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Name: Alexandra Trani
Dissertation Defense Meeting
Date: Wednesday, May 12, 2021
Time: 10:00AM
Location: https://gtri.webex.com/gtri/j.php?MTID=m8df62d5dfc2c32b553a6d393b16d4eca
Meeting number: 199 471 5495
Password: M7bCdJS2Uz4
Advisor:
Paul Verhaeghen, Ph.D. (Georgia Tech)
Dissertation Committee Members:
Eric Schumacher, Ph.D. (Georgia Tech)
Christopher Stanzione, Ph.D. (Georgia Tech)
Keaton Fletcher, Ph.D. (Georgia Tech)
Erica Briscoe, Ph.D. (University of Maryland)
Title: Creativity, Depression, and Rumination
Summary: Among creative professionals, affective vulnerability and diagnosed mood disorders are higher than would be expected in the general population (Ludwig, 1995). Rumination, that is, a broad class of thoughts that recur regardless of context or task and are centered around a common theme or idea (Leonard L. Martin & Tesser, 1996) may act as a third variable in the relationship between creativity and depression (Trani, submitted; Verhaeghen, Joormann, & Aikman, 2014; Verhaeghen, Joormann, & Khan, 2005; Verhaeghen, Trani, & Aikman, 2017) – . Recently I proposed a model in which adaptive and maladaptive ruminations differentially influence creativity and mood (Trani, submitted). Essentially, rumination, maladaptive or otherwise, enhances associative processing by sustaining the activation of concepts within memory. Adaptive rumination supports creative associative processing by allowing concepts in memory to remain active despite being unrelated to present tasks or environments. In much the same way, maladaptive rumination works to sustain depressive symptoms across environments by sustaining activation of negative affect and related concepts in memory which would impair a person’s ability to distract themselves from negative moods. I tested the hypothesized relationships between creativity, rumination, and depression using structural equation modeling. Roughly 350 students enrolled at the Georgia Institute of Technology completed an online battery of creativity, rumination, personality, and affective vulnerability measures. I present and discuss a model of rumination, creativity, and dysphoria.
