Empathy to Creativity: The Associations Between Empathy and Everyday Creativity

Everyday creativity is fundamental to human existence and improved well-being. Beyond recent attention regarding how contextual, lifestyle, personality, and neurobiological differences might foster everyday creativity, empathy may also constitute an intriguing connection. However, this potential relationship has not yet been systematically assessed.

Study 1 used multiple psychometric instruments to examine the levels of emotional and cognitive empathies and everyday creativity among different samples (n = 809). Study 2 used a cross-lagged panel model (CLPM) to examine longitudinal behavioral data (n = 653 at T1, n = 413 at T2) to determine how cognitive empathy might predict everyday creativity.

Study 1 found that cognitive but not affective empathy exhibited a significant positive correlation with everyday creativity and domain-specific creative behaviors. Study 2 also reported a positive correlation between cognitive empathy, overall creative achievement, and certain domain-specific creative achievements. Cognitive empathy was linked to greater involvement in everyday creativity.

To our knowledge, these studies are the first to demonstrate a robust relationship between cognitive empathy and everyday creativity across different samples, measures, and longitudinal data, providing evidence of a nuanced relationship between cognitive empathy and creative achievement. Future studies should explore how creativity or empathy may foster empathic/creative development.