Mixed Happy-Sad Emotions Fuel Creativity, Study

Research shows that it is not just inspiration and strong emotion, but calm attentiveness to different emotions that stokes creativity, according to psychcentral.

"Creative people aren't characterized by any one of these states alone; they are characterized by their adaptability and their ability to mix seemingly incompatible states of being depending on the task, whether it's open attention with a focused drive, mindfulness with daydreaming, intuition with rationality, intense rebelliousness with respect for tradition, etc.," wrote psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman of the Imagination Institute in the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

"In other words," he continued, "creative people have messy minds," according to hbr.

Dopamine in humans is linked closely with "creativity and madness" and the dopamine systems seem similar to schizophrenia, says a 2010 study from the Karolinska Institutet. Scientists found that dopamine systems in highly creative individuals are very similar to people with schizophrenia. In fact, genes associated with creativity may actually enhance schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

"There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad," said Salvador Dali

"Creativity is certainly about not being constrained by rules or accepting the restrictions that society places on us," psychologist Gary Fitzgibbon told BBC News. "Of course the more people break the rules, the more likely they are to be perceived as 'mentally ill'."

Moreover, people living with deep wells of emotional intensity is also associated with creativity. "There's something about living life with passion and intensity, including the full depth of human experience, that is conducive to creativity," Kaufman wrote.

People can also feel a lot of emotional ambivalence due to unusualness of the environment. Entirely positive or negative emotions do not dog people, but excitement might go with frustration, even as happiness goes with hurt, according to research scientist Christina Fong at Carnegie Mellon University. She feels that it is emotional ambivalence and the unusualness of one's environment that leads to creativity.