{"id":11088,"date":"2026-02-24T09:17:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T01:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/?p=11088"},"modified":"2026-02-24T11:20:03","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T03:20:03","slug":"creativity-feels-great-until-tomorrow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/creativity-feels-great-until-tomorrow\/","title":{"rendered":"Creativity feels great \u2014 until tomorrow"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A newly published daily-diary study has identified a surprising pattern among professional creatives:\u00a0After days with higher creative engagement, creative practitioners reported\u00a0more<\/em>\u00a0negative emotions the next day\u00a0\u2014 even though creativity improved well-being in the moment. The authors call this next day dip a\u00a0\u201ccreative hangover.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Published in The Journal of Positive Psychology<\/em><\/a>, the study tracked 355 adults (including 202 creative practitioners and 153 comparison participants with lower creative engagement) across baseline measures and 13 daily surveys of creativity and multidimensional well-being.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCreativity is usually framed as a straightforward path to feeling better,\u201d said\u00a0Kaile Smith, lead author and a doctoral candidate in Psychology at the\u00a0CUNY Graduate Center. \u201cWhat surprised us is that for creative practitioners, there can be a next-day emotional cost \u2014 even when the same-day effects are positive. That doesn\u2019t mean creativity is harmful; it suggests the emotional rhythm of creative work may be different when creating is central to your life and livelihood.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The research uses the PERMA model of well-being \u2014 Positive emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment \u2014 to move beyond one-size-fits-all ideas about \u201chappiness\u201d and capture how creativity relates to specific facets of flourishing over time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCreative professionals are often under intense pressure \u2014 to perform, to produce, and to evaluate their own work,\u201d said\u00a0Jennifer Drake, professor of Psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center and Brooklyn College and the study\u2019s senior author. \u201cThis study shows why blanket claims like \u2018creativity is always good for you\u2019 miss important nuance. Creativity tends to lift well-being in the moment for everyone, but the day-after pattern can diverge in ways that matter for mental health support and creative-arts interventions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Key Findings<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
    \n
  • Creativity helped people feel better that same day.<\/strong>\u00a0On days when participants were more creative, they reported higher well-being across multiple areas.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Creative practitioners started out with higher well-being.<\/strong>\u00a0They reported higher baseline well-being, especially in feeling absorbed\/engaged, connected to others, and having a sense of meaning.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • The next-day effects differed.<\/strong>\u00a0Casual creators tended to carry benefits into the next day (better mood and relationships), while creative practitioners reported more negative emotions the next day after higher creativity \u2014 the \u201ccreative hangover.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Feeling worse predicted next-day creativity only for casual creators.<\/strong>\u00a0In the comparison group, lower well-being was linked to more creativity the following day; this pattern did not show up for creative practitioners.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    Why It Matters<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    The findings complicate the familiar \u201ctortured artist\u201d narrative. Creativity appears to offer immediate well-being benefits across the board, but the timing and emotional spillover may depend on whether someone creates professionally or more casually \u2014 a difference that could inform wellness strategies, clinical approaches, and future intervention studies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Creativity appears to offer immediate well-being benefits across the board, but the timing and emotional spillover may depend on whether someone creates professionally or more casually \u2014 a difference that could inform wellness strategies, clinical approaches, and future intervention studies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":11089,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2048,19,2218,848,20],"class_list":["post-11088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsmakers","tag-good-life","tag-health","tag-high-life","tag-mental-health","tag-wellness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11088"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11088\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11090,"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11088\/revisions\/11090"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zestmag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}