Affective computational priming and creativity

Abstract

While studies have shown that affect influences creativity, few investigate how affect influences creative performance with creativity support tools. Drawing from methods commonly used in psychology research, we present affective computational priming, a new method for manipulating affect using digitally embedded stimuli. We present two studies that explore computational techniques for inducing positive, neutral, and negative affect and examine their impact on idea generation with creativity support tools. Our results suggest that positive affective computational priming positively influences the quality of ideas generated. We discuss opportunities for future HCI research and offer practical applications of affective computational priming. INTRODUCTIONCreative professionals, such as engineers, scientists, and designers, increasingly rely on technology to complete creative tasks at work. They use web browsers to conduct research and search for inspiration. They document projects on wikis in order to collaborate with others. They depend on graphic design software and word processors to design and create. In response, human-computer interaction (HCI) researchers have started building creativity support tools, or software to enhance creative performance [37].

(E)Motion and Creativity

“…Interactive systems designed to influence the relationship between emotion and creativity are scarce, though some examples do exist. Emotion elicitation techniques developed in psychology have been tested on crowdsourcing platforms within this context [20,21]. For instance, priming positive emotion by placing a positive picture on the crowdsourcing platform during an idea generation task augments creativity [20].…”

“…Emotion elicitation techniques developed in psychology have been tested on crowdsourcing platforms within this context [20,21]. For instance, priming positive emotion by placing a positive picture on the crowdsourcing platform during an idea generation task augments creativity [20]. Another development is using of the tendency of people to mirror each other's facial expressions to influence emotion.…”

“…This provides an opportunity for designers of technologies that aim to augment creativity to develop systems that influence emotion, and via emotion, augment creativity. However, until now, the possibilities to develop such systems have been limited [20,21,23]. This is surprising, because creativity is often seen as the new smart, a sought after skill that helps well-being, innovation, and culture thrive [22].…”

Early and Repeated Exposure to Examples Improves Creative Work

“…This platform has been used for experiments on affect and creativity (Lewis et al, 2011). Mechanical Turk workers have also been employed to provide perception responses (Heer & Bostock, 2010), objective labels (Deng et al, 2009;Snow et al, 2008), and subjective ratings (Dow et al, 2011 …”

Combining crowdsourcing and learning to improve engagement and performance

“…In our work, we build on previous techniques used in crowdsourcing creative work [4,8,12,13,14,16,20] and sug gest that a learning framework may further enhance creative crowd work. When the task to be crowdsourced is presented in the context of learning new skills, workers should be less likely to cheat or produce poor quality results; doing so not only harms the requester, it also subverts the learning objec tives of the worker.…”