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Awe is Associated With Creative Personality, Convergent Creativity, and
Everyday Creativity
Jia Wei Zhang
1
, Ryan T. Howell
2
, Pooya Razavi
3
, Hadi Shaban-Azad
4
, Wen Jia Chai
5
, Tamilselvan Ramis
6
,
Zena Mello
2
, Craig L. Anderson
7
, Maria Monroy
8
, and Dacher Keltner
8
1
Department of Psychology, University of Memphis
2
Department of Psychology, San Francisco State University
3
Department of Psychology, University of Oregon
4
Department of Psychology, University of Tehran
5
Department of Neuroscience, Universiti Sains Malaysia
6
Department of Psychology, Sunway University
7
Department of Marketing, Washington University, St. Louis
8
Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley
Creativity has many benefits, such as workplace performance and life satisfaction. Three studies
extended a small body of work to examine whether awe was associated with creative personality, con-
vergent creativity, and everyday creative behaviors (N= 1,844). Study 1 demonstrated that trait awe
was associated with a more creative personality among adolescents and adults in the U.S., Iran, and
Malaysia. Study 2 showed that trait awe was associated with an increased likelihood of solving the
Duncker’s Candle Problem. Finally, Study 3 found that on days when participants felt more daily awe
than they typically do, they reported having done more everyday creative activities. The effects of awe
were independent of amusement (Studies 1–3) and Big Five personality (Study 3). Moreover, we found
that daily curiosity explained the link between daily awe and daily creativity in Study 3. These results
are the first to demonstrate a consistent link between awe and complementary measures of creativity.
The discussion focuses on the limitations of the present work as well as implications of the present
results for future research on awe and creativity.
Keywords: awe, convergent creativity, curiosity, creative personality, everyday creativity
Supplemental materials: https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000442.supp
Creative individuals perform better academically (Chamorro-
Premuzic, 2006); receive better job-performance ratings from super-
visors and make more sales (Gong et al., 2009); report greater ca-
reer satisfaction and feel more included in their organizations (Kim
et al., 2009); and are more satisfied with life (Tan et al., 2008).
Given these and other benefits of creativity (Feist, 1998;Gajda et
al., 2017;Ma, 2009), it is important to identify different ways to
foster creativity. A consistent antecedent of increased creativity is
positive emotion (Baas et al., 2008;Lyubomirsky et al., 2005). This
literature, however, has generally focused on positive emotion and
has not ascertained whether some positive emotions promote crea-
tivity more than others. In one exception, however, researchers
found that participants specifically induced to feel awe, compared
to neutral, produced more creative product-improvement sugges-
tions (Chirico et al., 2018). Although this study demonstrated the
effect of awe on creativity, it used a small convenience sample (N=
52) and did not explore specific facets of creativity or examine plau-
sible mechanisms between awe and creativity.
The present research improves on this small body of work on the
link between awe and creativity in several ways. First, we employed
an individual difference approach that tested if trait and daily awe
were associated with creativity. Second, we measured creativity
with a multifaceted approach, including creative personality, con-
vergent creativity, and everyday creative activities to increase the
generalization of the awe and creativity link. Third, we explored cu-
riosity as a plausible mechanism of the association between awe
and creativity. Last, we explored if the effect of awe was independ-
ent from another positive emotion, namely amusement.
The Multifaceted Approach to Measuring Creativity
Creativity is generally conceived of as the generation of ideas,
insights, or solutions that are novel and potentially useful (Amabile,
1983;Simonton, 2000;Stein, 1953;Sternberg, 1999). Although there
is a consensus definition of creativity, there is not a best way to
Jia Wei Zhang https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2649-2245
Pooya Razavi https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9878-7873
Hadi Shaban-Azad https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3821-6232
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jia Wei
Zhang, Department of Psychology, University of Memphis, 400 Innovation
Drive, Memphis, TN 38152, United States. Email: jzhang11@memphis.edu
1
Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts
©2021 American Psychological Association
ISSN: 1931-3896 https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000442
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2024, Vol. 18, No. 2, 209–221
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This article was published Online First October 7, 2021.