Sadness Aids Creativity
“Why does a melancholy mood turn us into a better artist? The answer returns us to the intertwined nature of emotion and cognition.” The Frontal Cortex on creativity.
“It turns out that states of sadness make us more attentive and detail oriented … Joe Forgas, a social psychologist at the University of New South Wales in Australia, has spent the last decade investigating the surprising benefits of negative moods. According to Forgas, angst and sadness promote ‘information-processing strategies best suited to dealing with more-demanding situations.’ This helps explain why test subjects who are melancholy—Forgas induces the mood with a short film about death and cancer—are better at judging the accuracy of rumors and recalling past events; they’re also much less likely to stereotype strangers and make fewer arithmetic mistakes.”
