Mood States and Everyday Creativity: Employing an Experience Sampling Method and a Day Reconstruction Method

Investigating the mood-creativity relationship in everyday life is important for innovation promotion in organizational management. This study explores the relationship between mood states and everyday creativity using two different measurement methods. Both the experience sampling method (ESM) and the day reconstruction method (DRM) were simultaneously applied to conduct a 15-day follow-up study of the relationship between 10 typical positive and negative moods and creativity in daily situations. In total, 31 corporate employees participated in the study. Participants reported their mood states and creativity at three time points per day by using experience sampling method; they also recalled and reported their mood states and creativity for at least three major events per day at the end of each day by using day reconstruction method. In total, we collected 935 valid measurements from ESM and 1260 valid measurements from DRM. The results revealed that highly active, positive moods including happiness, concentration, feeling active and interested had significant positive correlations with creativity, while the low-activity, negative mood states of feeling tired and sleepy were associated with low creativity. Both DRM-based and ESM-based results were largely consistent in measuring individual’s mood states and everyday creativity. To our knowledge, this is the first study to conduct DRM for mood-creativity relationship. The high consistency between the two daily research methods provides further empirical evidence towards a comprehensive understanding of mood and creativity. As DRM imposes a lessened respondent load on the participants as compared to ESM, our results suggest DRM as a promising tool for further mood-creativity research.