of creative pressure that may be
Green, & Gray, 2014; see; Kenett, 2019, for a recent experienced in many real-world contexts in which
review of LSA-based semantic distance measures in creativity “on demand” may be advantageous (e.g., in
creativity research). Participants typically produce the workplace).
words with increased semantic distance under the Using this approach, we sought to test whether crea­
instruction to be creative (Heinen & Johnson, 2018; tivity anxiety would moderate the effects of creative
Prabhakaran, Green, & Gray, 2014). Consistent with pressure. Specifically, we expected that the effects of
the proposed role of semantic memory structure in creative pressure would be less beneficial for individuals
creativity, semantic distance correlates with a wide with higher levels of creativity anxiety, resulting in
range of other creativity measures (Beaty & Johnson, a reduced ability to access creativity on demand.
2021; Heinen & Johnson, 2018; Johnson, Cuthbert, & Across participants, our manipulation of creative pres­
Tynan, 2021; Prabhakaran, Green, & Gray, 2014). For sure was expected to increase the semantic distance
example, Heinen and Johnson (2018) found that the between cues and responses, in line with the established
semantic distance of words produced in a WAT corre­ “be creative” effect (see Said-Metwaly, Van Den
lated with the subjectively rated creativity of these Noortgate, & Kyndt, 2017, for meta-analysis, and;
words, while Prabhakaran, Green, and Gray (2014) Heinen & Johnson, 2018, for an example using
found a strong relationship between semantic distance a WAT). Critically, however, this increase was predicted
and a battery of verbal, nonverbal and achievement- to be smaller among participants who exhibit high levels
based creativity measures. We note that the latter find­ of creativity anxiety compared to low levels of creativity
ings were observed in the context of WAT instructions anxiety.
that encouraged creativity, arguably inducing a form of
creative pressure. However, a relationship between
semantic distance and other creativity measures has Materials and method
been demonstrated even in the absence of any creativity
Participants
instruction. Using a WAT in which participants were
instructed to simply say aloud the first word that came All native or fluent English speakers, participants’
to mind, White and Shah (2016) found that semantic reported ages1 ranged from 19 to 40 (M = 31.09,
distance statistically mediated the increased flexibility SD = 5.02). Participation was incentivized through
shown by adults with ADHD on a realistic creativity entry into a prize draw to win a £25 voucher. An
task (generating innovative new features for a cell initial sample of 108 participants was recruited from
phone). Semantic distance measured in the absence of the general population through social media plat­
creativity instructions can hence be considered as forms. The sample size was determined by the num­
a measure of creative potential. The ability of WATs to ber of responses it was possible to collect within
objectively measure this aspect of creative thinking in a two-month period that the study was live, with the
the absence of any implied creative pressure is advanta­ intention of achieving a minimum final sample size of
geous for the present research aims, in terms of facil­ 100, which would provide adequate power (>80%) to
itating experimental manipulation of creative pressure. detect small-medium between subject correlations
(>.275). Following the removal of data from three
participants who reported that they were only “some­
The present study
what fluent” in English and two that were classed at
In the present study, a WAT closely based on that outliers due to their task scores, the final sample
used by White and Shah (2016) was completed under included 103 participants (37 self-identified as male,
two conditions designed to produce a subtle 65 female, 1 another gender). This research received
4 A. BULLOCK MUIR ET AL.

ethical approval from the University of Sussex School demands of the situations in the CA items, e.g. “Having
of Psychology Ethics Committee (ethical approval to solve a problem in the exact way you were taught to
number ER/AB2204/1). do so” and “Having to precisely follow an established
method of doing something.” Participants are asked to
rate how much each situation (both CA and NAC items)
Procedure and materials
would make them feel anxious, on a five point scale
An online study was created using Qualtrics and dis­ ranging between “not at all” and “very much.” Two
tributed to participants via a link shared on social mind wandering scales were also included for explora­
media. Participants completed the study remotely tory purposes; however, these were not the focus of this
using personal devices. Participants first completed project and have not been analyzed at the time of
a word association task (WAT) under two conditions writing.
administered in a fixed sequential order, during which
they were presented with a series of cue words, one at
Word association task pre-processing
a time. In the first task (general condition), participants
received the following instruction: “Please type in the The semantic distance between the cue words and
first word you think of in response to each word as soon responses was calculated using latent semantic analysis
as it comes to your mind without giving it much (LSA) (Deerwester, Dumais, Furnas, Landauer, &
thought.” In the second task (creative pressure condi­ Harshman, 1990). The English LSA space, comprising
tion), the instruction was to: “Please type in the first documents from the British National Corpus, ukWaC
word you think of in response to each word as soon as it corpus and a 2009 Wikipedia download, was utilized
comes to your mind without giving it much thought. through the R package `LSAfun` (Günther, Dudschig, &
This task is designed to measure your creativity.” The Kaup, 2015). This enables similarity comparisons
general task was presented first for all participants to between words, as described by Günther, Dudschig,
prevent any carryover effect from the creative pressure and Kaup (2015). Prior to analysis, unambiguous spel­
instruction. However, within condition randomization ling mistakes were first corrected: for example, where
of cue presentation order was employed to counterba­ the response to the cue “vegetable” was “carrott,” it was
lance and reduce order effects. Each word remained on accepted as “carrot.” Abbreviations were translated to
screen until the participant had typed their response. their full form: for example, “uncomfy” was accepted as
Each task condition included a distinct set of 25 cue “uncomfortable” as a response to the cue “jeans.” Multi-
words. These were all nouns selected at random from word responses were excluded unless they included
the Oxford 3000 word list, which was filtered to include a noun: for example, “going out” was excluded as
only words that were CEFR level A1. The top 1000 most a response for the cue “dress,” while “my partner” was
frequent words – as set out by Education First – were accepted as “partner” as a response to the cue “boy­
excluded from the sample, on the basis that these might friend.” All other responses that were not included in
be too familiar to participants and therefore produce the English LSA Space were deemed invalid and
dominant responses (for similar practice, see excluded. Semantic distance values were calculated by
Fitzpatrick, Playfoot, Wray, & Wright, 2015). To further subtracting all cosine values from 1 to provide a score
minimize differences in the parameters of each word between 0 and 1. The mean distance between cue words
list, the mean and standard deviation of cue word length and responses in each task was then calculated for each
was matched across conditions (M = 5, SD = 2). participant.
Together these criteria ensured that, as far as possible,
the semantic distance between cues and responses could
Results
be attributed to the instruction rather than the words.
Following the WAT, participants completed the Data can be downloaded from: https://osf.io/rkpe5/?
Creativity Anxiety Scale established and tested by view_only=2467b674ce6e4573be25c8b35d17f566.
Daker, Cortes, Lyons, and Green (2020). This measure To test for an interactive effect of creativity anxiety
includes eight items specific to creativity anxiety (CA): and instruction on semantic distance, a linear mixed
for example, “Having to come up with a creative solu­ effects model was fitted using the `lme4` package
tion to a problem” and “Having to come up with (Bates, Mächler, Bolker, & Walker, 2015) in R (R core
a unique way of doing something,” as well as eight non- team, 2021). The model was specified including seman­
creativity anxiety control (NAC) items. The latter items tic distance scores as the dependent variable with fixed
were included in Daker, Cortes, Lyons, and Green effects of creativity anxiety, instruction and their inter­
(2020) scale to control for anxiety about the noncreative action, and participant as a random effect. Diagnostic
 CREATIVITY RESEARCH JOURNAL 5

plots obtained using the `check_model` function from interaction. The conditional R2 of 0.662 indicates that
the `performance` package (Lüdecke, Ben-Shachar, 66.2% of variance in semantic distance scores is
Patil, Waggoner, & Makowski, 2021) indicated the pre­ explained when including a random intercept for
sence of heteroskedasticity, so a robust version was participant.
fitted using the `rlmer` function from the `robustlmm` Note that no significant correlation was observed
package (Koller, 2016) using design adaptive scale between the creativity anxiety scale and scores on the
(DAStau) estimation. The results are reported in stan­ non-creativity anxiety control items (NAC), r = .016,
dardized units. n = 103, p = .877, suggesting that the above effects are
Overall, participants produced more semantically specific to creativity anxiety rather than being more
distant responses following the creative pressure general effects of anxiety. Indeed, repeating the above
instructions (M = 0.62, SD = 0.052), compared to gen­ linear mixed effects model including NAC rather than
eral instructions (M = 0.545, SD = 0.064) and this main creativity anxiety as a fixed effect revealed no significant
effect of instruction was significant (β = −1.086, effect of NAC, β = 0.095, SE = 0.084, 95% CI [−0.070,
SE = 0.083, 95% CI [−1.249, −0.924], t = −13.09, 0.260], t = 1.13, p = .258, nor an interaction effect
p < .001). This supported the prediction that, on aver­ between NAC and instruction condition, β = 0.069,
age, creative pressure boosts creativity. SE = 0.085, 95% CI [−0.098, 0.236], t = 0.81, p = .420.
There was no main effect of creativity anxiety,
β = −0.097, SE = 0.084, 95% CI [−0.262, 0.068],
Discussion
t = −1.15, p = .249. Critically, however, there was
a significant interaction between instruction and crea­ The present data suggests that, in general, subtle creative
tivity anxiety, β = 0.205, SE = 0.083, 95% CI [0.042, evaluative pressure is beneficial for creativity – as
0.368], t = 2.47, p = .014. As can be seen in Figure 1, reflected in increased semantic distance between cues
the pattern of data underlying this interaction was in and responses in response to the knowledge that the task
line with our hypotheses – as creativity anxiety was measuring creativity. This finding suggests that,
increased, the beneficial impact of creative pressure on although we didn’t explicitly instruct participants to be
creativity (as indexed by semantic distance) decreased. creative, the knowledge that the task was measuring
Fit statistics were obtained using the `tab_model` func­ creativity was sufficient to induce effects comparable
tion from the `sjPlot` package (Lüdecke, 2020). The to the well-established “be creative” effect (see Said-
marginal R2 was 0.308, indicating that 30.8% of variance Metwaly, Van Den Noortgate, & Kyndt, 2017, for meta-
in semantic distance scores is accounted for by the fixed analysis and; Heinen & Johnson, 2018, for a prior
effects of creativity anxiety, instruction and their demonstration using the semantic distance measure).

Figure 1. The relationship between creativity anxiety and the impact of creative pressure (semantic distance in creative pressure
condition minus general condition).
6 A. BULLOCK MUIR ET AL.

Critically, however, the extent of this benefit was sig­ mediating the translation of creative potential to crea­
nificantly moderated by creativity anxiety – the increase tive performance. For example, two recent large sample
in semantic distance was smaller among participants studies in adolescents have pointed to a key role of
who exhibit high levels of creativity anxiety compared creative metacognitive ability, demonstrated via con­
to those with low levels of creativity anxiety. The present structive post-task improvement-focused reflection, in
findings point to a potential explanation for some of the predicting creative performance (Anderson & Haney,
inconsistencies in the literature around the effect of 2021; Zielińska, Lebuda, Ivcevic, & Karwowski, 2022). It
creative pressure on creative performance (see Byron, is interesting to consider how creativity anxiety might
Khazanchi, & Nazarian, 2010, for a review), highlighting correlate with these other tendencies. For example, one
the recently identified trait of creativity anxiety as an might speculate that creativity anxiety could hinder the
important hidden moderator variable. Importantly, this ability to constructively reflect on one’s creative output
effect appeared specific to creativity anxiety – differ­ or, conversely, the ability to learn from past experience
ences in more general anxiety about non-creative could reduce creativity anxiety. A useful direction for
aspects of task performance did not modulate the future research will be to elucidate the relationship of
impact of creative pressure or predict creative perfor­ creativity anxiety to creative self-regulation, in particu­
mance. The pattern of our data is consistent with the lar creative metacognition. For example, given our
proposal that our manipulation, designed to parallel demonstrated sensitivity of creativity anxiety to evalua­
subtle forms of real-world creative pressure, was experi­ tive pressure, it would be informative to test how such
enced differently by participants with varying levels of a manipulation impacts post-task reflection.
creativity anxiety. Those low in creativity anxiety There are some limitations to this study that should
appeared able to make positive use of the knowledge be considered. Firstly, the two conditions of the word
that creativity was being assessed – perhaps simply association task were presented in sequential order, with
adapting their approach to produce appropriate the general condition completed first and the creative
responses, or even experiencing the mild pressure as pressure condition completed second by all participants.
a motivating challenge (see Byron, Khazanchi, & This is consistent with common practice in the field
Nazarian, 2010). On the other hand, those with higher (e.g., Heinen & Johnson, 2018) and is necessary in
levels of trait creativity anxiety may have experienced order to avoid any carryover effects from the creative
the knowledge that their creativity was being assessed as pressure condition. However, we cannot rule out the
a threat, undermining their ability to make constructive possibility that the observed within subject effect of
use of this information. instruction condition and its interaction with creativity
The present findings hence provide further support anxiety might also be influenced by order effects (e.g.,
for Daker, Cortes, Lyons, and Green (2020) proposal of practice or boredom; see Barbot, 2019, for a discussion
creativity anxiety as an important predictor of both of the challenges of these common methodological chal­
creativity and the effectiveness of interventions lenges in measuring creativity change). We nevertheless
intended to enhance it. Interestingly, using the self- reason that the proposed effects of creative pressure
report Creativity Self-Efficacy Scale, Daker, Cortes, appear the most plausible interpretation of the key
Lyons, and Green (2020) found that individuals with aspect of our findings – the interaction between creative
creativity anxiety considered themselves less capable of pressure and creativity anxiety: it is unclear why indivi­
creativity than those without it. Our data suggests that duals higher in creativity anxiety would experience
creativity anxiety may prevent people from unleashing reduced effects of practice or boredom to produce the
their full creative potential in situations that require it observed pattern or data.
the most, from creativity tests during job interviews to Secondly, while we anticipated that our manipula­
idea generation at work and everyday problem solving. tion – telling participants that the task was designed to
This would plausibly result in both lower self-reported measure their creativity – would create creative evalua­
lifetime creative achievement and lower creativity self- tive pressure, we did not directly measure subjectively-
efficacy among individuals with higher levels of creativ­ experienced evaluative pressure (e.g., through partici­
ity anxiety, as observed by Daker, Cortes, Lyons, and pant ratings) as this would have interfered with the
Green (2020). manipulation. As such, while our findings are compa­
The present data adds to an emerging literature tible with the view that creativity anxiety may be asso­
pointing to a key role of creative self-regulation pro­ ciated with a tendency to appraise creative pressure as
cesses and creative self beliefs in fostering resilience of a threat versus challenge, the impact of creativity anxiety
creativity in the face of life stresses (e.g. Anderson, on appraisal of creative pressure could be more directly
Bousselot, Katz-Buoincontro, & Todd, 2021), and tested in future research.
 CREATIVITY RESEARCH JOURNAL 7

Finally, it remains to be directly established to what to increase ability to overcome such anxiety (Uusimaki
extent the present findings would generalize beyond & Kidman, 2004), with expressive writing appearing to
associative thinking to other aspects of creative perfor­ improve math performance by reducing the number of
mance. Our dependent variable of semantic distance intrusive thoughts (Park, Ramirez, & Beilock, 2014).
was selected based on its ability to objectively index an Initial research is promising in suggesting that similar
underlying ability that has been linked both theoreti­ approaches may be applied in the context of creativity
cally and empirically to a variety of other creativity anxiety. Focusing on creativity, Anderson et al. (2022)
measures (see Kenett, 2019), including in the absence demonstrated the effectiveness of a blended professional
of any implied pressure to be creative. The latter was development model – aimed at developing teachers’
important to enable comparison of the presence versus understanding and beliefs around creativity – in reducing
absence of the fairly subtle form of creative evaluative creativity anxiety among teachers. In this study, reduced
pressure that would be intrinsic to most real-world and creativity anxiety was accompanied by a shift from a fixed
realistic laboratory creativity tasks. While it would be to a growth mind-set about their own and their students’
difficult to remove any level of creative pressure from creativity abilities – suggesting that reducing creativity
more realistic creativity tasks, future research could test anxiety and increasing creative self-efficacy among tea­
whether the present findings generalize to other mea­ chers could create a more encouraging environment for
sures of creative performance using manipulations of students as well. Shimizu, Yomogida, Shijun, and Okada’s
low versus high creative pressure. (2021) program aimed at fostering creativity through art
As a novel construct, creativity anxiety is ripe for provides another great example of how creativity anxiety
further research and there are a number of different can be reduced – a next step for future research could be to
directions this could take. As a starting point, it will be test directly whether such interventions can restore the
important to understand the mechanisms through ability to assess creativity under situations of creative pres­
which creativity anxiety hinders creative thinking as sure, using an experimental manipulation of the latter.
these will inform interventions to address it. Our para­ The present findings also have implications for edu­
digm offers a potential means to investigate the neural cational contexts. By hindering their ability to think
mechanisms underlying the interaction of creativity creatively, creativity anxiety could cause children to
anxiety and creative pressure – building on recent perform worse at school, since creative abilities have
work that established a “creativity anxiety connectome” consistently been found to predict academic achieve­
(Ren et al., 2021). ment (Gajda, Karwowski, & Beghetto, 2017). Our find­
It will also be important to develop interventions that ings highlight the importance of parents and teachers
reduce the potential for creativity anxiety to emerge and recognizing where creativity anxiety is emerging and
provide people with tools to control their anxiety, as this adapting their communication style accordingly – for
will help people to perform better at work where they example, by framing instructions in a way that elimi­
are more likely to encounter creative pressure, particu­ nates any creative pressure. In some situations, such as
larly in roles that require creativity, from engineering to educational settings, it may also be useful to measure
marketing. The well-established field of math anxiety people’s creativity without any pressure in order to be
provides a useful foundation from which such interven­ able to estimate (and give feedback and hence build
tions could be developed (see Ramirez, Shaw, & confidence on) their true creative ability.
Maloney, 2018, for a review). Particularly in the light of the gender imbalance in
Notably, studies have shown success in combating creativity anxiety (Daker, Cortes, Lyons, & Green, 2020),
math anxiety through certain mindfulness, mind-set- one implication of the present findings concerns the use of
based or breathing-focused interventions, which could creativity tests in organizational recruitment contexts.
potentially help mitigate the impact of evaluative pres­ Such tests might involve an even higher level of creative
sure in creative contexts too. For example, Samuel and pressure than would be experienced as part of the job, and
Warner (2019) found that a combined mindfulness and as such may underestimate the creative ability of candi­
growth mind-set intervention reduced math anxiety and dates with higher levels of creativity anxiety. As such, while
increased math self-efficacy in a sample of college stu­ the ability to access creativity on demand may be an
dents. Similarly, Brunyé et al. (2013) found that focused important part of a particular job, recruitment tests should
breathing, designed to lessen anxiety through effortful seek to equate the level of pressure involved in any test to
control of attention to divert attention away from wor­ that involved in the actual job (e.g., by using takeaway tasks
rying thoughts about arithmetic tests, was an effective rather than timed tests where appropriate).
intervention for math anxiety. Simply practicing self- In summary, the present study highlights creative anxi­
awareness of feelings around math has also been found ety as an important moderator of the ability to think
8 A. BULLOCK MUIR ET AL.

creatively – in the form of associative thinking – under creativity in the classroom. Teaching and Teacher Education,
pressure. Mild creative pressure appears to generally 110, 103583. doi:10.1016/j.tate.2021.103583
increase creative performance, in terms of associative Baas, M., De Dreu, C. K. W., & Nijstad, B. A. (2008). A
meta-analysis of 25 years of mood-creativity research:
thinking, but this benefit may be lost or reduced among Hedonic tone, activation, or regulatory focus?
individuals who exhibit high levels of creativity anxiety. Psychological Bulletin, 134(6), 779–806. doi:10.1037/
These findings will help guide further research on the a0012815
construct and inform intervention strategies to alleviate Barbot, B. (2019). Measuring creativity change and
such anxiety and unlock people’s creative potential for development. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the
the benefit of individuals, organizations, the economy Arts, 13(2), 203–210. doi:10.1037/aca0000232
Bates, D. M., Mächler, M., Bolker, B. M., & Walker, S.
and wider society. (2015). Fitting linear mixed-effects models Usinglme4.
Journal of Statistical Software, 67(1). doi:10.18637/jss.
v067.i01
Note Beaty, R. E., & Johnson, D. L. (2021). Automating crea­
1. The age data field was missing for 37 participants in the tivity assessment with SemDis: An open platform for
final sample. computing semantic distance. Behavior Research
Methods, 53(2), 757–780. doi:10.3758/s13428-020-
01453-w
Disclosure statement Beaty, R. E., Silvia, P. J., Nusbaum, E. C., Jauk, E., &
Benedek, M. (2014). The roles of associative and execu­
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s). tive processes in creative cognition. Memory &
Cognition, 42(7), 1186–1197. doi:10.3758/s13421-014-
0428-8
Funding Blascovich, J., Seery, M. D., Mugridge, C., Norris, R., &
Weisbuch, M. (2004). Predicting athletic performance
The work was supported by the Economic and Social Research from cardiovascular indexes of challenge and threat.
Council [ES/W007320/1]. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40(5), 683–688.
doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2003.10.007
Blascovich, J., & Tomaka, J. (1996). The biopsychosocial
ORCID model of arousal regulation. Elsevier eBooks, 1–51. doi:10.
1016/s0065-2601(08)60235-x
S. Forster http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6028-4821 Brunyé, T. T., Mahoney, C. R., Giles, G. E., Rapp, D. N.,
Taylor, H. A., & Kanarek, R. B. (2013). Learning to relax:
Evaluating four brief interventions for overcoming the nega­
Data availability statement tive emotions accompanying math anxiety. Learning and
Individual Differences, 27, 1–7. doi:10.1016/j.lindif.2013.06.008
Data can be downloaded from: https://osf.io/rkpe5/?view_
Byron, K. L., Khazanchi, S., & Nazarian, D. (2010). The
only=2467b674ce6e4573be25c8b35d17f566
relationship between stressors and creativity: A
meta-analysis examining competing theoretical models.
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