Urgent societal problems including climate change require innovative engineering and can benefit from interdisciplinary solutions. A small body of research has demonstrated the potential for positive emotions (e.g., gratitude, awe) to promote creativity and prosocial behavior. Both creativity and prosocial behavior are relevant to undertaking problems that are currently inadequately addressed. This study integrates, for the first time, research on a positive and prosocial emotion studied in psychology (i.e., gratitude) with engineering-design creativity research. In a pre-registered study design, both working engineers and engineering students (pilot N = 49; full study N = 329) completed gratitude, positive emotion control or neutral control inductions. Design creativity was assessed through rater scores of responses to an Alternate Uses Task (AUT) and a Wind-turbine-blade Repurposing Task (WRT). No significant differences emerged across conditions with regard to AUT scores in either sample. Though only the pilot study manipulation was successful, WRT results suggest that gratitude is at least not harmful for, and may even promote, more creative engineering design. Results of this research may help engineers arrive at more original and effective concepts to tackle climate change, and in the future, other problems facing society.Our keywords are: Wind-Turbine-Blade-Repurposing; Alternate Uses Task; Gratitude; Creativity

Can Gratitude Promote More Creative Engineering Design?

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/IDETC-CIE/IDETC-CIE2021/volume/85369

ASME 2021 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences & Computers and Information in Engineering Conference (IDETC/CIE2021)

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