Zorana Pringle [00:00:00]:
Emotions are evolutionary based and they have a purpose and they are telling us something. They are trying to tell us something. And by paying attention to our emotions and by identifying very specifically, very granularly, what we are experiencing, we can gain more information about what is going on on. And with more information we can be better informed for our actions.

Cyndi Burnett [00:00:32]:
Hello everyone. My name is Dr. Cindy Burnett.

Matthew Worwood [00:00:35]:
And my name is Dr. Matthew Werwood.

Cyndi Burnett [00:00:37]:
This is the fueling Creativity and Education podcast.

Matthew Worwood [00:00:41]:
On this show, we’ll be talking about creativity topics and how they apply to the field of education.

Cyndi Burnett [00:00:46]:
We’ll be speaking with scholars, educators, and resident experts about their work, challenges they face, and digging deeper into new and varying perspectives of creativity, all with the.

Matthew Worwood [00:00:57]:
Goal to help fuel a more rich and informed discussion that provides teachers and parents with knowledge they can use at home or in the classroom.

Cyndi Burnett [00:01:05]:
So let’s begin.

Matthew Worwood [00:01:07]:
Welcome back to our double espresso episode with Zarana Ivjevich, a research scientist at the Yale Centre for Emotional Intelligence. In part one, we discuss Serana’s work on the creative process and how that integrates into a classroom environment. And in the second part, we’ll be discussing a lot more around the emotional aspect of creativity, particularly in a K through twelve classroom.

Cyndi Burnett [00:01:32]:
So Zorana, yesterday I noticed on your LinkedIn profile that your new book, coedited with Jessica Hoffman and James Kaufman, who we’ve had on the show, came out. And this book is the Cambridge Handbook of Creativity and Emotions. So congratulations on the recent publication.

Zorana Pringle [00:01:47]:
Woohoo. Thank you.

Cyndi Burnett [00:01:50]:
So can you share with us some of the highlights of what you worked on in this book and how it applies to education?

Zorana Pringle [00:01:57]:
The handbook is taking a survey of the field of creativity and emotions, and it really surveys the last 40 years of research and says, what have we learned? And looks forward and says, what do we still need to learn? So it is the first of its kind in taking stock of this big time period and all of its lessons.

Matthew Worwood [00:02:24]:
And given the fact that it focuses on surveying the relationship with emotions in the creative process, can you tell us a little bit about what type of emotions we commonly experience when we’re engaging in a creative process?

Zorana Pringle [00:02:35]:
That is a great question because it’s one of those questions that doesn’t have a single and simple answer, and I think those are the best questions. When scientists started studying creativity and emotions, the first question that was asked was what emotions help creative thinking, especially idea generation, and what emotions heard it. And so scientists really liking experiments would bring participants in a lab wanting to create an emotional state. So what they would do is they would ask people to recall an emotional event from their personal lives, something happy or something sad, for instance. Or they would have them listen to different kinds of music, upbeat music versus very subdued and blue music. After that, they would be given a creative thinking task. This can be various kinds of tasks. Most popular is called alternate uses task, which asks people to think of new and unusual uses for everyday objects, such as different uses for a brick or paperclip or tin can.

Zorana Pringle [00:04:00]:
And what we have learned from these studies is pretty unanimous, actually, that positive, pleasant, highly energized moods, such as being happy, is helpful for creative thinking. People come up with more ideas and more original ideas in these states. I was reading this research, and I had this nagging feeling that this is not really telling us the full story. I do not doubt this research. It’s reliable. There are now multiple decades of research supporting this finding. So I’m not judging it and I’m not doubting it, but I thought that it was not telling us the whole story. There are several issues that are important here.

Zorana Pringle [00:04:51]:
First is when we are studying these research participants. They are general population samples. Oftentimes they are college students who do not have particular interests in creativity or particular inclination towards creativity. And the tasks that they are given are purposefully those that do not require any prior knowledge or any interest. Nobody really cares about a brick. So you have to come up with uses for a brick, but you don’t care about the brick. Well, in everyday life, creative individuals are intrinsically motivated about what they are working on. They are interested in it, they enjoy the process, they are passionate about it.

Zorana Pringle [00:05:47]:
So this kind of experimental situation is not replicating what goes on in everyday life with real creative people doing real creative things. So I wanted to know what really happens, really, to answer your question, what are the emotions that happen in the creative process? What we did is in one study, we had a very significant sample of people working in artistic domains and very broadly defined. So they were painters, they were sculptors, they were composers, choreographers, they were writers of fiction and nonfiction. And we have asked them, what happens emotionally in times of inspiration, when you get that idea, when you get moved towards something? And then we asked them a different question. We asked them, well, now you have an idea and you are doing something with it. What happens in that daily work of creating emotionally for you? And then we said, knowing how the creative process works, we know that there are going to be times of challenge and times of what we popularly called the creative block, what happens emotionally in those times? And we’ve seen that the emotional experience and these different times in the creative process are quite different. So we see that at time of inspiration, there is a great variety of emotions that happen, but happiness and love and joy are very prominent. They are not the only ones.

Zorana Pringle [00:07:39]:
So the advice shouldn’t be that we have to be happy or joyful in order to be creative. But it oftentimes happens like that. There are also other people who got inspired by grief and by pain and by anxiety. So that is possible too, and we shouldn’t discount it, especially when we are giving advice of how to be inspired. And then in that daily work of creation, there were a lot of different emotions. Again, there was enjoyment, but there was also, very prominently, frustration. There was also some anxiety. There was dissatisfaction.

Zorana Pringle [00:08:28]:
All of these things were commingling, and they cannot be separated into, these are the desirable emotions. These are the nondesirable emotions. In emotion science, we don’t even like to use terms positive versus negative emotions, because in everyday discourse, they can imply being bad or being good. All emotions are conveying some meaning. They are conveying some information about what is going on inside us or in our environment. And they can be used and harnessed. Their power can be used towards our goals, such as our creative goals. Those unpleasant emotions like frustration, just like those moments of joy.

Zorana Pringle [00:09:21]:
And then finally, in those times that people are experiencing creative block, and something is breaking down in that process, it’s really interesting to see the word cloud of all the emotions that people have mentioned. It is frustration in giant letters, and then a scattering of other things, like being self conscious or being stressed or being angry, really, it’s about frustration.

Cyndi Burnett [00:09:53]:
So, can you tell us how we can harness those emotions for our creativity? Can you give us an example?

Zorana Pringle [00:10:00]:
So, I work at a place called Yale center for Emotional Intelligence, and we worked from the theory of emotional intelligence, which is based on this very simple notion that emotions are evolutionary based and they have a purpose, and they are telling us something. They are trying to tell us something. And by paying attention to our emotions and by identifying very specifically, very granularly, what we are experiencing, we can gain more information about what is going on. And with more information, we can be better informed for our actions. To give you specific examples, different feelings are more conducive to different kinds of thinking. So when we are feeling energized and pleasant feelings, such as being happy or joyful, the way of our thinking is expansive. We can be playful, we can be silly, we can be very broad in our thinking. When we are more subdued, maybe slightly sad, or pessimistic.

Zorana Pringle [00:11:21]:
We can be very critical in our thinking. We are good at being critical in our thinking. So now think of creative work. Creative work requires sometimes to broadly and wildly think of ideas. But at other times you have to be really critical about what you have just done, what you have written, what you have tried out. All of those things are important. It’s just they’re going to come into play in different times. And if we know these connections between different feelings and different ways of thinking, we can be matchmakers.

Zorana Pringle [00:12:03]:
We can say, okay, right now I am feeling very energized, I am feeling happy and joyful. Something great has happened. I can think of ideas. This is a good time to think of new ideas. And those other times when you’re feeling subdued or pessimistic, you can say, now I am going to revise my work. I’m going to see what doesn’t work quite right, and I’m going to make it better. I’m going to identify what the problems are and sometimes we can play with our natural cycles. To give you a personal example, I am not a morning person.

Zorana Pringle [00:12:42]:
I am very much not a morning person. And in the morning I am regularly grumpy. To me it’s sort of funny. To my environment, probably less so substantially into midmorning. I am seeing everything that is wrong with the world. I am feeling grumpy. I am feeling pessimistic. You can say, not in a good space, but that space, that emotional space is actually really good.

Zorana Pringle [00:13:12]:
If I have to. Really helpful. I could use it. I could harness it for reading what I have written the day before. My most productive writing hours are in the late afternoon. That’s pretty unconventional because lots of people have low times in the late afternoon. But I know my daily changes in moods first thing in the morning that I do, I take advantage of that grumpy mood and take my red pen to what I have written the day.

Matthew Worwood [00:13:47]:
Before, bringing this back into a K through twelve classroom environment. It seems to me that based on what you said, there are opportunities for teachers to think about how they might initiate creativity by stimulating certain types of emotions in their environment. So I’d like to ask you that question and then the second part of it, I think there’s obviously a good connection with social emotional learning, which is a hot topic in classrooms as well, about getting students to be more reflective and aware of how they’re feeling and how those feelings are interacting with the creative process.

Zorana Pringle [00:14:20]:
Certainly I think these are great ways that we can connect what we know about emotions, what we know about creativity and put it together in social emotional learning, we are teaching about the nature of emotions. So in teaching about the nature of emotions, people will learn that when you are feeling frustrated, the reason for that is there’s some kind of obstacle in front of you. What you are doing is not working. So continuing to do the same thing is not going to work. You have to do something different. So this connection of I am feeling frustration and saying, okay, what is this teaching me? Can be then used the same thing with creative thinking and idea generation. We are going to be better at generating creative ideas in positive moods and in highly energized positive moods. But those same moods, those same highly energized positive moods are not going to be helpful if we have to revise our work.

Zorana Pringle [00:15:30]:
So we need to know all of these pieces. And that’s part of social and emotional learning. It is learning how emotions connect to thinking and how they connect to action. Once we know that, we can apply it to creative thinking and creative action and we can then model it for students.

Matthew Worwood [00:15:56]:
And just to build on that, there’s sometimes when you go in with a plan. So sometimes I come into my design thinking class or one of my first year classes where I’m trying to get students to think creatively and generate ideas in response to a problem. And I walk into the classroom and the mood’s not there. And sometimes I try and plow through. And if I’m honest with you, there’s times that I get frustrated because what I planned isn’t working. But I have over the last six to twelve months been reflecting about the fact that, hey, I walked in. I kind of knew that the mood wasn’t right for an ideation session. And what you’re sharing today is making me kind of realize I need to come up with a plan B, right? There’s going to be times I walk in and I’m like, today’s an ideation session.

Matthew Worwood [00:16:36]:
Yes, I’ve got them, we’re going to get going. Other times I walk in, I’m like, okay, I’m going to have to see if I can energize these students. Otherwise I need to move to plan B. And my gut feeling is there’s probably lots of other teachers that can relate to that. And I think you’re giving us something to think about and think a lot about.

Zorana Pringle [00:16:53]:
Yeah, certainly what you are saying is sometimes we get attached to our plan and there’s place for planning and creativity. You want to have an outline, you want to have an idea where you’re going to go, because if you don’t, just the uncertainty is going to eat part of your mental capacity. But if you have a plan and you don’t have an ability to deviate from it, then it might happen that you will go through your plan and check it off the list. There are two approaches you can take. One approach is when you enter the classroom and you had an ideation session planned for that day. So your plan was to come up with ideas and lots of ideas, and you are not necessarily going to be evaluating them or figuring out are they good ideas. You just want to come up with them and you see that the mood is subdued. You have two options.

Zorana Pringle [00:17:56]:
First is you are recognizing what’s going on. You are recognizing that there is a mood problem there, that it’s not conducive to your plan, and you are already doing the first step. You are acknowledging what is going on emotionally. You are not ignoring it. Then your options for action are twofold. One option is to say, okay, the mood does not work for ideation, but maybe it works for critical thinking. And we have done last week something we can review today and tear apart that could be very productive for that session because the mood is conducive to critical thinking. The other option is to create a mood.

Zorana Pringle [00:18:47]:
So you are starting with a mood that is not conducive to ideation, but you are saying, okay, let’s create that positive and energized mood in some way. And you can say that everybody’s going to take out their phones and listen to a piece of music. And we all walk around these days with our phones. There are pieces of music. Or you are going to do some silly activity that will move people’s moods in a more energized direction. You can create moods, but you can only do that if you first acknowledge that there’s this disconnect.

Matthew Worwood [00:19:30]:
Another strategy that I’ve brought in is focusing more on the wild and wacky ideas and really engaging in the divergent thinking process. But I actually try and promote wild and wacky ideas, and every few minutes I get them to share a wild and wacky idea and I say, I’m sorry, that’s not wild and wacky enough. Let’s go further. Let’s go crazy. And I tried that for the first time last semester, and I started to see the group starting to laugh and giggle and have fun.

Zorana Pringle [00:19:55]:
This wild and wacky idea is accomplishing two different things. First, it’s accomplishing setting more of that positive and energized mood that makes it even possible to come up with new ideas and broad ideas. But it’s doing another thing too. It is saying that it is okay to come up with ideas that are not fully thought out. It is giving people permission and showing it is safe by you saying it as an authority figure that they are allowed to do that, and that they are not going to be those negative psychological social consequences for their reputation or for how they’re going to be perceived or for their grade or whatever other concern that students might be having.

Cyndi Burnett [00:20:54]:
Zarana we wrap up every show with three tips to bring creativity into the classroom. So what three tips would you provide our educators who are listening?

Zorana Pringle [00:21:03]:
I think that’s a great practice. My first tip would be to tell teachers that creativity is full of emotions, from the anxiety in front of an empty screen, to frustrations when you’re facing obstacles, and then to joy and pride of success. And all are part of the creative process. My tip is to remind yourself and your students that challenging feelings are not a sign of lack of creativity skills, but they are normal, part of the creative process, and they can be expected and anticipating they are going to happen. My second tip is that when teaching for creativity, it’s important to model and support the process of transforming ideas into products, into something that you end up with, whether that’s an essay, whether that is a painting or whatever it is in the classroom. And that process will be sometimes long and will require flexibility and adjusting approach and facing frustrations. And my third tip is to teach students how to regulate their work on the creative projects. They need to be aware that they will have to persist through difficulties, that they can use different emotions they experience in the service of their project.

Zorana Pringle [00:22:39]:
Whether that is times of feeling silly and coming up with ideas, or times of feeling subdued and finding those critical moments and improving the work, we can use what we are feeling to help us with our creative work.

Matthew Worwood [00:22:55]:
Serona, thank you so much for coming on the show and introducing us to this exciting topic around creativity and emotions, which is something that we haven’t actually spoke too much on the show before. So that concludes part two of our double espresso episode with Zarona Evzcevic. If you’re a fan of this show and think it can benefit training teachers, we ask you to share a link to this episode or any other of your favorite episodes with an old professor or an educator who specializes in the training of teachers and perhaps might want to use that episode or even this podcast as a resource in their curriculum. My name is Dr. Matthew Werwood, and.

Cyndi Burnett [00:23:31]:
My name is Dr. Cindy Burnett. This episode was produced by creativity and education in partnership with warwoodclassroom.com. Our editor is Sina Yusefzade.