Creativity and cheerfulness. A comparative study in the educational context

Abstract

INTRODUCTION. The creativity construct has been the object of as many investigations as of passionate followers and attacks. For decades it was used as an attribute alluding to the most intelligent or capable people, although current studies and trends position this concept as an independent variable with respect to the intelligence construct. This work is based on the need to verify the latent differences in cheerfulness as a function of the levels of creativity, understanding cheerfulness as an emotional factor in the educational context, in order to know the extent of positive emotions in this context. METHOD. The research was carried out using a quantitative, non-experimental, comparative, post-hoc methodological design. The sample consisted of 727 students aged between 6 and 14 years old, attending public schools in the Region of Murcia (Spain), who were administered the Torrance figurative creativity test (Torrance, 1974) and the SCTI-T Cheerfulness test (Ruch et al., 1996). RESULTS. The results show the existence of significant associations between traits of happiness, fluency, flexibility and originality. By contrast, bad mood coincides with the presence of low scores in fluency and flexibility. No differences were found with respect to the elaboration variable. DISCUSSION. The results obtained in this study force us to reconsider the value of positive affect (especially cheerfulness) as a descriptive variable of the creative personality. Furthermore, they also demand to incorporate some of the approaches of Positive Psychology to the classroom in order to develop creativity and cheerfulness; the school being an open and flexible space that allows for the integral development of pupils.