Metacognitive Feelings as a Source of Information for the Creative Process: A Conceptual Exploration

Philosophers and psychologists have debated the wisdom of using feelings as a source of information when making decisions. While not trying to solve this debate, a complementary approach is to examine how metacognitive feelings are used when generating, evaluating, and selecting ideas to solve creative problems and whether their use leads to accurate idea evaluation and selection. Hence, this conceptual article aims to explore how metacognitive feelings are used to evaluate and select creative ideas. Interestingly, while metacognitive feelings come from the perceived ease or difficulty of generating solutions to creative problems, these feelings also inform the decision to continue generating ideas or stop. Metacognitive feelings are then an integral part of the creative process of generating, evaluating, and selecting ideas. The present article briefly reviews the history of metacognitive feelings as examined in metamemory, meta-reasoning, and judgment formation in social psychology, before discussing their implications and potential for understanding the creative process. The article ends by positing directions for future research.