Emotional creativity refers to a set of cognitive abilities and personality traits related to the originality of emotional experience and expression. Previous studies have found that emotional creativity can positively predict posttraumatic growth and mental health. The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has posed great challenges to people’s daily lives and their mental health status. Therefore, this study aims to address the following two questions: whether emotional creativity can improve posttraumatic growth and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic and (...) how it works. To do this, a multiple mediation model has been proposed, which supposes that emotional creativity is associated with posttraumatic growth and mental health through perceived social support and regulatory emotional self-efficacy. The study involved 423 participants from multiple regions with different COVID-19 involvement levels. Participants were asked to complete a questionnaire with six parts, which included Emotional Creativity Inventory (ECI), Regulatory Emotional Self-Efficacy Scale (RES), Stress-Related Growth Scale-Short Form (SRGS-SF), Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support scale (MSPSS), Brief Symptom Inventory-18 scale (BSI-18), and COVID-19-related life events questionnaire. Path analysis used to examine the mediation model indicated that under the control of COVID-19-related life events and age, perceived social support mediated a positive association between emotional creativity and posttraumatic growth as well as a negative association between emotional creativity and all mental health problems, including somatization, depression, and anxiety. Regulatory emotional self-efficacy mediates the association between emotional creativity and posttraumatic growth, emotional creativity and anxiety, and emotional creativity and depression. The results suggest that emotional creativity plays an important role in coping with stressful events related to COVID-19. Furthermore, these results might provide a better understanding of the possible paths through which emotional creativity is related to psychological outcomes, such as mental health and posttraumatic growth. (shrink)

With the outbreak of the COVID-19 crisis, the public keeps getting epidemic-related information on the media. News reports on the increasing number of fatalities have exposed individuals to death, which causes negative emotional experiences such as tension, anxiety, and fear. This study aimed to investigate whether creativity could serve as an anxiety-buffer when mortality is salient. Based on previous findings, the present study utilized type of creative task and personal search for meaning as moderators. In Study 1, a 2 × (...) 2 between-subject design was utilized, and 168 subjects were randomly assigned to four experimental conditions. In Study 2, 221 subjects were recruited. The experimental procedure was similar to Study 1, except that the priming paradigm of mortality was changed and search for meaning was included as an additional moderating variable. State anxiety was measured as the dependent variable in both studies. Results of Study 1 showed that, while the benevolent creative task could buffer anxiety in the mortality salience condition, the malevolent creative task did not have the same effect. Furthermore, there was a significant interaction between mortality salience, type of creative task, and search for meaning in life on anxiety. In Study 2, the buffering function of benevolent creativity was more intense for participants with a higher level of search for meaning. Together, these findings reveal the influence of different types of creative tasks on individual anxiety levels under death priming conditions and the moderating effect of search for meaning in this relationship. Further, they suggest the need to focus on the role of creativity in terror management. (shrink)