| dc.description.abstract | This study investigated whether the type of problem
involved in creative performance increases anxiety level
to a greater extent than the type of problem involved in
noncreative performance. Subjects were 9 male and 48
female undergraduate Psychology students, selected from a
voluntary subject pool, and randomly assigned to either a
divergent creative problem-solving (CPS) condition, a
convergent noncreative problem-solving (NCPS) condition,
or a control condition involving a passive neutral problemsolving
(NPS) task. The Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety
Inventory (STAI) was administered to each group before
and after the experimental conditions. The study tested
two opposing hypotheses: (n) "the view held by many
humanistic psychologists that creative activity increases
anxiety and (b) the psychoanalytic prediction that creative
activity decreases anxiety. A subsidiary hypothesis was
that (c) trait anxiety would not change significantly.
The results showed that there was no significant pre to
post increase in state anxiety for the creative divergent
problem-solving group but that the other two groups did
manifest significant increases in state anxiety. Trait
anxiety remained stable throughout the groups. These
results were interpreted in favour of the psychoanalytic hypothesis with the reservation that tasks more challenging
for the student subjects in this study might have produced
more anxiety than the creative divergent task employed.
Suggestions for future research were made. | |
