Perception of emotion, alexithymia and creative potential

Theoretical proposals suggest that emotional intelligence (EI) may favor creativity. In the present paper, two studies are reported with French adults to examine the degree to which the ability to identify emotion is related to creative performance. This component of ability EI was hypothesized to be positively associated with a divergent thinking task involving emotional information. Contrary to our expectations, the first study (n = 95) indicated that ability to identify emotions in faces and images was negatively related to idea generation ability. The second study (n = 100) including a measure of alexithymia confirmed this relation. Moreover, evaluating emotional creativity, we observed a significant negative link between the ability to identify emotions and the tendency to experience emotions differently from those of others. We discuss these results suggesting an opposition between consensual/convergent thinking concerning emotions (ability EI) and divergent thinking.