The chapter summarizes the conceptual foundations of, and research on, emotional creativity (EC). Emotional creativity is defined as a pattern of cognitive abilities and personality traits related to originality and appropriateness in emotional experience. Emotional creativity is related to personality traits (e.g., openness to experience), positive affect, post-traumatic growth, and engagement in creative leisure activities. In applied settings, emotional creativity is related to innovative performance of employees as well as higher teaching efficacy. Meta-analysis revealed that women showed higher emotional creativity than men. Emotional creativity is also lower in older adulthood compared to younger age. Because the levels of EC are sensitive to the decline of cognitive functions in older adults, their decrease can be considered as one of the indicators of cognitive aging. Recent research in clinical neuropsychology has also revealed that older adults in the early stages of Parkinson’s disease showed decreased emotional creativity compared to healthy older adults. Several directions and research questions for future research are developed.

Many have written about the importance of creativity as it relates to preparation for the modern workforce; such statements emphasize individual skill and societal factors. In the coming decades, creativity is predicted to be one of the skills in greatest demand (Bakhshi et al., 2017), and is one of the least likely skills to be automated (Frey & Osborne, 2017). Adolescence is a time with enormous potential for creative growth, which is necessary in the lifetime trajectory of creative development. Adolescence is also, however, a time when individuals are especially likely to abandon creative passions and pursuits. Though adolescence is both a consequential and promising time in creative development, it has not been studied as thoroughly as creativity in childhood and adulthood. This chapter covers the research supporting the argument for an increased focus on the development and enhancement of creativity in adolescence, and reviews a breadth of research that addresses this goal.