From BPS Research Digest, 19/04/23:

Our ability to regulate our emotions by reframing the meaning of emotional events is an important skill. We may need to ‘psych ourselves up’ when feeling unconfident or make ourselves feel calmer when we’re under stress, for example, both by reinterpreting situations or thinking about them in more positive ways.

Reappraising emotional events requires us to think creatively — so the researchers behind a new studyin Organizational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes wondered whether it could also boost our creativity more generally.

The study suggests that creativity and the ability to think in flexible, interesting ways is not solely trait based, but can change and shift quite easily. Methods such as reappraisal could therefore provide a way to improve our creativity, at work and in other environments.

Read more here.