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Soghra Akbari charmihani

Soghra Akbari charmihani

Academic rank: Associate Professor
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7025-0203
Education: PhD.
ScopusId: 35745489900
HIndex:
Faculty: Humanities
Address: Arak University
Phone:

Research

Title
Positive Mood and Creative thinking
Type
Presentation
Keywords
Divergent thinking, Convergent thinking, Mood induction, Dopamine, Eye Blink Rate
Year
2015
Researchers Soghra Akbari charmihani

Abstract

In this study two experiments were conducted to identify the optimal conditions for divergent ‎and convergent thinking. Two different thinking styles were considered as two different types of ‎creativity: divergent thinking (measured by Alternative Used Task; Guilford, ‎ 1967 ‎) and ‎convergent thinking (measured by Remote Associate Task; Mednick, ‎ 1962 ‎). In the first ‎experiment we studied whether individual performance in divergent and convergent thinking ‎tasks can be predicted by the individual spontaneous eye blink rate (EBR), a clinical marker of ‎dopaminergic functioning. The results showed a negative correlation between convergent ‎thinking and EBR-dopamine levels, and performance on divergent thinking test followed an ‎invert U-shaped relation with an individual’s dopamine level. In this experiment performance of ‎the individual with moderate level of eye blink rate was better and higher than individuals with ‎low and high EBR. These results were considered as the basic idea to run the second experiment ‎as a mood induction experiment. Mental imaginary procedure was used for inducing either ‎positive or negative mood. In this experiment two groups of subjects participated in a mood ‎induction (either positive or negative) experiment. Individual's eye blink rate was recorded before ‎and after mood induction. Performance of all the subjects in two set of divergent thinking tasks ‎were measured before and after mood induction. Results of this experiment show positive mood, ‎when compared to negative mood, enhanced creative performance on divergent thinking test. ‎Positive mood significantly improved performance in divergent thinking: flexibility of people ‎with low dopamine level. But there is a different scenario for people with medium (or high) level ‎of dopamine, as the benefit of positive mood was very small and not significant at all for them. ‎We conclude that impact of positive mood on the performance in divergent thinking depends on ‎an individual’s