More creative through positive mood? Not everyone!

It is commonly assumed that positive mood improves human creativity and that the neurotransmitter dopamine might mediate this association. however,given the non-linear relation between dopamine and flexibility in divergent thinking (akbari chermahini & hommel,2010),the impact of mood on divergent kinds of creativity might depend on a given individual's tonic dopamine level. we tested this possibility in adults by assessing mood,performance in a divergent-thinking task (the alternate uses task),and eye-blink rates (ebrs),a well-established clinical marker of the individual dopamine level,before and after positive-mood or negative-mood induction. as expected,the association between flexibility in divergent-thinking performance and ebr followed an inverted u-shape function (with best performance for medium levels),positive mood induction raised ebrs and only individuals with below-median ebrs,but not those with above-median ebrs,benefited from positive mood. these observations provide support for dopamine-based approaches to the impact of mood on creativity and challenge the generality of the widely held view that positive mood facilitates creativity. © 2012 akbari chermahini and hommel.