In the present study, we tested this possibility by presenting participants with creative-thinking tasks and assessing whether this would lead to systematic mood changes. Applied to the interaction between mood and creative thinking, this suggests that particular mood states may not only facilitate or hinder particular types of thought processes but some types of thought processes might also facilitate or even induce particular mood states. Indeed, Srinivasan and Hanif ( 2011) reported that attending to the global aspect of visual stimuli facilitates the processing of happy as compared to sad faces while attending to the local aspects facilitates the processing of sad faces.
For instance, Bar ( 2009) suggested an interactive relation between mood and cognitive control: The broad associative activation that is thought to coming along with positive mood may help gaining a broader perspective, which again might make people happier. More recently, however, authors have also considered the possibility of a more reciprocal relationship between affective and cognitive processes (Bar, 2009 Gray, 2004 Gross, 2002 Salovey, Mayer, & Caruso, 2002), which would allow creative thought to affect mood. For instance, Ashby, Isen, and Turken ( 1999) assumed that mood creates particular brain states that facilitate or interfere with particular processing operations that are required for creative thinking. One idea regarding how mood and creative processes might interact considers mood as the cause and changes in creativity as effect. Nevertheless, it seems clear that some sort of link exists between positive and negative mood on the one hand and creative thought processes on the other. At the same time, however, the type and nature of this interaction are not well understood and mediating factors like type of task (Davis, 2009), motivational set (Baas et al., 2008), and individual differences (Akbari Chermahini & Hommel, 2011) can play decisive roles. Various authors have assumed that positive mood enhances creativity (e.g., Isen, 1999 Hirt, Melton, McDonald, & Harackiewicz, 1996), and numerous findings are consistent with this idea (for reviews, see Baas, De Dreu, & Nijstad, 2008 Davis, 2009).
A particularly close relationship seems to exist between mood and creative thinking. For instance, positive mood and affect have been shown to facilitate associative (Bar, 2009) and semantic priming (Hanze & Hesse, 1993), to enhance the recall of happy memories (Teasdale & Fogarty, 1979), and to support the processing of global perceptual information (Gasper & Clore, 2002) whereas negative mood and affect have been found to narrow the focus of attention (Rowe, Hirsh, & Anderson, 2007), facilitating analytical processing, causal reasoning, and reliance on systematic processing (Pham, 2007), and to support forgetting (MacLeod, 2002 Bäuml & Kuhbandner, 2009). In contrast to the commonsense concept of affect and reason as antagonistic factors that compete for the control of our thoughts and actions, recent research has revealed evidence for numerous types of fruitful cooperation between affective and cognitive processes.
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