Emerging from a Bad Mood into a Good Mood Can Make You More Creative

People who were plunged into bad moods by being asked to write about distressing experiences, but were then put into good moods by being asked to write about joyful events, were subsequently better at imagining creative ideas for improving university teaching than people who had been in positive moods all along, says a team led by Ronald Bledow of Ghent University in Belgium. For example, their average originality score by independent raters was 4.12 on a 7-point scale, versus 3.53 for the others. An episode of negative mood can lay the foundation for high creativity at a later point in time, the authors say.