Examining the effect of emotions on forecasting extensiveness during idea evaluation

Abstract

Previous research has shown emotion to be an antecedent to creativity. Research has also illustrated that emotion affects non-creative decision making. The focus of this study was an examination of the relationship between emotion and performance in forecasting during idea evaluation, which is a decision about the viability of creative ideas. Incidental emotions were induced for social service workers, then they were presented with a social innovation problem along with three previously generated ideas for solutions. Participants were then asked to forecast the positive and negative consequences along with obstacles that may arise during the implementation of each solution. The results indicate that emotion does not impact forecasting performance during idea evaluation. However, individual difference measures included in this study, namely creative fluency and domain expertise, were found to be significant contributors to performance in forecasting. While future research is needed to confirm these findings, these results reveal that organizations may be best served to increase accuracy in decisions regarding the viability of creative ideas through increasing the creative fluency or expertise of their employees rather than attending to the emotional influences of the decision maker.