Emotional creativity among musical artists
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3846/cs.2026.25146Abstract
Creativity and music are fundamental to human experience, with emotional facets of creativity being particularly critical yet underexplored, especially among professional musicians. Emotional creativity (EC) – the capacity to generate novel, effective, and authentic emotional responses – is deeply interwoven with artistic creation. This quantitative, questionnaire-based study aimed to investigate whether significant gender- or age-related differences exist in emotional creativity among musicians, and to compare their EC levels to general population norms. The study tested three main hypotheses concerning gender, age, and professional status. The study employed the Hungarian-adapted, 15-item Emotional Creativity Inventory (ECI) on a sample of 166 musicians from 24 countries. Statistical analyses included reliability assessment (Cronbach’s alpha), independent samples t-tests, one-way ANOVA, and correlation analysis. The ECI showed excellent internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.884). No statistically significant differences were found between male and female musicians, leading to the rejection of H1. Similarly, no significant age differences were detected, rejecting H2. Musicians displayed moderately high total EC scores (M = 3.62), with particularly high values in the Effectiveness and Authenticity dimensions, partially confirming H3.
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emotional creativity, musical artists, creative performance, personality trait, gender differences, age differences, emotional creativity inventoryHow to Cite
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Copyright (c) 2026 The Author(s). Published by Vilnius Gediminas Technical University.
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