Toward a Dynamic Social Process View: An Integrative, Multidisciplinary Review of the Relationship Between Affect and Creativity

Creativity and affect (moods and emotions) are inherently and intimately connected, and management research has broadly acknowledged that affective states influence creative outcomes. Despite increasing research attention, the field lacks a systematic understanding of the affect-creativity link. Moreover, although the literature increasingly views both affect and creativity as dynamic social processes, this view is not reflected in our current understanding of their relationship. Disciplinary research silos further complicate this issue. We aim to address these concerns and provide an integrative and multidisciplinary review of the affect-creativity link, moving scholarship toward a dynamic social process view of the link. We critically examine 294 empirical studies published since 2008 across various disciplines, including organizational behavior, entrepreneurship, marketing, and psychology. We review this work along four quadrants of a 2 × 2 framework (outcome-oriented vs. process-oriented research × within-creator vs. socially oriented research) to uncover the dynamic relations between affective states and creativity, along with their profoundly social nature. We subsequently integrate this work to propose our overarching dynamic social process framework of the affect-creativity link, the creativity and affect as social processes (CASP) framework. The CASP framework emphasizes that the influence of affect on creative outcomes is mediated by three complementary pathways and best understood as a function of both affective states and creative processes under consideration. Additionally, it highlights that social factors are critical in fully understanding the reciprocal and dynamic relationship between affect and creativity.