Recent studies have found the connections between cognitive reappraisals’ creativity and their regulatory efficacy. The present study proposed and tested a novel hypothesis on the function of cognitive reappraisals, especially creative ones. That is, whether they could positively alter negative emotional arousal toward unpleasant stimuli. To this end, two questions were investigated: (a) whether the creative reappraisals were more capable than ordinary ones of transforming the negative stimuli (pictures) to be perceived as positive, and (b) whether these two kinds of reappraisals made the “negative‐to‐positive transformation” through different mechanisms. To answer the first question, we examined the power of the creative and ordinary reappraisals in making the “negative‐to‐positive transformation” using an indirect and delayed “positive‐or‐negative” picture‐sorting task (Exp. 1, n = 41 with a statistical power of 0.877), or using a direct and immediate subjective rating (Exp. 2, n = 31 with a statistical power of 0.768). To answer the second question, we checked how the factor of creativeness (creative vs. ordinary reappraisal) interacted with the factor of “timing” (simultaneous vs. delayed reappraisal delivery, Exp. 1), or with that of “dose” (one vs. three reappraisal applications; Exp. 2), in making the “negative‐to‐positive transformation,” respectively, and examined if the variation of “timing” or “dose” factors would exert different effects on the creative and ordinary reappraisals’ regulatory function. Our results generally proved that creative reappraisal was more capable of making the “negative‐to‐positive transformation” than the ordinary reappraisal, regardless of the direct and indirect emotion evaluation ratings as well as the variations in the timing and dose of reappraisal delivery. Moreover, we found that these two kinds of reappraisals could show dissociable dose‐dependent effects (but not timing‐dependent ones), thus partially implying that creative and ordinary reappraisal might make the “negative‐to‐positive transformation” through fundamentally different processes or mechanisms.

A mental set is a cognitive bias induced by the successive application of a specific strategy; developing a specific mental set prevents individuals from generating more direct and creative ways of solving novel problems. The neural mechanisms underlying mental set induction are unclear. We predicted that the repeated application of a specific strategy leads to increasing similarity of the related neural representations. To test this hypothesis, representation similarity analysis (RSA) was used to identify brain regions whose neural encoding patterns showed increases in representational similarity (RS) during the first, second, third, and fourth induction trials, which utilized the same type of ordinary radical-level “loose” chunk decomposition (LCD) strategy. This induction would consequently restrict one’s ability to solve the probe trials that required a different strategy (insightful stroke-level “tight” chunk decomposition, TCD). We found that from the first to the final LCD trial, regions for attentional control, mental operation, and the default mode network (DMN)-based processing showed increased RS. These RS increases positively predicted the activation of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and medial frontal lobe when solving TCD probe trials, which in turn modulated the impacts of the RS increase in the process of mental set inducing on the degree of representational changes in regions for perceptual, operative, and executive processing on TCD trials. Thus, increased similarities of neural representational patterns in the goal-directed manipulation and spontaneous processing DMN systems may underlie mental set induction; these neural changes interacted with conflict resolution and representational changes when solving novel problems.