Handbook of Positive Psychology Phần 3 ppt

conse-Taken together, findings from research usingthe emotional approach coping scales suggestthat coping through actively processing and ex-pressing emotion can confer psychological andp

treatment for breast cancer In a 3-month

lon-gitudinal study, they found that women who

coped through expressing emotions

surround-ing cancer at study entry had fewer medical

ap-pointments for cancer-related morbidities (e.g.,

pain, lymphedema) during the subsequent 3

months, enhanced self-perceived physical health

and vigor, and decreased distress relative to

women low in coping through emotional

ex-pression These relations held when participant

age, other coping strategy scores (including

seeking social support), and initial values on

de-pendent variables were controlled statistically

Expressive coping also was related to improved

quality of life for women who viewed their

social contexts as highly receptive Coping

through emotional processing was associated

only with one index reflecting greater distress

over time The strong and consistent findings

for emotional expression relative to emotional

processing in this study may reflect the lesser

utility of emotional processing as a stressor

per-sists Because women on average had been

di-agnosed with cancer approximately 6 months

prior to study entry, high scores on coping

through emotional processing in part may have

reflected rumination or an inability to come to

a satisfactory understanding of their feelings

surrounding cancer

Additional analyses suggested that coping

through emotional approach may serve as a

suc-cessful vehicle for goal clarification and pursuit,

as revealed by significant mediated and

moder-ated relations of emotionally expressive coping

with dispositional hope (Snyder et al., 1991)

For example, through expressing her sense of

loss of control engendered by a cancer diagnosis,

a woman may begin to distinguish what she can

and cannot control in her experience of cancer

and her life more generally, to channel energy

into attainable goals, and to work toward active

acceptance of more uncontrollable aspects of her

experience

Experimental work also supports the validity

of the emotional approach coping scales

(Stan-ton et al., 2000b, Study 4) Undergraduates

cop-ing with a parent’s psychological or physical

disorder (e.g., cancer, alcoholism) were assigned

randomly to talk about either their emotions

re-garding the parent’s disorder or the facts

rele-vant to the disorder across two sessions

Par-ticipants with high scores on emotionally

ex-pressive coping assessed in a prior screening

session who then were induced to talk about

their emotions evidenced reduced physiological

arousal and negative affect compared with ticipants for whom preferred and induced cop-ing were mismatched (e.g., highly expressiveparticipants in the facts condition) Thus,one’s preference for emotional approach copingmay interact with environmental contingencies

par-to determine the coping mechanisms’ quences

conse-Taken together, findings from research usingthe emotional approach coping scales suggestthat coping through actively processing and ex-pressing emotion can confer psychological andphysical health advantages But such coping isnot uniformly beneficial Under what conditions

is emotional approach coping most likely toyield positive outcomes? The extant researchprovides several clues As Lazarus and Folkman(1984) asserted, the utility of any coping strat-egy depends on situational contingencies Thus,individuals who cope through processing andexpressing emotions are likely to benefit to theextent that their interpersonal milieu welcomesemotional approach (Lepore, Silver, Wortman,

& Wayment, 1996; Stanton et al., 2000a) Thosewho are isolated or who are punished for ex-pressing emotions are less likely to benefit, un-less they have satisfactory solitary outlets foremotional approach, such as journal writing (re-call that emotional approach is associated withadjustment even when social support is con-trolled statistically; Stanton et al., 1994, 2000a,2000b) The utility of emotional approach cop-ing also might vary as a function of the nature

of the stressful encounter For example, tional approach coping might be more useful forinterpersonal than for achievement-relatedstressors (Stanton et al., 1994) and for situationsperceived as relatively uncontrollable (Berghuis

emo-& Stanton, 1994; Terry emo-& Hynes, 1998).Other potential moderators of the effective-ness of emotional approach coping also requireempirical attention The utility of emotional ap-proach may vary as a function of the specificemotion processed or expressed and the individ-ual’s comfort and skill in approaching suchemotion For example, some individuals may beable to use anger to motivate constructive ac-tion, whereas others who experience anger maylash out destructively or transform anger intopersistent resentment Individual differencecharacteristics such as gender, hope, and opti-mism may influence the utility of emotional ap-proach coping The timing of emotional ap-proach coping efforts also may be important,with emotional processing most useful at the

onset of the stressful encounter and emotional

expression gaining maximal utility once one has

come to understand one’s feelings

Given that emotional approach coping is

ben-eficial under particular conditions, what are the

mechanisms for its salutary effects? Coping

through processing and expressing emotions

may direct one’s attention toward central

con-cerns (Frijda, 1994) and result in identification

of discrepancies between one’s progress toward

a goal and the expected rate of progress (Carver

& Scheier, 1998) For example, acknowledging

and attempting to understand one’s anger may

lead one to conclude that a central goal

cur-rently is blocked (e.g., maintaining a close

re-lationship with one’s partner), to identify

contributors to the blockage (e.g., partners’

dif-fering styles of approaching conflict), and to

generate ways of restoring progress toward the

goal (e.g., accepting and reinterpreting the

dif-ference, expressing the anger constructively,

seeking therapy) Thus, emotional approach

coping may constitute a useful vehicle for

de-fining goals and motivating action Mediated

re-lations of expressive coping with hope (Stanton

et al., 2000a) and associations with

problem-focused coping (Stanton et al., 2000b) support

this interpretation

Emotional approach coping also may aid in

habituation to a stressor and its associated

emo-tions (e.g., Foa & Kozak, 1986; Hunt, 1998),

either simply through repeated exposure or

through concomitant altered cognitive

reap-praisal of the stressor For example, through

processing and expressing emotions, one may

conclude that the situation is not as dire as

orig-inally conceived, that painful emotions do

in-deed subside, and that some benefit can be

gleaned from adversity (e.g., Davis,

Nolen-Hoeksema, & Larson, 1998; Foa, Steketee, &

Rothbaum, 1989) Analyzing six experiments

on written emotional disclosure, Pennebaker,

Mayne, and Francis (1997) found that use of

words reflecting insightful and causal thinking

was associated with improved health outcomes

Finally, coping through expressing emotions

may facilitate regulation of the social

environ-ment (e.g., Thompson, 1994) Letting a partner

know of one’s sadness can prompt comfort, for

example An understanding of one’s inner

emo-tional world also can allow individuals to select

maximally satisfying emotional environments

(Carstensen, 1998) We would suggest that the

most interesting questions regarding emotional

approach coping involve specifying for whom,

under what conditions, and how coping throughemotional processing and expression yields ben-efits, as well as how the resultant understandingcan be translated into effective interventions forpeople confronting stressful experiences

Clinical Interventions

It is clear from the foregoing that the experienceand expression of emotion may be adaptive ormaladaptive In fact, most clients presenting forpsychotherapy share the characteristic of somedysfunctional emotional patterns (Mahoney,1991) Although some clinical approaches his-torically have touted pure expression as thera-peutic, theorists now suggest that a central goal

of psychotherapy and of successful human

de-velopment is balanced emotional expression in

which emotions are recognized, understood, andcommunicated appropriately in a way thateventually prompts a reduction in distress(Kennedy-Moore & Watson, 1999) Such ther-apies focus not just on unbridled expression ofemotion but rather on emotional processing andexpression that serve functions such as regulat-ing arousal, fostering self-understanding, en-hancing problem-solving, and improving inter-personal relationships

One example of a therapy with such a goal isemotionally focused therapy (EFT; e.g., Green-berg & Paivio, 1997; Safran & Greenberg,1991), which seeks to help clients achieve moreadaptive functioning through evoking and ex-ploring emotions and restructuring maladaptiveemotional schemes A recent meta-analysis offour randomized controlled trials of EFT forcouples revealed that this approach clearly is ef-fective in reducing marital distress (Johnson,Hunsley, Greenberg, & Schindler, 1999) Based

on four studies of the mechanisms for change

in EFT, Johnson et al theorized that ment is associated with expression of feelingsand needs, and that this expression leads to pos-itive shifts in relationship patterns

improve-Our review of the recent literature revealedother experimental studies designed to enhanceemotional processing and/or expression that in-cluded a no-treatment control group For ex-ample, Schut, Stroebe, van den Bout, and deKeijser (1997) offered seven sessions ofproblem- or emotion-focused counseling to menand women experiencing mildly complicated be-reavement Emotion-focused therapy was aimed

at acceptance, exploration, and discharge of

emotions related to the loss Both interventions

produced greater reduction in distress than a

no-treatment control group, with the

problem-focused intervention producing slightly better

results than the emotion-focused intervention

Interestingly, problem-focused counseling was

more effective in women, and emotion-focused

counseling yielded better results for men The

effects of emotion-focused coping were observed

only at follow-up, 7 months after the

comple-tion of treatment In a study of women

expe-riencing infertility, McQueeney, Stanton, and

Sigmon (1997) assessed the efficacy of six

ses-sions of problem- or emotion-focused

counsel-ing compared with a no-treatment control

group Both problem-focused and

emotion-focused participants evidenced significantly

re-duced distress at treatment termination relative

to controls At a 1-month follow-up, only the

emotion-focused group evidenced significantly

better psychological adjustment than controls

(i.e., lower depressive symptoms and greater

infertility-specific well-being) and in fact

showed continued gains from treatment

termi-nation through 1 month At 18 months after

treatment, a significant between-groups

differ-ence emerged on parental status Eight of 10

problem-focused group members had become

mothers (4 biological, 4 adoptive) versus 2 of 8

emotion-focused members and three of eight

controls

These studies provide support for the

poten-tial of interventions promoting emotional

pro-cessing and expression, but they also suggest

four important qualifiers First, Schut et al

(1997) emphasized the importance of studying

effects of coping skills interventions as a

func-tion of participant gender (also see Stanton et

al., 1994) Interventions aimed at enhancing

emotional approach coping may be more useful

for some participants than others, and potential

moderators require study Second, the finding

in both studies that emotional approach coping

emerged as more beneficial at follow-up

sug-gests that working with and expressing

emo-tions may have a delayed impact as compared

with problem-focused coping It also

high-lights the need for longitudinal studies of the

effects of emotional approach coping skills

in-terventions Third, although the mechanisms

for change in these therapies presumably center

on the facilitation of emotional processing and

expression, specific mechanisms for change

require identification Finally, this research

underlines Lazarus’s (1999) cautions against

di-chotomizing emotion- and problem-focusedcoping Both approaches may confer benefit,perhaps in different realms or at different points

in the trajectory of the stressor, and integratedinterventions may yield the most positive out-comes Folkman and colleagues’ (1991) CopingEffectiveness Training represents an interven-tion that combines training in emotion- andproblem-focused skills Effective in bolsteringquality of life in HIV⫹ men, this approach in-cludes (a) appraisal training to disaggregateglobal stressors into specific coping tasks and todifferentiate between modifiable and immutableaspects of specific stressors; (b) coping training

to tailor application of problem-focused andemotion-focused coping efforts to relevantstressors; and (c) social support training to in-crease effectiveness in selecting and maintainingsupportive resources Continued empirical ex-ploration of emotionally evocative therapeuticframeworks is essential

Directions for Research

Our investigation of coping through emotionalapproach has begun with self-report items thatare brief and general in nature Findings of in-itial studies have generated numerous, specificquestions for research Further specification ofthe functional and dysfunctional aspects of cop-ing through emotional approach is of centralimportance One important element of the emo-tional approach coping construct requiringcloser scrutiny is the role of intentionality(Compas, Connor, Osowiecki, & Welch, 1997),that is, the conscious and purposive use of emo-tional processing and expression This inten-tionality is embedded in the emotional approachitems we have evaluated (e.g., “I take time toexpress my emotions”) and may be intrinsic tothe adaptiveness of emotional approach Whennonvolitional, emotional processing may be-come maladaptive rumination, and emotionalexpression may produce destructive outbursts.Continued examination of: (a) individual differ-ence characteristics of the coper, such as hope,developmental attributes, and gender; (b) thenature of the stressor, such as its controllability,severity, and timing of emotional approach cop-ing relative to stressor onset; (c) the specificemotions processed and expressed; and (d) as-pects of the environmental context, includingproximal social support and more distal culturalreceptivity to emotional approach, also will fa-

cilitate the identification of for whom and

under what conditions coping through

emo-tional approach is effective Further,

develop-mental antecedents of emotional approach

cop-ing and mechanisms through which it produces

effects warrant exploration In addressing these

research questions, the broader literatures on

emotion regulation, developmental psychology,

biological psychology, evolutionary psychology,

and others will be useful in generating

hypoth-eses and constructing methodologies

Although the self-report measures of

emo-tional approach coping we have described here

have demonstrated evidence of interjudge

reli-ability and correspondence with behavioral

in-dicators of emotional expression, as well as

pre-dictive validity, our understanding of coping

through emotional approach will be enhanced

by the use of methods in addition to self-report

questionnaires, including direct observation and

thought sampling, experimental induction of

emotional approach, and qualitative studies of

coping processes Longitudinal research designs

that control for initial levels on dependent

var-iables (e.g., psychological adjustment) also are

essential to evaluate coping through emotional

approach because benefits of these coping

proc-esses may emerge weeks or months after their

initiation (Schut et al., 1997; McQueeny et al.,

1997)

Findings to date demonstrate that, although

correlated, emotional processing and expression

can have differential relations with adaptive

outcomes, suggesting that further investigation

of their distinct qualities and consequences

re-quire study with these various methods

Clearly, the emotional approach coping

con-structs also should be distinguished from other

presumably emotion-focused coping strategies,

both conceptually and empirically We suggest

that researchers select coping assessments that

are uncontaminated by psychological distress

and clearly specify the coping processes assessed

in their published reports (and abstracts) rather

than use the “emotion-focused coping”

um-brella term

Intriguing research questions pertinent to

clinical applications also are evident For

ex-ample, what are the implications for therapy

process and outcome of discrepancies in

emo-tional approach coping between partners in

cou-ples therapy? Does the extent of client-therapist

congruence in emotional approach coping

increase over the course of therapy and

influ-ence outcomes? How can we best design

inter-ventions to facilitate adaptive coping throughemotional approach for clients with diverse at-tributes? Translation of coping theory and em-pirical findings into effective clinical interven-tions is under way in several domains (e.g.,Folkman et al., 1991); integration of findingsfrom research on coping through emotional ap-proach may bolster the utility of such interven-tions for individuals confronting life’s adversi-ties

Chapters in this volume illustrate the family

of constructs and theories undergirding positivepsychology Functionalist theories of emotionand the empirical evidence presented here sug-gest that coping through emotional approachdeserves inclusion in this diverse array of adap-tive processes To once again capture the poten-tial of emotional approach, we close with elo-quent words of a research participant, “Myemotional life is rich now Through facing mydeepest fears, I realize my strength Throughexpressing my sadness, I come to know my truecompanions Once thought my enemy, myemotions are now my friends.”

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12

The Positive Psychology of

Emotional Intelligence

Peter Salovey, John D Mayer, & David Caruso

Out of the marriage of reason with affect

there issues clarity with passion Reason

with-out affect would be impotent, affect withwith-out

reason would be blind.

S S Tomkins, Affect, Imagery,

and Consciousness

For psychologists, the 1990s were best known

as the “Decade of the Brain.” But there were

moments during those 10 years when the

pop-ular press seemed ready to declare it the

“De-cade of the Heart,” not so much for a popular

interest in cardiovascular physiology but rather

as a reflection on the growing interest in

emo-tions and emotional intelligence, in particular

During the second half of the 1990s, emotional

intelligence and EQ (we much prefer the former

term to the latter) were featured as the cover

story in at least two national magazines (Gibbs,

1995; Goleman, 1995b); received extensive

cov-erage in the international press (e.g., Alcade,

1996; Miketta, Gottschling, Wagner-Roos, &

Gibbs, 1995; Thomas, 1995); were named the

most useful new words or phrases for 1995 by

the American Dialect Society (1995, 1999;

Bro-die, 1996); and made appearances in syndicated

comic strips as diverse as Zippy the Pinhead and Dilbert.

What is this construct, and why has it been

so appealing? Emotional intelligence representsthe ability to perceive, appraise, and expressemotion accurately and adaptively; the ability tounderstand emotion and emotional knowledge;the ability to access and/or generate feelingswhen they facilitate cognitive activities andadaptive action; and the ability to regulate emo-tions in oneself and others (Mayer & Salovey,1997) In other words, emotional intelligencerefers to the ability to process emotion-ladeninformation competently and to use it to guidecognitive activities like problem solving and tofocus energy on required behaviors The termsuggested to some that there might be otherways of being intelligent than those emphasized

by standard IQ tests, that one might be able todevelop these abilities, and that an emotionalintelligence could be an important predictor ofsuccess in personal relationships, family func-tioning, and the workplace The term is one thatinstills hope and suggests promise, at least ascompared with traditional notions of crystal-lized intelligence For these very reasons, emo-tional intelligence belongs in positive psychol-

ogy The purpose of this chapter is to review

the history of and current research on

emo-tional intelligence and to determine whether

our positive assessments are appropriate or

mis-placed

History of the Concept

Turning to the field of psychology, there are

two references to emotional intelligence prior to

our work on this concept First, Mowrer (1960)

famously concluded that “the emotions do

not at all deserve being put into opposition with

‘intelligence’ they are, it seems, themselves

a high order of intelligence” (pp 307–308)

Sec-ond, Payne (1983/1986) used the term in an

un-published dissertation A framework for an

emotional intelligence, a formal definition, and

suggestions about its measurement were first

described in two articles that we published in

1990 (Mayer, DiPaolo, & Salovey, 1990;

Sa-lovey & Mayer, 1990)

The tension between exclusively cognitive

views of what it means to be intelligent and

broader ones that include a positive role for the

emotions can be traced back many centuries For

example, the Stoic philosophers of ancient

Greece viewed emotion as too individualistic

and self-absorbed to be a reliable guide for

in-sight and wisdom Later, the Romantic

move-ment in late-18th-century and

early-19th-century Europe stressed how emotion-rooted

intuition and empathy could provide insights

that were unavailable through logic alone

The modern interest in emotional intelligence

stems, perhaps, from a similar dialectic in the

field of human abilities research Although

nar-row, analytically focused definitions of

intelli-gence predominated for much of this century,

following Cronbach’s (1960) often cited

conclu-sion that a social intelligence was unlikely to be

defined and had not been measured, cracks in

the analytic intelligence edifice began to appear

in the 1980s For example, Sternberg (1985)

challenged mental abilities researchers to pay

more attention to creative and practical aspects

of intelligence, and Gardner (1983/1993) even

defined an intrapersonal intelligence that

con-cerns access to one’s feeling life, the capacity to

represent feelings, and the ability to draw upon

them as a means of understanding and a guide

for behavior Shortly thereafter, in their

con-troversial book, The Bell Curve, Herrnstein and

Murray (1994) revived debate about the genetic

basis for traditionally defined intelligence andthe degree to which intelligence is affected byenvironmental circumstances Paradoxically, in-stead of crystallizing support for the genetic in-

telligence position, the effect of The Bell Curve

was to energize many educators, investigators,and journalists to question whether the tradi-tional view of intelligence was conceptualizedtoo narrowly and to embrace the notion thatthere might be other ways to be smart and suc-ceed in the world

It was in this context that we wrote our 1990articles, introducing emotional intelligence asthe ability to understand feelings in the self andothers, and to use these feelings as informa-tional guides for thinking and action (Salovey

& Mayer, 1990) At that time, we describedthree core components of emotional intelli-gence—appraisal and expression, regulation,and utilization—based on our reading and or-ganizing of the relevant literature rather than

on empirical research Since this original article,

we have refined our conceptualization of tional intelligence so that it now includes fourdimensions (Mayer & Salovey, 1997), which wewill discuss later in this chapter

emo-Our work was reinforced by neuroscientists’interest in showing that emotional responseswere integral to “rational” decision making(e.g., Damasio, 1995) Through our theorizing,

we also helped to stimulate the writing of the

best-selling book Emotional Intelligence, in

which Goleman (1995a) promised that tional intelligence rather than analytical intel-ligence predicts success in school, work, andhome Despite the lack of data to support some

emo-of Goleman’s claims, interest in emotionalintelligence soared, with books appearingmonthly in which the authors touted the value

of emotional intelligence in education ling, 1996), child rearing (Gottman & DeClaire,1997; Shapiro, 1997), the workplace (Cooper &Sawaf, 1997; Goleman, 1998; Ryback, 1998;Simmons & Simmons, 1997; Weisinger, 1998),and personal growth (Epstein, 1998; Salerno,1996; Segal, 1997; Steiner & Perry, 1997) Verylittle of this explosion of available resources onemotional intelligence represented empiricallyoriented scholarship

(Schil-In the past 5 years, there also has been greatinterest in the development of measures to as-sess the competencies involved in emotional in-telligence Not surprisingly, a plethora of sup-posed emotional intelligence scales and batteries

of varying psychometric properties appeared

(e.g., Bar-On, 1997; Cooper & Sawaf, 1996;

Schutte et al., 1998) In reality, these

instru-ments tapped self-reported personality

con-structs, and they were disappointing in terms of

their discriminant and construct validities

(Da-vies, Stankov, & Roberts, 1998) As an

alter-native, we have been arguing for the value of

conceptualizing emotional intelligence as a set

of abilities that should be measured as such

(Mayer, Salovey & Caruso, 2000a, 2000b) We

will describe this approach to measurement later

in the chapter

Current Model of Emotional Intelligence

What follows is a brief summary of our ability

theory of emotional intelligence, displayed in

Table 12.1; more detailed presentations can be

found elsewhere (e.g., Mayer, Caruso, &

Sa-lovey, 1999; Mayer & SaSa-lovey, 1997; SaSa-lovey,

Bedell, Detweiler, & Mayer, 2000; Salovey &

Mayer, 1990) Although there is sometimes

em-pirical utility in considering emotional

intelli-gence as a unitary construct, most of our work

suggests that it can be divided into four

branches The first of these branches, emotional

perception and expression, involves recognizing

and inputting verbal and nonverbal information

from the emotion system The second branch,

emotional facilitation of thought (sometimes

referred to as using emotional intelligence),

re-fers to using emotions as part of cognitive

pro-cesses such as creativity and problem solving

The third branch, emotional understanding,

in-volves cognitive processing of emotion, that is,

insight and knowledge brought to bear upon

one’s feelings or the feelings of others Our

fourth branch, emotional management,

con-cerns the regulation of emotions in oneself and

in other people

The first branch of emotional intelligence

be-gins with the capacity to perceive and to

ex-press feelings Emotional intelligence is

impos-sible without the competencies involved in this

branch (see also Saarni, 1990, 1999) If each

time unpleasant feelings emerged, people

turned their attentions away, they would learn

very little about feelings Emotional perception

involves registering, attending to, and

decipher-ing emotional messages as they are expressed in

facial expressions, voice tone, or cultural

arti-facts A person who sees the fleeting expression

of fear in the face of another understands much

more about that person’s emotions and

thoughts than someone who misses such asignal

The second branch of emotional intelligenceconcerns emotional facilitation of cognitive ac-tivities Emotions are complex organizations ofthe various psychological subsystems—physio-logical, experiential, cognitive, and motiva-tional Emotions enter the cognitive systemboth as cognized feelings, as is the case whensomeone thinks, “I am a little sad now,” and asaltered cognitions, as when a sad person thinks,

“I am no good.” The emotional facilitation ofthought focuses on how emotion affects thecognitive system and, as such, can be harnessedfor more effective problem solving, reasoning,decision making, and creative endeavors Ofcourse, cognition can be disrupted by emotions,such as anxiety and fear, but emotions also canprioritize the cognitive system to attend to what

is important (Easterbrook, 1959; Mandler, 1975;Simon, 1982), and even to focus on what it doesbest in a given mood (e.g., Palfai & Salovey,1993; Schwarz, 1990)

Emotions also change cognitions, makingthem positive when a person is happy and neg-ative when a person is sad (e.g., Forgas, 1995;Mayer, Gaschke, Braverman, & Evans, 1992;Salovey & Birnbaum, 1989; Singer & Salovey,1988) These changes force the cognitive system

to view things from different perspectives, forexample, alternating between skeptical and ac-cepting The advantage of such alterations tothought is fairly apparent When one’s point ofview shifts between skeptical and accepting, theindividual can appreciate multiple vantagepoints and, as a consequence, think about aproblem more deeply and creatively (e.g.,Mayer, 1986; Mayer & Hanson, 1995) It is justsuch an effect that may lead people with moodswings toward greater creativity (Goodwin &Jamison, 1990; see Simonton, this volume).The third branch involves understandingemotion Emotions form a rich and complexlyinterrelated symbol set The most fundamentalcompetency at this level concerns the ability tolabel emotions with words and to recognize therelationships among exemplars of the affectivelexicon The emotionally intelligent individual

is able to recognize that the terms used to scribe emotions are arranged into families andthat groups of emotion terms form fuzzy sets(Ortony, Clore, & Collins, 1988) Perhaps moreimportant, the relations among these terms arededuced—that annoyance and irritation can lead

de-to rage if the provocative stimulus is not

elim-Table 12.1 The Four-Branch Model of Emotional Intelligence

(after Mayer & Salovey, 1997)

Emotional Perception and Expression

Ability to identify emotion in one’s physical and psychological states

Ability to identify emotion in other people

Ability to express emotions accurately and to express needs related to them

Ability to discriminate between accurate/honest and inaccurate/dishonest feelings

Emotional Facilitation of Thought (Using Emotional Intelligence)

Ability to redirect and prioritize thinking on the basis of associated feelings

Ability to generate emotions to facilitate judgment and memory

Ability to capitalize on mood changes to appreciate multiple points of view

Ability to use emotional states to facilitate problem solving and creativity

Emotional Understanding

Ability to understand relationships among various emotions

Ability to perceive the causes and consequences of emotions

Ability to understand complex feelings, emotional blends, and contradictory

states

Ability to understand transitions among emotions

Emotional Management

Ability to be open to feelings, both pleasant and unpleasant

Ability to monitor and reflect on emotions

Ability to engage, prolong, or detach from an emotional state

Ability to manage emotions in oneself

Ability to manage emotions in others

inated, or that envy often is experienced in

con-texts that also evoke jealousy (Salovey & Rodin,

1986, 1989) The person who is able to

under-stand emotions—their meanings, how they

blend together, how they progress over time—

is truly blessed with the capacity to understand

important aspects of human nature and

inter-personal relationships

Partly as a consequence of various

populari-zations, and partly as a consequence of societal

pressures to regulate emotions, many people

primarily identify emotional intelligence with

its fourth branch, emotional management

(sometimes referred to as emotional regulation)

They hope emotional intelligence will be a way

of getting rid of troublesome emotions or

emo-tional leakages into human relations and rather,

to control emotions Although this is one

pos-sible outcome of the fourth branch, optimal

lev-els of emotional regulation may be moderate

ones; attempts to minimize or eliminate

emotion completely may stifle emotional

intel-ligence Similarly, the regulation of emotion in

other people is less likely to involve the

sup-pressing of others’ emotions but rather the

har-nessing of them, as when a persuasive speaker

is said to “move” his or her audience

Individuals use a broad range of techniques

to regulate their moods Thayer, Newman, andMcClain (1994) believe that physical exercise isthe single most effective strategy for changing

a bad mood, among those under one’s own trol Other commonly reported mood regulationstrategies include listening to music, social in-teraction, and cognitive self-management (e.g.,giving oneself a “pep talk”) Pleasant distrac-tions (errands, hobbies, fun activities, shopping,reading, and writing) also are effective Less ef-fective (and, at times, counterproductive) strat-egies include passive mood management (e.g.,television viewing, caffeine, food, and sleep), di-rect tension reduction (e.g., drugs, alcohol, andsex), spending time alone, and avoiding the per-son or thing that caused a bad mood In general,the most successful regulation methods involveexpenditure of energy; active mood manage-ment techniques that combine relaxation, stressmanagement, cognitive effort, and exercise may

con-be the most effective strategies for changing badmoods (reviewed by Thayer et al., 1994) Cen-

tral to emotional self-regulation is the ability to

reflect upon and manage one’s emotions;

emo-tional disclosure provides one means of doing

so Pennebaker (1989, 1993, 1997) has studied

the effects of disclosure extensively and finds

that the act of disclosing emotional experiences

in writing improves individuals’ subsequent

physical and mental health (see Niederhoffer &

Pennebaker, this volume)

Measuring Emotional Intelligence

We believe that the most valid approach for

as-sessing emotional intelligence is the use of

task-based, ability measures Although self-report

inventories assessing various aspects of

emo-tional intelligence have proliferated in recent

years (e.g., Bagby, Parker, & Taylor, 1993a,

1993b; Bar-On, 1997; Catanzaro & Mearns,

1990; EQ Japan, 1998; Giuliano & Swinkels,

1992; Salovey, Mayer, Goldman, Turvey, &

Palfai, 1995; Schutte et al., 1998; Swinkels &

Giuliano, 1995; Wang, Tett, Fisher, Griebler,

& Martinez, 1997), these constructs are difficult

to distinguish from already measured aspects of

personality (Davies et al., 1998); moreover,

whether emotional competency self-belief

scores actually correlate systematically with

those competencies per se has yet to be

deter-mined (Mayer et al., 1999) We ask the reader

to imagine whether he or she would be

con-vinced of the analytic intelligence of another

person based on the respondent’s answer to a

question such as “Do you think you’re smart?”

We are not, and therefore since the beginning

of our work on emotional intelligence, we have

suggested that tasks that tap into the various

competencies that underlie emotional

intelli-gence are likely to have more validity than

self-report measures (e.g., Mayer et al., 1990)

Task-based measures of emotional abilities

developed on the basis of other theoretical

frameworks may be useful in the assessment of

emotional intelligence For example, in the

Lev-els of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS),

re-spondents are asked to describe their feelings

about various stimuli, and then these protocols

are coded according to differentiations in the

feeling language used (Lane, Quinlan, Schwartz,

Walker, & Zeitlin, 1990) Another possibility is

Averill and Nunley’s (1992; see also Averill,

1999) test of emotional creativity, in which

par-ticipants are asked to write about situations in

which they experience three different emotions

simultaneously Various measures of nonverbalemotional sending and receiving ability alsohave been explored over the years (e.g., Buck,1976; Freedman, Prince, Riggio, & DiMatteo,1980; Rosenthal, Hall, DiMatteo, Rogers, & Ar-cher, 1979)

The first comprehensive, theory-based tery for assessing emotional intelligence as a set

bat-of abilities was the Multifactor Emotional telligence Scale (MEIS), which can be adminis-tered through interaction with a computer pro-gram or via pencil and paper (Mayer, Caruso,

In-& Salovey, 1998, 1999) The MEIS comprises

12 ability measures that are divided into fourbranches, reflecting the model of emotional in-telligence presented earlier: (a) perceiving andexpressing emotions; (b) using emotions to fa-cilitate thought and other cognitive activities; (c)understanding emotion; and (d) managing emo-tion in self and others (Mayer & Salovey, 1997).Branch 1 tasks measure emotional perception inFaces, Music, Designs, and Stories Branch 2measures Synesthesia Judgments (e.g., “Howhot is anger?”) and Feeling Biases (translatingfelt emotions into judgments about people).Branch 3’s four tasks examine the understand-ing of emotion Sample questions include “Op-timism most closely combines which two emo-tions?” A participant should choose “pleasureand anticipation” over less specific alternativessuch as “pleasure and joy.” Branch 4’s two testsmeasure Emotion Management in the Self and

in Others These tasks ask participants to readscenarios and then rate four reactions to themaccording to how effective they are as emotionmanagement strategies focused on the self or onothers

An issue that comes up in task-based tests ofemotional intelligence concerns what consti-tutes the correct answer We have experimentedwith three different criteria for determining the

“correct” answer to questions such as ing the emotions in facial expressions or makingsuggestions about the most adaptive way tohandle emotions in difficult situations The first

identify-involves target criteria Here we would ask the

person whose facial expression is depicted onour test item what he or she was feeling To theextent that the respondent’s answer matches thetarget’s, the answer would be scored as correct

A second approach is to use expert criteria In

this strategy, experts on emotion such as chotherapists or emotion researchers wouldread test items and provide answers To the ex-tent that the respondent’s answers match the

psy-experts’, they would be scored as correct

Fi-nally, the consensus criteria involve norming

the test on a large, heterogeneous sample The

test-taker now receives credit for endorsing

an-swers that match those of the larger group

One might think that a consensus or a target

criteria would not be an appropriate approach to

scoring tasks measuring emotional competence

After all, aren’t most people misguided about

their true feelings? We were able to look at how

the target, expert, and consensus criteria are

in-terrelated across some of the MEIS ability tasks

The correlations were actually rather high; half

were above r⫽ 52 (Mayer et al., 1999) In

gen-eral, the consensus approach correlated more

highly with the target criteria than did the

expert criteria At the moment, we are

recom-mending a consensus-based approach to scoring

the MEIS for several reasons Targets

some-times minimize their own negative feelings

when asked to report on them (Mayer & Geher,

1996), but large normative samples, when

re-sponses are pooled, tend to be reliable judges

(Legree, 1995)

Investigations using the MEIS are in rather

preliminary stages, but there are a few findings

to report (Mayer et al., 1999) In general, we

found support for the theoretical model of

emo-tional intelligence described earlier (Mayer &

Salovey, 1997) In a sample of 503 adults, MEIS

tasks were generally positively intercorrelated

with one another, but not highly so (most were

in the r⫽ 20 to 50 range) As well, the test’s

factorial structure recommended two equally

vi-able factorial models: (a) a three- to four-factor

solution that separated out factors of emotional

perception, understanding, management, and, at

times, using emotions to facilitate cognitive

ac-tivities; or (b) a hierarchical structure that first

describes a general factor, gei The internal

con-sistency of the MEIS is reasonably high: Using

consensus scoring, most of the 12 subscales had

Cronbach alphas in the 70 to 94 range, though

the Branch 3 tasks, which are the shortest

sub-scales, tended to have lower internal consistency

(although two of these tasks had alphas of 78

and 94, respectively; two others were 49 and

.51) In an independent investigation, the

Cron-bach alpha reported for the MEIS as a whole

was 90 (Ciarrochi, Chan, & Caputi, 2000)

The MEIS as a whole correlates positively

with verbal intelligence (but only in the r⫽ 35

to 45 range), self-reported empathy, and

paren-tal warmth and negatively with social anxiety

and depression (Mayer et al., 1999) The MEIS

is not correlated with nonverbal measures of telligence such as the Raven Progressive Matri-ces (Ciarrochi, Chan, & Caputi, 2000) Finally,and consistent with the idea that emotional in-telligence is a set of abilities that are developedthrough learning and experience, scores on theMEIS improve with age (Mayer et al., 1999)

in-A refined and better normed successor to theMEIS, called the Mayer, Salovey, and CarusoEmotional Intelligence Scales (MSCEIT), pres-ently is being prepared for distribution (Mayer,Salovey, & Caruso, in preparation) We rec-ommend this set of tasks for assessing emo-tional intelligence as an ability Structuredmuch like the MEIS, the MSCEIT also is based

on the four-branch model of emotional gence, but it allows for the assessment of emo-tional intelligence in less time than the MEIS.Poorly worded items have been eliminated, andextensive normative data will be available

intelli-Current Research Findings

We have just started to publish research usingability-based measures of emotional intelli-gence, like the MEIS and the MSCEIT (see Sa-lovey, Woolery, & Mayer, 2001, for a sum-mary) However, there are some findings toreport that are promising with respect to theprediction of important behavioral outcomes

We note that many of the findings describedhere are as of yet unpublished and unreviewed

by other scientists, so they should be viewed assuggestive

Mayer and his colleagues have been oping measures of individuals’ life space—a de-scription of a person’s environment in terms ofdiscrete, externally verifiable responses (e.g.,How many pairs of shoes do you own? Howmany times have you attended the theater thisyear? see Mayer, Carlsmith, & Chabot, 1998)

devel-In these studies, higher scores on the MEIS areassociated with lower self-reported, life-spacemeasures of engagement in violent and antiso-cial behavior among college students; the cor-relations between the MEIS and these measures

were in the r⫽ 40 range Other investigatorsalso have reported that greater emotional intel-ligence is associated with lower levels of anti-social behavior For example, Rubin (1999)found substantial negative correlations between

a version of the MEIS developed for adolescents(the AMEIS) and peer ratings of their aggres-siveness; prosocial behaviors rated by these

schoolchildren’s teachers were positively

asso-ciated with emotional intelligence (|r|s⫽ 37 to

.49)

Research focused on adolescents’ substance

use has been conducted by Trinidad and

John-son (in press) They collected data from 205

cul-turally diverse seventh- and eighth-grade

stu-dents using five subtests from the AMEIS

Those scoring high on overall emotional

intel-ligence were significantly less likely to have

ever tried smoking a cigarette or to have

smoked recently They were also less likely to

report having had an alcoholic beverage in the

past week Emotional intelligence was positively

correlated with endorsing the idea that doing

well in school is important

Emotional intelligence, as assessed with the

MEIS, also appears to be important in workplace

situations In an intriguing study conducted

with 164 employees of an insurance company

assigned to 26 customer claim teams, Rice

(1999) administered a shortened version of the

MEIS, then asked a department manager to rate

the effectiveness of these teams and their

lead-ers The MEIS scores were highly correlated

with the manager’s ratings of the team leaders’

effectiveness (r⫽ 51) The average MEIS scores

of each of the teams—the team emotional

in-telligence—also was related to the manager’s

ratings of the team performance in customer

service (r ⫽ 46) However, emotional

intelli-gence was negatively associated with the team’s

speed in handling customer complaints (r ⫽

⫺.40) It appears that emotional intelligence

may help team leaders and their teams to be

better at satisfying customers but not

necessar-ily to increase the efficiency with which they

perform these behaviors Perhaps dealing with

customers’ feelings in an adaptive way takes

time

Interventions to Improve

Emotional Intelligence

Despite the paucity of predictive validity data

on emotional intelligence, interventions are

be-ing developed aimed at raisbe-ing emotional

intel-ligence in a variety of contexts

Interventions in Education

With the availability of materials suggesting

how teachers can cultivate emotional

intelli-gence in schoolchildren, there has been an

in-creasing interest in the last decade in developingschool-based programs focused on these abilities(Mayer & Cobb, 2000; Salovey & Sluyter,1997) For example, in a guidebook for devel-oping emotional intelligence curricula for ele-mentary school students, Schilling (1996) rec-ommends units on self-awareness, managingfeelings, decision making, managing stress, per-sonal responsibility, self-concept, empathy,communication, group dynamics, and conflictresolution As should be obvious, the emotionalintelligence rubric is being applied quite broadly

to the development of a range of emotional skills As a result, many of theschool-based interventions designed to promoteemotional intelligence are better classified underthe more general label Social and EmotionalLearning (SEL) programs (Cohen, 1999a; Elias

social-et al., 1997)

There are over 300 curriculum-based grams in the United States purporting to teachSocial and Emotional Learning (Cohen, 1999b).These range from programs based on very spe-cific social problem-solving skills training (e.g.,Elias & Tobias, 1996), to more general conflictresolution strategies (e.g., Lantieri & Patti,1996), to very broad programs organizedaround themes like “character development”(Lickona, 1991) One of the oldest SEL pro-grams that has a heavy dose of emotional in-telligence development within it is the SocialDevelopment Curriculum in the New Haven,Connecticut, public schools (Shriver, Schwab-Stone, & DeFalco, 1999; Weissberg, Shriver,Bose, & DeFalco, 1997) The New Haven SocialDevelopment Program is a kindergartenthrough grade 12 curriculum that integrates thedevelopment of social and emotional skills inthe context of various prevention programs(e.g., AIDS prevention, drug use prevention,teen pregnancy prevention; see also Durlak,1995) The curriculum provides 25 to 50 hours

pro-of highly structured classroom instruction ateach grade level Included in the early years ofthis curriculum are units on self-monitoring,feelings awareness, perspective taking (empa-thy), understanding nonverbal communication,anger management, and many other topics,some of which are loosely consistent with ourmodel of emotional intelligence Although thisprogram has not been evaluated in a random-ized, controlled trial, a substantial survey ad-ministered every 2 years to New Haven school-children has revealed positive trends sinceimplementation of the program For example,

one change has been reduced school violence

and feelings of hopelessness (Shriver et al.,

1999)

Another well-known emotional intelligence

curriculum is called Self Science, which was

de-veloped and field tested at the Nueva School in

Hillsborough, California, in the first through

eighth grades (Stone-McCown, Jensen,

Freed-man, & Rideout, 1998) This program begins

with three assumptions: There is no thinking

without feeling and no feeling without

think-ing; the more conscious one is of what one is

experiencing, the more learning is possible; and

self-knowledge is integral to learning The Self

Science curriculum is a flexible one, although it

is organized around 54 lessons grouped into 10

goals For example, Goal 3, called “Becoming

More Aware of Multiple Feelings,” includes

les-sons such as Naming Feelings, What Are

Feel-ings? Reading Body Language, Emotional

Sym-bolism, Evoking Emotions, Acting on Emotions,

Sources of Feelings, and Responsibility for

Feel-ings This approach directly focuses on

emo-tions in about half of the lessons The goals of

the Self Science curriculum include talking

about feelings and needs; listening, sharing, and

comforting others; learning to grow from

con-flict and adversity; prioritizing and setting goals;

including others; making conscious decisions;

and giving time and resources to the larger

community (Stone-McCown et al., 1998)

Finally, many emotional intelligence

inter-ventions for schoolchildren take place within

other more specific prevention programs A

good example is the Resolving Conflict

Crea-tively Program (RCCP) that began in the New

York City public schools (Lantieri & Patti,

1996) The program goals include increasing

awareness of the different choices available to

children for dealing with conflicts; developing

skills for making these choices; encouraging

children’s respect for their own cultural

back-ground and the backback-grounds of others; teaching

children how to identify and stand against

prej-udice; and increasing children’s awareness of

their role in creating a more peaceful world

These goals are addressed in a 25-hour teacher’s

training program and in a program emphasizing

peer mediation for children in grades 4 to 6 A

follow-up program, Peace in the Family, trains

parents in conflict resolution strategies RCCP

training programs emphasize identifying one’s

own feelings in conflict situations and taking

the perspective of and empathizing with others’

feelings In an evaluation that included 5,000

children participating in the RCCP program

in New York City, hostile attributions andteacher-reported aggressive behavior dropped as

a function of the number of conflict resolutionlessons the children had received, and academicachievement was highest among those childrenwho received the most lessons (Aber, Brown, &Henrich, 1999; Aber, Jones, Brown, Chaudry, &Samples, 1998)

Although increasing numbers of Social andEmotional Learning programs are being evalu-ated formally (e.g., Elias, Gere, Schuyler,Branden-Muller, & Sayette, 1991; Greenberg,Kushe, Cook, & Quamma, 1995), many stillhave not been subjected to empirical scrutiny.There is virtually no reported research onwhether these programs are effective by en-hancing the kinds of skills delineated in ourmodel of emotional intelligence

Interventions in the Workplace

Possible interventions to increase emotional telligence also can be found in the workplace(e.g., Caruso, Mayer, & Salovey, in press; Cher-niss & Goleman, 1998; Goleman, 1998) Theseworkplace programs, however, are at a muchearlier stage of development than those de-signed for the classroom Furthermore, many ofthese workplace “emotional intelligence” pro-grams are really old and familiar trainingsessions on human relations, achievement mo-tivation, stress management, and conflict reso-lution

in-One promising approach to workplace tional intelligence is the Weatherhead MBAProgram at Case Western Reserve University,where training in social and emotional compe-tency is incorporated into the curriculum for fu-ture business leaders (Boyatzis, Cowen, & Kolb,1995) Although this program is not focusedexplicitly on emotions per se, these MBA stu-dents receive experiences designed to promoteinitiative, flexibility, achievement drive, empa-thy, self-confidence, persuasiveness, network-ing, self-control, and group management Com-munication and emotion-related skills also areincreasingly being incorporated into physiciantraining (Kramer, Ber, & Moores, 1989).Perhaps the workplace program that most ex-plicitly addresses itself to emotional intelligence

emo-is the Emotional Competency Training Program

at American Express Financial Advisors Thegoal of the program is to assist managers in be-coming “emotional coaches” for their employ-

ees The training focuses on the role of emotion

in the workplace and gaining an awareness of

how one’s own emotional reactions and the

emotions of others affect management practices

Although systematic evaluation of this program

has yet to be published, a higher business

growth rate (money under management) has

been found for the financial advisers whose

managers had taken the training program as

compared with those who had not (reported in

Cherniss, 1999)

Directions for Future Research

Despite the rapid growth of interest in

tional intelligence, the measurement of

emo-tional intelligence using ability-based indices is

still in an early stage Recently, as is inevitable

for a new concept, emotional intelligence has

re-ceived some criticism In particular, using an

ar-ray of available and, for the most part, poorly

validated instruments as the basis for analysis,

the construct validity of emotional intelligence

has been questioned (Davies et al., 1998) It

sim-ply is premature to draw any such conclusions

until investigators in our laboratory and other

laboratories have completed and validated the

appropriate ability-based measures of emotional

intelligence

The area of emotional intelligence is in need

of energetic investigators interested in helping

to refine the ability-based assessment of

emo-tional intelligence and, subsequently, studying

the predictive validity of emotional intelligence

(over and above other constructs) in accounting

for important outcomes in school, workplace,

family, and social relationships Given the

pres-ent status of instrumpres-ent developmpres-ent and

val-idation, we would encourage investigators to

fo-cus their energies on the refinement of ability

measures of emotional intelligence Although

we have been pleased with the MEIS and are

confident that its successor, the MSCEIT, will

be the measurement instrument of choice for

assessing emotional intelligence as an ability,

research needs to be conducted to measure

emo-tional intelligence with even greater precision

and with more easily administered and briefer

tests Further work also will be needed before

we can confidently claim that one method of

scoring—expert, target, or consensus—is

clearly more valid than the others And it will

be necessary to investigate whether tests of

emotional intelligence are culture-bound The

fact is, we are in the early phase of research onemotional intelligence, in terms of both mea-suring it as an ability and showing that suchmeasures predict significant outcomes

After refining the measurement of emotionalintelligence, we are hoping that many investi-gators will join us in exploring what this con-struct predicts, both as an overall ability and interms of an individual’s profile of strengths andweaknesses The domains in which emotionalintelligence may play an important part are lim-ited only by the imagination of the investigatorsstudying these abilities, and we are hoping tosee an explosion of research in the near futureestablishing when emotional intelligence is im-portant—perhaps more so than conventional in-telligence—and, of course, when it is not.Finally, and reflecting the theme of this vol-ume, positive psychology, attention will need to

be focused on how emotional intelligence can

be developed through the life span We suspectthat work on the teaching and learning ofemotion-related abilities might prove to be auseful counterpoint to the nihilistic conclusions

of books like The Bell Curve and instead, may

suggest all kinds of ways in which emotionallyenriching experiences could be incorporated intoone’s life We need to remind ourselves, how-ever, that work on emotional intelligence is still

in its infancy, and that what the field and eral public need are more investigators treating

gen-it wgen-ith serious empirical attention

Acknowledgments Preparation of this chapter

was facilitated by grants from the National cer Institute (R01-CA68427), the National In-stitute of Mental Health (P01-MH/DA56826),and the Donaghue Women’s Health Investiga-tor Program at Yale University to Peter Sa-lovey

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Emotional Creativity

Toward “Spiritualizing the Passions”

James R Averill

The relation between emotions and creativity is

complex and charged with ambivalence In

schools we try to encourage creativity, and in

the arts and sciences, we reserve our greatest

praise for its achievement A person, it seems,

cannot be too creative By contrast, a person

who is too prone to emotion risks being labeled

as immature, uncouth, boorish, or worse Even

our language seems to disparage emotions:

Most nonemotional words have a positive

con-notation; the opposite is true of emotional

words, where those with a negative connotation

outnumber those with a positive connotation by

roughly 2 to 1 (Averill, 1980b)

The way creativity and emotions are

evalu-ated in everyday affairs is reflected in our

sci-entific theories Psychologically, for example,

creativity is classed among the “higher”

thought processes, whereas emotions often are

treated as noncognitive—a psychological

euphe-mism for “lower” thought processes

Physio-logically, creativity is considered a neocortical

activity, whereas emotions are presumed to be

a manifestation of paleocortical and subcortical

regions of the brain Finally, from a biological

perspective, creativity is regarded as a late

ev-olutionary development, whereas the emotionsare treated as holdovers from our prehuman an-imal heritage

Before we take such contrasts too seriously, itmight be noted that the positive evaluation af-forded creativity is, to put it bluntly, tautologi-cal That is, only valued events and activities arelabeled as creative Moreover, the positive eval-uation is typically made post hoc Many innova-tions later judged as creative were condemned atthe time of their occurrence, and their authorsmay even have been persecuted The fate of Ga-lileo is only the most familiar example of a dis-tressingly common phenomenon

Similar observations can be made with spect to the emotions, but in reverse; that is,emotions that are viewed negatively or con-demned in the abstract often are encouraged inpractice For example, given an adequate prov-ocation, the person who fails to respond withanger, grief, fear, or jealousy (as the case maybe) is liable to be treated not as a morally su-perior human being but as shallow, at best, andperverted, at worst

re-In short, our everyday conceptions of tion and creativity can be misleading This is

emo-particularly true when emotions and creativity

are set in opposition to each other not only in

evaluative terms but also in terms of underlying

psychological processes The primary purpose of

this chapter is to present a contrary view, one

in which emotions themselves are seen as

cre-ative products A secondary purpose is reflected

in the subtitle to the chapter, “spiritualizing the

passions,” which I adopt from Nietzsche (1889/

1997, p 25) I will not speculate about

Nietz-sche’s meaning of this phrase; later, I offer my

own interpretation Suffice it to say that, as

used in this chapter, spiritualization has no

necessary ontological implications—a belief, for

example, in a nonmaterial mode of existence

Acts of creation—or re-creation, as in aesthetic

experiences (Averill, Stanat, & More, 1998;

Richards, 1998)—provide the reference point

for spiritualizing the passions as here

con-ceived.1

In addition to presenting a model of emotion

in which emotional creativity makes theoretical

sense, I review briefly some empirical research

on individual difference in emotional creativity,

with special reference to alexithymia and

mys-ticlike experiences—two conditions that

repre-sent low and high points along the continuum

of emotional creativity I also explore how

neu-rotic syndromes can be interpreted as emotional

creativity gone awry—a despiritualization of

the passions, so to speak

Historical Background in Brief

The idea of emotional creativity is a

straight-forward extension of a social-constructionist

view of emotion (Averill, 1980a, 1984; Averill

& Thomas-Knowles, 1991) It is not, however,

limited to any one theoretical perspective, as the

following brief sample of historical antecedents

indicates In his Varieties of Religious

Experi-ence, William James (1902/1961) observed,

“When a person has an inborn genius for

cer-tain emotions, his life differs strangely from

that of ordinary people” (p 215) This

obser-vation epitomizes a view of emotion that bears

little relation to the famous theory typically

as-sociated with James’s name (together with that

of the Danish physician Carl Lange) In the

lat-ter (James-Lange) theory, emotions are

attrib-uted to feedback from bodily responses; little

allowance is made for the type of emotional

ge-nius described by James in the Varieties I

would only add the following caveat to James’s

observation on emotional genius: Creativity inthe emotional domain is not limited to a fewindividuals of exceptional talent any more than

is creativity in the intellectual and artistic mains so limited

do-Two other past theorists deserve brief tion Otto Rank (1936/1978), an artist as well as

men-a disciple of Freud, believed thmen-at mmen-any neuroticsyndromes reflect creative impulses that are ex-pressed in ways detrimental to the individual In

a similar vein, but at the other end of theneurotic-healthy spectrum, Abraham Maslow(1971) distinguished between primary and sec-ondary creativity Routine scientific research andartistic production, which depend more on tech-nical competence and persistence than on origi-nal thought, exemplify the latter Primary crea-tivity, by contrast, is the ability to be inspired, tobecome totally immersed in the matter at hand,and to experience those “peak” moments that are

“a diluted, more secular, more frequent version

of the mystical experience” (p 62) Again, a veat is in order: Just as creativity is not limited to

ca-a few exceptionca-al individuca-als (geniuses), neitherare emotionally creative responses limited to afew extreme (peak or mystical) experiences

To bring this brief historical review up to date,note should be made of a number of conceptsthat bear a family resemblance to emotional cre-ativity, for example, emotional intelligence (Sa-lovey, Mayer, & Caruso, this volume), emo-tional competence (Saarni, 1999), and emotionalliteracy (Steiner, 1996) Also worthy of mentionare Gardner’s (1993) intra- and interpersonalintelligences and Epstein’s (1998) constructivethinking There are important differences in thetheoretical underpinnings to these concepts;what they have in common is an emphasis on thefunctional or adaptive aspects of emotional be-havior

A Model of Emotion

The theoretical model on which the present ysis is based is depicted in Figure 13.1 Becausethis model has been discussed in detail elsewhere(Averill, 1997, 1999a), I will outline it onlybriefly here Although our emotions are condi-tioned by our evolutionary history, biologicalpredispositions place only loose constraints onbehavior Beliefs and rules, the social analogue ofgenes, are of greater importance in organizing

anal-emotional syndromes and, ultimately, in the

ex-perience and expression of emotion

IMPLICIT THEORIES

(folk beliefs and rules)

Figure 13.1 Emotional syndromes, schemas, states,

and responses as related to one another and to

im-plicit (folk) theories of emotion

By emotional syndrome I mean those states

of affairs recognized in ordinary language by

such abstract nouns as anger, grief, and love.

Emotional syndromes are not intrapsychic

phe-nomena; rather, they are the folk equivalent of

the theoretical constructs found in formal

sci-entific theories In medicine, for example, one

can speak of smallpox as a syndrome, even

though no one is actually afflicted with the

dis-ease Succinctly put, the meaning of emotional

syndromes depends on a matrix of culturally

specific beliefs (implicit theories) about the

na-ture of emotion, just as the meaning of disease

syndromes depends on a matrix of beliefs

(sci-entific theories) about microbes, immunity,

ho-meostasis, and so on

There are, of course, important differences

between folk-theoretical concepts and the

con-cepts of scientific theories Among other things,

scientific concepts are (relatively) value free,

whereas folk concepts about emotion are valueladen That is, emotional concepts presume notonly beliefs about the nature of emotion per se

but also beliefs about how a person should

re-spond when emotional The latter beliefs stitute the rules of emotion

con-To the extent that emotional syndromes areconstituted by rules, they are analogous to so-cial roles (Averill, 1980a, 1990) Consider thefollowing episode of grief manifested by a Ki-owa woman at her brother’s funeral: “She wept

in a frenzy, tore her hair, scratched her cheeks,and even tried to jump into the grave” (LaBarre,

1947, p 55) Within most modern, ized societies, this would appear to be an exces-sive reaction even to the loss of a dear brother.According to LaBarre, however, the deceasedbrother was not dear to the woman—but nei-ther was her reaction excessive “I happened toknow,” he writes, “that [the woman] had notseen her brother for some time, and there was

industrial-no particular love lost between them: she wasmerely carrying on the way a decent womanshould among the Kiowa Away from the grave,she was immediately chatting vivaciously aboutsome other topic Weeping is used differentlyamong the Kiowas” (p 55)

Was the Kiowa woman merely playing therole of a grief-stricken sister? Not if we inter-pret “merely” to suggest that her performancewas feigned There is no reason to believe thatthe woman was insincere in her grief Meta-

phorically speaking, grief is a role that societies

create in order to facilitate transition followingbereavement and that people may enact withgreater or lesser involvement (Averill, 1979;Averill & Nunley, 1993) This is not to gainsaythe importance of biology—the tendency togrieve at the loss of a loved one is part of what

we are as a social species However, biologyonly prompts; it does not write the script.Returning now to the aspects of emotion de-picted in Figure 13.1, before a person can re-spond emotionally (enter into an emotionalrole), the relevant beliefs and rules must be in-

ternalized to form emotional schemas Because

of individual differences in temperament, cialization, and position in society, people inter-nalize with varying degrees of fidelity the be-liefs and rules that help constitute emotionalsyndromes; hence, even within the sameculture, no two individuals experience grief, orany other emotion, in exactly the same way

so-An emotional state is a temporary (episodic)

disposition to respond in a manner consistentwith an emotional syndrome, as that syndrome

is understood by the individual In personality

theory, the notion of a disposition is typically

used to refer to enduring traits, such as

extra-version But dispositions can be temporary and

reversible, in which case we speak of states

rather than traits

An emotional state is “switched on” when a

relevant emotional schema is activated by

conditions external (e.g., environmental events)

or internal (e.g., physiological arousal) to the

individual In simple, oft-recurring situations,

emotional schemas may exist preformed in the

mind (or brain) of the individual When the

situation is unusual and the episode complex,

however, emotional schemas are constructed

“on-line,” as an episode develops In

construct-ing a schema on-line, a person has recourse to

a large database of experience stored in

mem-ory, as well as general guidelines (beliefs

and rules) about the proper course of the

emo-tion Depending on the circumstances and the

person’s goals, only a subset of this stored

information may be accessed in a given

epi-sode Hence, even within the same individual,

no two episodes of grief, or of any other

emotion, will be experienced in exactly the

same way

Emotional responses are what a person does

when in an emotional state Instrumental acts

(e.g., hitting, running), physiological changes

(e.g., increased heart rate), and expressive

re-actions (e.g., smiling, frowning) are familiar

ex-amples of emotional responses The cognitive

appraisals or judgments that a person makes

about events (e.g., that an event is dangerous in

the case of fear) are also responses—a part of

the emotional syndrome and not simply an

an-tecedent condition (Solomon, 1993) In a similar

vein, feelings—the subjective experience of

emotion—can be considered responses a person

makes Like other subjective experiences (e.g.,

perceptual responses), emotional feelings can be

veridical or illusory (Averill, 1993)

Emotions as Creative Products

A reflexive, or bidirectional, relation exists

among emotional syndromes/schemas, states,

and responses, as illustrated by the curved

ar-rows at the right of Figure 13.1 As depicted in

the figure, emotional creativity can start with a

change in the beliefs and rules that help

con-stitute emotional syndromes; or it can start

from the bottom, with a change in behavior In

the latter case, alterations in beliefs and rules

may follow, first as a rationalization or post hoclegitimation for responses already made, andlater as a basis for further action Irrespective ofhow change is induced, whether from the topdown or from the bottom up, creativity mustultimately be judged by its product

In what ways can an emotion be a creativeproduct? A brief detour into the realm of artwill help us to address this question The sur-realists believed that any “found object” can be

a work of art if appropriately selected and played; the object itself need undergo little or

dis-no change in the process Marcel Duchamp’s use

of a porcelain urinal is a famous example Ofcourse, most artists (including Duchamp) arenot content simply to use an object as it is,whether found in nature or ready-made Morecommonly, a piece of wood or scrap metal, say,may be sculpted to give it representationalform, for example, as a commemorative mask

or statue Going further, an artist may breakwith tradition and develop a new form of ex-pression, one that may at first appear strangeand even “unnatural” within the cultural con-text (e.g., as with dadaism and abstract expres-sionism, in their inception)

The division between ready-made, tational, and revolutionary art does not nec-essarily correspond to three levels of creativity.Ready-made art can be highly creative, whereas

represen-a representrepresen-ationrepresen-al prepresen-ainting or sculpture, represen-though technically competent, may be unimag-inative And, needless to say, a radicallynew or untraditional form of expression neednot be judged creative simply because it is dif-ferent

al-This threefold distinction also applies to tions as creative products First, corresponding

emo-to ready-made art, emotional creativity may volve the particularly effective application of apreexisting emotion, or combinations of emo-tions Second, emotional creativity may involvethe modification (“sculpting”) of a standardemotion to better meet the needs of the indi-vidual or group Third, emotional creativitymay involve the development of new forms ofexpression, with fundamental changes in thebeliefs and rules by which emotional syndromesare constituted

in-Criteria for Judging an Object

as Creative

Creativity is not an inherent feature of certaintypes of behavior but a judgment made about

behavior This is true, incidentally, of emotion

as well as creativity A perennial debate among

theorists is whether emotions involve special

processes (e.g., an affect system distinct from a

cognitive system), or whether common

pro-cesses underlie both emotional and cognitive

be-havior Much depends, of course, on how

“emo-tion” and “cogni“emo-tion” are defined (cf Cacioppo

& Berntson, 1999) The model of emotion

pre-sented earlier (Figure 13.1) presumes no special

or uniquely emotional processes Terms such as

anger, fear, and love reflect judgments about

be-havior; they do refer to underlying mental or

physiological mechanisms This is a point worth

emphasizing, for it helps break down the barrier

so often erected between emotions and

presum-ably “higher” thought processes, including

cre-ativity

A similar special-versus common-process

de-bate occurs with respect to creativity There,

too, a common-process perspective would seem

adequate to account for known facts (Weisberg,

1986) But if not by reference to a special

pro-cess, how do we recognize a response as

crea-tive? The criteria are threefold—novelty,

ef-fectiveness, and authenticity

The criterion of novelty implies that

some-thing new is brought into being, somesome-thing that

did not exist before Novelty is thus a relative

concept; it presumes a standard of comparison

(that which existed before) That standard may

be a person’s own past behavior, or it may be

behavior of the group within which the person

lives The latter (group) comparison is more

common in the assessment of creativity;

how-ever, it is important to keep in mind that all

growth—to the extent that it is growth and not

mere alternation or substitution—involves

some novelty when compared with the

individ-ual’s own past behavior

A novel response may simply be bizarre To

be considered creative, the response must also

be effective—for example, aesthetically (as in

art), practically (as in technology), or

interper-sonally (as in leadership) Like novelty,

effect-iveness is a relative concept Nothing can be

ef-fective in and of itself but only within a context

As the context changes, so, too, may

effective-ness Thus, a response that is effective in the

short term may be ineffective in the long term,

and vice versa Similarly, a response that is

ef-fective for the individual may be inefef-fective for

the group, and vice versa

Finally, for a response to be considered

cre-ative, it should be an authentic expression of the

person’s own beliefs and values, and not a merecopy of others’ expectations This criterion hasbeen particularly emphasized by Arnheim(1966, p 298) with respect to works of art, but

it applies equally well to the emotions And, aswill be discussed more fully in a later section,authenticity is especially important in spiritu-alizing the passions For the moment, suffice it

to note that an emotion that is not a true thentic) reflection of a person’s own beliefs andvalues cannot be considered fully creative, nomatter how novel or effective

(au-Individual Differences in Emotional Creativity

In any given culture, some emotions are sidered more basic than others When viewedacross cultures, however, considerable variationcan be found among emotions, including theemotions considered most basic within Westerncultures (e.g., anger, fear, grief) This fact is not

con-in dispute, although its theoretical con-tion remains the topic of controversy (Ekman &Davidson, 1994) If we accept cultural variations

interpreta-as genuine, and not interpreta-as mere patina on the real

emotions, the question then becomes: How dosuch variations arise? The most parsimoniousanswer is: Through the accumulation and dif-fusion of typically small innovations made bycountless individuals In other words, culturalvariations presume emotional creativity on theindividual level

Not everyone is equally creative in the tional domain any more than in the intellectual

emo-or artistic domains Years of preparation aretypically required before creativity is achievedwithin the arts and sciences (Hayes, 1981;Weisberg, 1986) There is no reason to believethe situation to be different in the domain ofemotion Some people think about and try tounderstand their emotions, and they are sensi-tive to the emotions of others Such people, wemay presume, are on average better preparedemotionally than are their more indifferent—but not necessarily less reactive—counterparts

To explore individual differences in the ity to be emotionally creative, a 30-item Emo-tional Creativity Inventory (ECI) has been con-structed (Averill, 1999b) Seven of the itemsrefer to emotional preparedness The remainingitems address the three criteria for creativitydiscussed earlier Specifically, 14 items refer tothe novelty of emotional experiences; 5 to ef-

abil-Table 13.1 Sample Items from the Three Facets of the Emotional Creativity Inventory

Preparation (2 of 7 items)

When I have strong emotional reactions, I search for reasons for my feelings.

I pay attention to other people’s emotions so that I can better understand my own.

Novelty (4 of 14 items)

My emotional reactions are different and unique.

I have felt combinations of emotions that other people probably have never experienced.

I sometimes experience feelings and emotions that cannot be easily described in ordinary language.

I like to imagine situations that call for unusual, uncommon, or unconventional emotional reactions.

Effectiveness/Authenticity (3 of 9 items)

My emotions help me achieve my goals in life.

The way I experience and express my emotions helps me in my relationships with others.

My outward emotional reactions accurately reflect my inner feelings.

fectiveness; and 4 to authenticity Factor

anal-ysis indicates that the ECI can be broken down

into three facets The first facet comprises the

preparedness items; the second facet, the

nov-elty items; and the third facet, a combination of

the effectiveness and authenticity items

Sam-ple items from the three facets are presented in

Table 13.1

Scores on the ECI have been related to a

va-riety of behavioral and personality variables,

in-cluding peer ratings of emotional creativity, the

ability to express emotions in words and

pic-tures, and the “big five” personality traits

(Av-erill, 1999b; Gutbezahl & Av(Av-erill, 1996) I will

limit the present discussion to two variables of

particular relevance to this chapter, namely,

al-exithymia and mysticism The relevant data are

presented in Table 13.2

Alexithymia and the Language of

Emotion

Persons with alexithymia suffer from an

im-poverished fantasy life, a reduced ability to

ex-perience positive emotions, and poorly

differ-entiated negative affect (Taylor, 1994) The

Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) is

com-monly used to measure the condition (Bagby,

Parker, & Taylor, 1994) This scale consists of

three factors: Factor 1 assesses a person’s

diffi-culty identifying feelings as distinct, say, from

bodily sensations; Factor 2 reflects difficulty

de-scribing feelings or communicating feelings to

others; and Factor 3 indicates a preference for

externally oriented thinking, that is, a focus on

situational details as opposed to one’s own

thoughts and feelings The top half of Table

13.2 presents the correlations between the threefacets of the ECI (Preparedness, Novelty, andEffectiveness/Authenticity) and the three di-mensions of the TAS-20, based on a sample of

89 university students (see Averill, 1999b,Study 5, for details)

The data in Table 13.2 suggest that ally creative people differ from people with al-exithymia in every respect save one, namely,both have difficulty identifying and describingtheir emotional experiences, as indicated by thepositive association between the Novelty sub-scale of the ECI and the F1 and F2 factors of the

emotion-TAS-20 (r⫽ 39 and 18, respectively) ever, the source of the difficulty is different forthe two conditions For people with alexithymia,the difficulty stems from an impoverished innerlife; for emotionally creative persons, it stemsfrom the complexity and originality of their ex-periences As one of the items in the ECI reads,

How-“I would have to be a poet or novelist to scribe the kinds of emotions I sometimes feel,they are so unique.”

de-When describing events that lack emotional

content, people with alexithymia can be quitefluent, even poetic This sometimes makes it dif-ficult to distinguish alexithymia from emotionalcreativity Consider the following stanzas from

the poem No Platonique Love, by William

Cart-wright, a 17th-century Oxford don:

Tell me no more of minds embracingminds,

And hearts exchang’d for hearts;

That Spirits Spirits meet, as Winds doWinds

And mix their subt’lest parts;

Table 13.2 Correlations of the Emotional Creativity Inventory (ECI) with Alexithymia andMysticism Scales

That two unbodi’d Essences may kiss,

And then like Angels, twist and feel one

bliss

I was that silly thing that once was wrought

To practice this thin Love;

I climb’d from Sex to Soul, from Soul to

Thought;

But thinking there to move,

Headlong I roll’d from Thought to Soul,

and then

From Soul I lighted at the Sex agen.2

Pere´z-Rinco´n (1997) has used this poem to

illustrate alexithymia, presumably on the basis

of the poet’s—Cartwright’s—stated inability to

appreciate love abstractly, in Thought, but only

concretely, in Sex Based on the poem alone,

that is not an unreasonable interpretation From

the little we know of Cartwright’s life, however,

he was not at a loss for words in describing the

emotions: “Those wild beasts (the Passions)

be-ing tuned and composed to tameness and order,

by his sweet and harmonious language” (Lloyd,

1668, cited by Goffin, 1918, p xvii)

Cart-wright’s poem is like a reversible figure When

viewed from a different perspective, the image

it presents changes from a picture of

alexithy-mia to one of emotional creativity

Love—even the thick, sexual love touted by

Cartwright—does not just happen It requires

thought (preparation), and the quality of

thought makes a difference in the novelty,

ef-fectiveness, and authenticity of subsequent

be-havior Having “climb’d from Sex to Soul, from

Soul to Thought,” could Cartwright return to

Sex again, unchanged? Only if he were

suffer-ing a complete disjunction between thought and

feeling, a condition more akin to psychopathythan alexithymia More likely, Sex was trans-formed by Cartwright’s Thought into some-thing more than mere copulation; and, con-versely, his Thought was transformed by Sexinto something more than abstract contempla-tion

Poetry, it has long been recognized, is closelyallied to the emotions In the words of Words-worth (1805/1952), poetry is the “spontaneousoverflow of powerful feelings recollected intranquility” (p 84) Recollection, whether tran-quil or not, is only part of the story Poetry also

is oriented toward the future: “Until a man hasexpressed his emotions, he does not yet knowwhat emotion it is The act of expressing it istherefore an exploration of his own emotions

He is trying to find out what these emotionsare” (Collingwood, 1938/1967, p 111).Poetry is not the only means by which novelemotions may be given effective expression, butwords possess a special power in determiningthe realities as well as our ideas of emotion(Parkinson, 1995) Like a tree, language sendsits roots deep into the soil from which it drawssustenance, and the soil may be transformed inthe process Yet even at their poetic best, wordsare often insufficient to express some of ourmost profound and creative emotional experi-ences, including those that we might label mys-tical

Spirituality: The Mysticism ofEveryday Life

Full blown mystical experiences—the kind ported, say, by Meister Eckhart (translated byBlakney, 1941)—are as rare as they are difficult

re-Figure 13.2 Three characteristics of spiritual periences, as viewed from religious and secularperspectives.

ex-to describe In more mild degree, however,

mys-ticlike experiences are surprisingly common, if

not often discussed (Greeley, 1974; Laski, 1968)

The bottom half of Table 13.2 presents the

cor-relations, based on a sample of 91 university

students, between the ECI and a measure of

self-reported mystical experiences (Hood, 1975)

Hood’s scale comprises two dimensions: Factor

1, General Mysticism, emphasizes the unity of

experience, the transcendence of space and time,

the loss of ego boundaries, and a sense that all

things are alive; and F2, Religious

Interpreta-tion, emphasizes the holiness or sacredness of

experience, as well as feelings of peace and joy

As Table 13.2 indicates, the ECI total score was

associated (r⫽ 39) with the General Mysticism

subscale and (r⫽ 46) with the Religious

Inter-pretation subscale All three facets of the ECI

contributed to these relations, but particularly

Preparedness and Novelty.3

To place these results in a broader context, let

us return to Nietzsche’s call for “spiritualizing

the passions.” From a psychological perspective,

there are two ways of looking at spirituality

The first is as an emotional state per se,

repre-sented in extreme form by mystical

experi-ences.4 The second is as an attribute of other

emotional states, to the extent that they have

features in common with mystical experiences

Emotional creativity, I suggest, is associated not

only with the tendency toward mystical

expe-riences, as the data in Table 13.2 indicate, but

also with the tendency to imbue other, more

mundane emotions with mysticlike

character-istics

Three features are characteristic of mystical

states and hence to a spiritualization of the

pas-sions These are a sense of vitality,

connected-ness, and meaningfulness (Averill, 1999c) Each

of these features can be approached from either

a secular or a religious point of view, as

illus-trated in Figure 13.2

Vitality

In one of its most common usages, spirituality

implies a powerful force, especially one that has

creative or life-giving properties In animistic

religions, spirits may dwell in any object—a

volcano, say, or a tree or even a rock—from

whence they venture forth to influence human

affairs, for good or ill However, we need not

reify spiritual feelings into spiritual beings

From a secular perspective, spirituality (in the

sense of vitality) implies a creative attitude The

person who is “free spirited” is adventurous and

open to new experiences But vitality also can

be manifested in more tranquil states; tion, for example, provides opportunities forgrowth and inner exploration in the absence ofhigh arousal

medita-Connectedness

One of the most ubiquitous features of mysticalexperiences is a feeling of union or harmonywith another (Huxley, 1985) Sexual love andthe love of a parent for a child are commonmetaphors for such a feeling The “other” withwhich one unites need not be a person; it may

be conceived broadly as an ethnic or culturalgroup, humanity as a whole, nature, or even theground of all being (cf the Buddhist concept ofBrahman) And when the other is a person, thatperson need not be physically present—or evenexist For example, it is not uncommon to feel

a strong connection to a deceased parent orchild, or to a religious or political personage,real or mythic But no matter how the other isconceived, feelings of connectedness bring asense of completion or wholeness to the self; or,perhaps more accurately, connectedness brings

a sense of self-transcendence, an identificationwith something beyond the self

Meaningfulness

Spiritual experiences are deeply felt, even transforming Like an encrypted message, themeaning of the experience may not be imme-

life-diately apparent, but this only adds a sense of

mystery and awe, which furthers the feeling of

spirituality From a religious perspective,

reve-lation and scripture are typically used to help

decipher the meaning of spiritual experiences,

however opaquely From a secular perspective,

science, art, and literature serve similar

func-tions

It might be thought that most emotions

au-tomatically fulfill these three criteria for

spiri-tuality A person devoid of emotion is

consid-ered “lifeless,” unable to make human

connections, and superficial In science fiction,

extraterrestrial beings (e.g., the “pods” in

In-vasion of the Body Snatchers or the automaton

in Terminator 2) often are given the ability to

think rationally but not to experience real

emo-tions Figuratively, they lack “soul” and hence

never can be fully human

As noted in the introduction to this chapter,

however, emotions often are presented in a

dif-ferent, less flattering light—for example, as the

animal in human nature, to be tamed and

reg-ulated by presumably “higher” (i.e., rational)

thought processes In everyday discourse, too,

emotions often are depicted as alien to the self

For example, a common excuse for otherwise

indefensible behavior is “I couldn’t help it; I was

overcome by emotion.”

One way to get around this ambivalent, even

self-contradictory, view of emotion is to

distin-guish between two kinds of emotional

experi-ences—those that are considered true and those

that are considered spurious This distinction is

epitomized by the hackneyed phrase “Get in

touch with your true feelings.” But what is a

“true feeling,” the kind of emotion that pods

and automata cannot have? That question was

addressed in a study by Morgan and Averill

(1992), and the following is a greatly

abbrevi-ated answer: People judge as true those

emo-tions that relate to their core beliefs and values,

that help define who they are as individuals

To be more specific, “true feelings” typically

occur during periods of challenge or transition,

when fundamental values and beliefs must

ei-ther be amended or reaffirmed The breakup of

a love relationship is an example The initial

stage of an episode is typically marked by

con-fusion, depression, and anxiety These provide

the affective context out of which true feelings

emerge, as resolution is achieved The feelings

that are ultimately judged as true are difficult

to describe; typically, they represent an

amal-gam of more specific emotions, such as love,

an-ger, and pride But regardless of the specificemotions involved, the true feelings, when they

do emerge, are deeply and intensely felt; theyreflect a state of clarification and resolve, an af-firmation of values and self-worth

In more colloquial terms, then, it might besaid that “spiritualizing the passions” requiresthat one’s emotions be rendered “true,” that is,integrated with the beliefs and values that helpconstitute a person’s evolving sense of self, both

as an individual and in relation to others This

is a creative process—a creativity in the service

of the self But integration is not easilyachieved, and when achieved, it is in need ofconstant repair Emotional truths realized in onesituation may lose their validity as circum-stances change Spiritualizing the passions musttherefore be viewed as a process, not an end;moreover, it is a process fraught with difficul-ties Saint John of the Cross (1618/1987) de-scribed the “dark nights” through which thesoul must pass on its way to mystical unionwith God Mystics the world over have de-scribed similar turmoil, albeit in terms appro-priate to their own cultural context In the moremundane world of everyday affairs, some strifeand discord, both within the self and betweenthe self and others, also can be expected when

“spiritualizing the passions.” This is a topic towhich I will return in the conclusion to thischapter.5

Applications

If self-realization and expansion involve a itualization of the passions, neuroses of manytypes—not just alexithymia—might be charac-terized as a form of despiritualization Neuroticsyndromes not only are deficient in the featuresdescribed earlier for spiritualization (vitality,connectedness, and meaningfulness) but also arecontrary to the three criteria for emotional cre-ativity discussed earlier (novelty, effectiveness,and authenticity) Neurotic behavior—for ex-ample, a hysterical conversion reaction—may

spir-be unique (abnormal) in terms of group norms;however, it ceases to be novel from the individ-ual’s perspective as it becomes uncontrollableand unyielding to change Neurotic behavioralso is ineffective, at least in the long term, and

is not a true or authentic reflection of the dividual’s desires and values It follows, then,that much of psychotherapy is an exercise inemotional creativity (Averill & Nunley, 1992;

in-Nunley & Averill, 1996) This suggests that

some of the techniques used to foster creativity

in other settings (Nickerson, 1999) might be

fruitfully incorporated into psychotherapy

These techniques fall into four broad categories:

(a) preparedness—gaining knowledge and

ex-pertise within a domain; (b)

motivation—culti-vating a desire to innovate on what is known,

and a willingness to take risks; (c) imagination—

learning to envision new approaches and

reali-ties; and (d) self-monitoring—guiding and

as-sessing one’s own efforts for effectiveness But

more than new techniques, emotional creativity

suggests a different way of looking at the

emo-tions and their disorders Most therapies still

treat the emotions (at least the “basic”

emo-tions) as primitive reactions that may be

regu-lated but not fundamentally altered That belief

can become a self-fulfilling prophecy

The applications of emotional creativity are

not limited to psychotherapy To a certain

ex-tent, we are all emotional Luddites—we find it

difficult to adjust to change To illustrate,

con-duct the following thought experiment What

emotional adjustments would you have to make

if you and others around you were to live to be

150 to 200 years old? Could you remain

faith-fully married to the same person for over 100

years, “until death do you part”? How long

might you remain in a career before you were

burned out or sought other challenges?

Ques-tions such as these could easily be multiplied,

but there is no need The point is simply that

major accommodations would be required on

both the individual and social levels For

ex-ample, “family values” would take on new

meanings; the educational system would have

to be reorganized to accommodate the return of

(really) older students; current disputes over

is-sues such as retirement and social security

would pale by comparison (academics, in

partic-ular, would have to rethink tenure); and, if the

reduction in the death rate were not matched

by a corresponding reduction in the birth rate,

overpopulation in the developed parts of the

world would make present-day Bangladesh

seem like a wilderness area

Such a thought experiment is not mere fancy

Advances in genetic engineering and medicine

may eventually double the human life span;

much of the scientific knowledge is in place, and

its feasibility has been demonstrated in lower

(invertebrate) organisms The extension to

mammals and ultimately humans seems more a

matter of when, not if (Kolata, 1999) Referring

to that eventuality, John Harris (2000), whoholds the Sir David Alliance Chair of Bioethics

at the University of Manchester, has advisedthat “we should start thinking now about how

we can live decently and creatively with theprospect of such lives” (p 59)

In some respects, the future is already upon

us In most industrialized countries, the elderlyrepresent the fastest growing segment of thepopulation And with advanced age comes manychallenges with which people must cope: retire-ment, failing health, loss of loved ones, to namebut a few Fortunately, the elderly may be morecreative in meeting such challenges than popu-lar stereotypes suggest

The 19th-century French author George Sand(pseudonym of Aurore Dudevant) epitomizessuccessful aging Shortly after her 67th birth-day, Sand wrote to her friend and fellow authorGustave Flaubert: “On the day I decided to putyouth behind me I immediately felt twentyyears younger You’ll say the bark of the treestill has to bear the ravages of time I don’tmind that—the core is sound and the sap goes

on doing its work, as in the old apple trees in

my garden; the more gnarled they grow themore fruit they bear” (letter of 23 July 1871, inSteegmuller & Bray, 1993, p 234) A few yearslater, Sand advised Flaubert (who was 17 yearsher junior): “Before long, you will gradually beentering upon the happiest and most propitiouspart of life: old age It’s then that art revealsitself in all its sweetness, in our youth it man-ifests itself in anguish” (letter of 12 January

1876, in Steegmuller & Bray, 1993, p 384).Sand believed that when you are old, you lovepeople and things for what they are, not forwhat they might contribute to your own futurewell-being

Research by Carstensen and colleagues (e.g.,Carstensen, Isaacowitz, & Charles, 1999) sug-gests that Sand was not unusual in her opti-mistic outlook toward old age These investi-gators have found that older people tend to livemore complex, more meaningful, and betterregulated emotional lives than do their youngercontemporaries, at least before the ravages of illhealth and possible onset of senility take theirtoll Particularly relevant to our present con-cerns, successful aging appears to be facilitated

by a creative attitude toward life (Smith & vander Meer, 1997).6

Of course, not every person ages gracefully.Flaubert, for one, did not “I have always lived

my life from day to day, without plans for the

future, pursuing my goal—my only

goal—lit-erature—looking neither to the left nor right!”

he complained to Sand “Everything that

ex-isted around me has disappeared, and I find

my-self in a desert” (letter of 10 May 1875, in

Steegmuller & Bray, 1993, p 367)

Creativity is not a unitary attribute that

au-tomatically infuses all aspects of a person’s life

In the art of writing, Flaubert was more creative

than Sand, but not in the art of living In her

younger years, Sand often scandalized her

con-temporaries with her unabashed affairs and

un-conventional behavior; when she grew older,

she relished the company of her family and

friends (without forgoing an occasional tryst)

Flaubert, by contrast, led an eremitic existence,

allowing himself few worldly pleasures His

cre-ativity was almost entirely intellectual; he was

a sensitive and astute spectator of life, but

sel-dom an active participant

The preceding observations on creativity and

aging are illustrative of a larger issue Increased

life expectancy, with the attendant problems of

old age, is only one change wrought by science

and technology to which people will have to

ad-just in the coming decades and centuries In a

rapidly changing world, emotional creativity is

more than an academic curiosity; it is

indispen-sable to social and psychological well-being

Conclusions

Psychology, with its emphasis on the causes and

amelioration of human suffering, has been

crit-icized for focusing on the negative; this

hand-book serves as a welcome counterbalance to that

focus Psychological well-being, however, is not

simply the absence of suffering; rather, it

in-volves an active engagement in the world, a

sense of meaning or purpose in life, and

con-nection to persons or objects beyond oneself

These characteristics help define the spiritual

di-mension of human experience; they also

pre-sume the ability to be creative—emotionally as

well as intellectually

Emotional creativity has potential drawbacks

as well as benefits “Every act of creation,”

Pi-casso observed, “is first of all an act of

destruc-tion” (quoted in May, 1975, p 63) In the case

of emotional creativity, familiar ways of

re-sponding may be disrupted, established personal

relationships dissolved, and customary values

discarded This last is perhaps the most

porten-tous act of destruction, for it threatens the fabric

of society as well as the self

Emotions embody the values of a society If,for example, you strip all connotations of rightand wrong, of good and bad, from concepts such

as love, anger, grief, and fear, you also strip

them of much of their meaning Hence, any tempt to change an emotion in fundamentalways calls into question the values embodied bythe emotion, and it will be met with resistance,even condemnation This is true even when thechange is lauded in the abstract, as might beexpected with regard to spiritualizing the pas-sions Many mystics, for instance, have beencondemned in their lifetimes as heretics Mys-tical experiences tend to transcend ideologicalboundaries and hence pose a threat to acceptedcreeds Claims to authenticity—a hallmark ofspirituality as well as creativity—only exacer-bate the apostasy In such instances, recognition

at-of the experience as effective may be long layed—until there is a change in creed or theexperience itself is given new meaning withinestablished dogma

de-Condemnation of emotional innovation isnot limited to mystics and their inquisitors.Nietzsche’s call for a spiritualization of the pas-sions was not met with resounding approba-tion, even though his focus was on the moremundane emotions of everyday life And, on aless philosophical plane, the emotional experi-mentation that marked the counterculture ofthe 1960s was roundly condemned at the time,even while the larger society was adoptingsome of its practices

The resistance of society to changes in tion, and hence in values, is not without war-rant Like genetic mutations, most emotionalinnovations may be harmful rather than bene-ficial Some weeding out is necessary What cri-teria should guide selection? This is not a ques-tion that is easily answered in advance Aboutall that can be said with certainty is that if se-lection is too lenient, anarchy will result; if toosevere, stagnation As history amply attests, aproper balance between anarchy and stagnation

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Cognitive-Focused Approaches

Creativity

Dean Keith Simonton

People are almost universal in their appreciation

of creativity (Sternberg & Lubart, 1996) This

is true in home and at school, and whether at

work or at play Rarely is creativity perceived

as a negative quality for a person to possess

Likewise, people vary considerably in the

mag-nitude of creativity that they can or usually do

display Whereas some students put together

rather humdrum papers and projects, others

fulfill the same course requirements with

im-pressive imagination and wit While some

in-ventors may rest content with making minor

improvements in already established

technolo-gies, others devise revolutionary inventions that

dramatically transform our daily lives

Creativity is so highly valued as a human

re-source that most modern societies have special

means to encourage those of its citizens who

exhibit creative behavior At the most basic

level, patent and copyright laws have been

im-plemented so as to allow individuals to enjoy

the fruits of their creative labors At an even

higher level of creative achievement, there are

the honors and awards bestowed upon the most

outstanding exemplars of creativity Thus, the

Nobel Prizes are awarded to the best creators in

the sciences and literature, and each major

lit-erary tradition will have its own set of special

prizes recognizing their best writers (Pulitzer,

Cervantes, Goethe, etc.) Likewise, the AcademyAwards and Golden Globe Awards are granted

to those who create the most notable films.The worth of creative behavior may evencontinue to be recognized long after the creatorhas died If the accomplishment is truly excep-tional, the creator may “go down in history” as

a “creative genius.” These are people who haveleft a “name behind,” such as Aristotle, Des-cartes, Shakespeare, Michelangelo, and Beetho-ven Indeed, these names often are taken as in-dicative of the creative vitality of any givencivilization at a particular point in time (Gray,1966; Kroeber, 1944; Simonton, 1997b) When

a culture is overflowing with eminent creators,

it is said to exhibit a “golden age,” whereaswhen examples of creative genius become fewand far between, the culture is said to have en-tered a “dark age.” Hence, creativity often isviewed as a human capacity that has both in-dividual and sociocultural utility and value.Given the foregoing considerations, it is im-possible to imagine the emergence of a bona fidepositive psychology that does not include crea-tivity among its topics I subsequently will ex-amine what psychologists know about this cru-cial phenomenon I begin by narrating thehistory of the concept, and then discuss howcreativity can be measured Next, I review some

of the key empirical findings, as well as some

of the central theoretical issues After treating

some of the practical applications, I close by

suggesting the prospects for future work on the

topic of creativity

History of Creativity

To paraphrase what Ebbinghaus (1908, p 3)

once said of psychology, creativity has a long

past but a short history, especially as a research

topic in psychology There is insufficient space

to do any more than provide a sketch here, but

fortunately more detailed narratives have been

published elsewhere (e.g., Albert & Runco,

1999) I begin by discussing the history of

cre-ativity as a recognized human behavior and

then trace the history of psychological research

on the topic

The Origins of Creativity as a

Cultural Phenomenon

Given the manifest importance of creativity, it

is rather surprising to learn that it is actually a

somewhat recent concept It is not listed among

the classic human virtues, for example The

phi-losophers of ancient Greece listed prudence,

temperance, fortitude, and justice, whereas the

Christian theologians added faith, hope, and

love—but creativity is overlooked entirely Part

of the reason for this neglect is that creativity

originally was conceived as a defining

charac-teristic of an omnipotent divine creator rather

than an attribute of mere fragile mortals In the

biblical book of Genesis, for instance, God is

portrayed as the Creator of the cosmos, the

earth, and all life Indeed, almost every culture

possesses creation myths in which their gods

have this very function and capacity

Even when individual humans were seen as

the locus of creative activity, the causal agents

still sprung from a spiritual world This linkage

is apparent in the Greek doctrine of the Muses

There was a Muse for all major creative

activi-ties of classical times, including heroic or epic

poetry, lyric and love poetry, sacred poetry,

tragedy, comedy, music, dance, and even

as-tronomy and history The corresponding Muse

was thought to provide a guiding spirit or

source of inspiration for the mortal creator This

usage underlies several commonplace

expres-sions, such as to say that one has lost one’s

muse when one has run out of creative ideas

The Romans are responsible for a conceptthat is closely related to creativity—that of ge-nius According to Roman mythology, each in-dividual was born with a guardian spirit whowatched out for the person’s fate and distinctiveindividuality With time, the term was taken toindicate the person’s special talents or aptitudes.Although in the beginning everybody could besaid to “have a genius,” at least in the sense ofpossessing a unique capacity, the term eventu-ally began to be confined to those whose giftsset them well apart from the average The ex-pression “creative genius” thus unites two con-cepts with Greek and Roman roots pertaining tohow the spiritual world permeates human af-fairs Outstanding creativity was the gift of thegods or spirits, not a human act Even duringthe Italian Renaissance, when European civili-zation was becoming secularized by the advent

of humanism, rudiments of this ascription main In Vasari’s classic (a 1550/1968, p 347)

re-Lives of the Painters, Sculptors, and Architects,

for example, we can read how “the great Ruler

of Heaven looked down” and decided “to send

to earth a genius universal in each art.” Thisperson would be endowed with such specialqualities that his works would seem “rather di-vine than earthly.” Vasari was speaking of Mi-chelangelo

With the increased secularization of pean thought, however, the causal locus of cre-ativity gradually moved away from the spiritual

Euro-to the human world Once this cultural shifttook place, the phenomenon became the subject

Abraham Maslow (1959), and Rollo May

(1975)

Although several psychologists touched upon

this topic, the one who deserves more credit

than any other for emphasizing creativity as a

critical research topic is the psychometrician

J P Guilford (1950) His address as president of

the American Psychological Association, which

was published in a 1950 issue of American

Psy-chologist, is often considered a “call to arms”

on behalf of this overlooked subject More

im-portant, Guilford made many direct

contribu-tions to the research literature, most notably by

devising widely used instruments for assessing

individual differences in creativity (Guilford,

1967) In the latter half of the 20th century, the

interest in creativity steadily grew and

diversi-fied such that researchers were covering a fairly

wide range of subtopics (Feist & Runco, 1993)

Following a minor lull in activity in the 1970s,

creativity research has attained new heights in

the 1980s and 1990s (Simonton, 1999a) This

growth is demonstrated by (a) the advent of

several creativity handbooks (e.g., Glover,

Ron-ning, & Reynolds, 1989; Runco, 1997;

Stern-berg, 1999); (b) the appearance in 1988 of the

Creativity Research Journal, which

comple-mented the Journal of Creative Behavior

founded previously in 1967; and (c) the 1999

publication of the two-volume Encyclopedia of

Creativity (Runco & Pritzker, 1999) Indeed,

creativity now can be considered as a legitimate

topic for scientific inquiry in mainstream

psy-chological research

Measurement Approaches

Before a concept can be measured, it first must

be defined Fortunately, at least in the abstract,

there is virtually universal agreement on what

creativity is In particular, creativity usually is

said to entail the generation of ideas that fulfill

the two following conditions:

1 Creativity must be original These days,

no one can be called “creative” who decides to

“reinvent the wheel,” nor can one earn that

as-cription for writing the lines “To be, or not to

be.” Creative ideas are novel, surprising,

un-expected—sometimes even shocking

Original-ity is a necessary but not sufficient criterion for

creativity, which brings us to the second

con-dition

2 Creativity must be adaptive Someone

who decides to make a blimp out of solid

con-crete can no doubt claim considerable ity, but whether this strange idea “can fly” isquite a different matter Similarly, someonemay propose a highly unusual advertising slo-gan like “The worst wurst in the West,” butwhether that phrase will convince potential con-sumers to buy more of that brand of sausage ishighly unlikely

original-Given the general definition of creativity as

“adaptive originality,” how can it be best sured? This turns out to be difficult Creativityresearchers have not agreed on the optimal in-strument for assessing individual differences onthis trait (Hocevar & Bachelor, 1989) The rea-son for this lack of consensus is that creativitycan manifest itself in three distinct ways First,creativity may be viewed as some kind of men-

mea-tal process that yields adaptive and original

ideas (e.g., Sternberg & Davidson, 1995; Ward,Smith, & Vaid, 1997) Second, it can be seen as

a type of person who exhibits creativity (e.g.,

Gardner, 1993; Wallace & Gruber, 1989) Third,creativity can be analyzed in terms of the con-

crete products that result from the workings of

the creative process or person (e.g., Martindale,1990; Simonton, 1980, 1998b) Each of thesethree manifestations suggests rather distinctmeasures, as will become apparent next

The Creative Process

If the emphasis is on the thought processes thatyield creative ideas, then the best assessmentapproach should be to tap individual differences

in access to these processes This was the proach adopted by Guilford (1967), who began

ap-by proposing a profound distinction between

two kinds of thinking Convergent thought

in-volves the convergence on a single correct sponse, such as is characteristic of most aptitude

re-tests, like those that assess intelligence gent thought, in contrast, entails the capacity to

Diver-generate many alternative responses, includingideas of considerable variety and originality.Guilford and others have devised a large num-ber of tests purported to measure the capacityfor divergent thinking (e.g., Torrance, 1988;Wallach & Kogan, 1965) Typical is the Alter-nate Uses test, in which the subject must come

up with many different ways of using a mon object, such as a paper clip or brick.Another test that views the creative process

com-in a manner similar to divergent thcom-inkcom-ing is theRemote Associates Test, or RAT, of Mednick(1962) This test was based on the premise that

creativity involves the ability to make rather

re-mote associations between separate ideas

Highly creative individuals were said to have a

flat hierarchy of associations in comparison to

the steep hierarchy of associations of those with

low creativity A flat associative hierarchy

means that for any given stimulus, the creative

person has numerous associations available, all

with roughly equal probabilities of retrieval

Because such an individual can generate many

associative variations, the odds are increased

that he or she will find that one association that

will make the necessary remote connection The

RAT can therefore be said to operate according

to an implicit variation-selection model of the

creative process

Many investigators have tried to validate

these divergent-thinking tests against other

cri-teria of creative performance (see, e.g.,

Cram-mond, 1994) Although the researchers in these

validation studies have had some modicum of

success, it also has become clear that generalized

tests do not always have as much predictive

va-lidity as tests more specifically tailored to a

par-ticular domain of creativity (Baer, 1993, 1994;

for discussion, see Baer, 1998; Plucker, 1998)

Creativity in music, for example, is not going

to be very predictable on the basis of how many

uses one can imagine for a toothpick

The Creative Person

To the extent that the content of the creative

process is domain specific, it would seem

nec-essary to construct as many creativity

instru-ments as there are creative domains

Fortu-nately, an alternative psychometric tactic exists

that is based on the assumption that the creative

individual is distinctively different in various

personal characteristics Especially pertinent is

the evidence that creative people display

per-sonality profiles that depart from those of the

average person (Barron & Harrington, 1981;

Martindale, 1989; Sternberg & Lubart, 1995)

Creative personalities tend to possess those

characteristics that would most favor the

pro-duction of both numerous and diverse ideas In

particular, creative individuals tend to be

inde-pendent, nonconformist, unconventional, even

bohemian; they also tend to have wide interests,

greater openness to new experiences, and a

more conspicuous behavioral and cognitive

flex-ibility and boldness (see Simonton, 1999a) The

only major complication in this general picture

is that the personality profiles of artistic creators

tend to differ noticeably from those of scientific

creators (Feist, 1998) In a nutshell, the creativescientists tend to fall somewhere between thecreative artists and noncreative personalities interms of their typical traits

Not surprising given these results, severalmeasures of creativity are based on personalityscales, such as the 16 Personality Factor Ques-tionnaire (e.g., Cattell & Butcher, 1968) or theAdjective Check List (e.g., Gough, 1979) Yetthis is not the only person-based assessmentstrategy Presumably, the personality contrastsbetween creative and noncreative individualsmay partially reflect significant differences intheir biographical characteristics, including fam-ily background, educational experiences, and ca-reer activities As a consequence, some psy-chometricians have designed instruments based

on biographical inventories (e.g., Schaefer &Anastasi, 1968; Taylor & Ellison, 1967) For in-stance, creative persons often report havingmuch broader interests and a wider range ofhobbies than is the case for their less creativecolleagues

The Creative Product

Because process- and person-based creativitymeasures are relatively easy to design and ad-minister, the bulk of the literature on creativityhas tended to use them Yet one might arguethat the ultimate criterion of whether someonecan be considered creative is whether or not thatindividual has successfully generated a productthat meets both requirements of creative behav-ior—originality and adaptiveness This product-based assessment is more direct and objective,but it also has more than one operational defi-nition One approach is to simply ask individ-uals to identify what they would consider sam-ples of their creative activities, such as poems,paintings, and projects (e.g., Richards, Kinney,Lunde, Benet, & Merzel, 1988a) Another ap-proach is to have research participants generatecreative products under controlled laboratoryconditions and then have these products evalu-ated by independent judges (e.g., Amabile,1982; Smith, Ward, & Finke, 1995; Sternberg &Lubart, 1995) These two operational definitionshave the advantage that they are best designed

to assess individual differences in more day forms of the phenomenon

every-Yet it is obvious that at higher levels of ative activity, the investigator can go beyond aparticipant’s self-report or a judge’s subjectiveevaluation Inventors hold patents, scientistspublish journal articles, dramatists write plays,