• Creative activities can improve mood.
• Thinking creatively is a tool of emotion regulation.
• Creativity builds a sense of meaning, a major aspect of well-being.
• Beyond the individual, creativity benefits greater social justice and equity.

We assume creativity is valuable, but it is worth examining what exact advantages it provides. Some benefits of creativity are obvious, especially in the case of what scientists call Big-C creativity—inventions like treatments for once-incurable diseases, works of art that start new styles or movements, discoveries that help us understand the world. Other creative achievements may have a less profound influence but still enrich our lives.

Creative activities and creative thinking can improve mood.

When we consider well-being, we tend to first think of feeling good (and not feeling bad). This is the hedonic aspect of well-being. In a series of studies, Jennifer Drake and her colleagues compared how people who are sad, anxious, or angry feel after they are asked to draw for a while. The researchers found that both children and adults experience less unpleasant emotion when they draw something that is not related to their feelings than when they try to express their feelings through drawing. Drawing can be a way to distract ourselves from unpleasant emotions and provide distance that helps us cope with them.

Another way creativity can help improve our moods is by being a tool for emotion regulation. For us to experience an emotion, it is not enough to encounter a triggering situation. Rather, we attach meaning to our experiences and the resulting interpretations shape how we feel.

Imagine you are taking part in a brainstorming session. You share an idea. But someone else jumps in and takes it in a new direction. What you say to yourself that just happened will determine what you feel. Do you think the person is disrespectful? Or that they got carried away by the excitement of ideas?

Reframing potentially unpleasant experiences is one of the most effective ways of changing what we are feeling. Researchers have found that our ability to creatively think about the meaning of emotionally charged experiences is related to how well we cope with them. In other words, creative thinking can help us actively process emotional situations and find different ways of interpreting them.