The cost of creativity anxiety

You’re in a creative brainstorm and someone puts you on the spot. Does your brain crank into action, or do you freeze? If it’s the latter, you might be experiencing creativity anxiety.

Creativity anxiety is a distinct form of trait anxiety that emerges at the prospect of having to be creative. Recently identified by a group of psychologists (Daker et al, 2020), it’s more common in women – although men can experience it too.??

It’s important to be aware of, because creativity is an essential skill in many lines of work. From coming up with campaign ideas to solving complex problems, we are often expected to be creative ‘on tap’. And those that struggle may be considered less creative than their more confident counterparts, and have fewer opportunities to contribute as a result.??

But creative talent could be going to waste - with my own research (Bullock Muir et al, 2023) suggesting that creativity anxiety is a cause rather than a consequence of lower creative achievement. ?

We invited over a hundred participants to complete two separate word association tasks, one after the other. In both, they were instructed to respond to a series of cues with the first word that came to mind. At the start of the second task, they were told that this one was designed to measure their creativity – creating a subtle form of creative pressure intended to imitate real world demands.

We measured creativity by calculating the semantic distance between cues and responses. Put simply, semantic distance means ‘how much does A have to do with B?’, and its use as a creativity measure is rooted in Mednick’s (1962) associative theory of creativity. This suggests that our ability to think creatively depends upon the strength of the associations in our knowledge base. The looser our associations, the more easily we’re able to make new connections, which can translate to novel ideas.????

Generally, participants produced more creative responses when they were told that the task was designed to measure their creativity. So, creative pressure can be a good thing. However, this effect was much smaller among those who scored highly in our creativity anxiety scale – suggesting that the creative pressure was hindering this group’s ability to think outside the box.??

It’s important to note here that this effect couldn’t be attributed to differences in baseline creativity levels. In fact, although not statistically significant, a numerical trend in our data suggested that the participants with higher creativity anxiety were more, rather than less, creative following the first instruction than those with lower creativity anxiety.??

This is critical, because it puts to bed the idea that people might experience anxiety at the prospect of being creative because they simply aren’t very creative. Instead, it suggests that organisations could be overlooking team members with huge creative potential, because their current ways of working are preventing them from tapping into this. ?

Given the inherent value of creativity, organisations should strive to create an environment that enables everyone to thrive. Remember that the perception of creative pressure is subjective. One person’s motivating challenge is another’s anxiety-provoking threat. This has implications for everything from the way decisions are made and brainstorms are run to the use of creativity tests during the recruitment process.??

And if you’re someone who experiences creativity anxiety yourself, let go of your ‘I’m just not a very creative person’ mantra. Be curious about your experience. Notice the conditions that cause your anxiety to flare up and consider steps you can take to address these. Perhaps you need to be briefed differently. Maybe you need more time or a different environment to unlock your best thinking. Or maybe you need to change the way you talk to yourself, to take some of that anxiety-inducing pressure away.??

I run creativity workshops that arm teams with the tools and confidence to come up with new ideas. For more personalised support, coaching helps individuals to understand and challenge belief systems that may be holding them back.???

You can read my full article in the Creativity Research Journal here.??

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