Training creative thinking in primary school children: the role of trait Emotional Intelligence.

Creativity is increasingly recognized as a valuable resource for individuals in their daily problem solving and to face the new challenges characterizing the society of the future. However, empirical evidences show that the developmental course of creative abilities is not at all linear but it is subject to peaks and slumps, which are particularly evident starting from primary school. Among the psychological variables related to creativity, the current research focuses on trait Emotional Intelligence (EI) defined as a constellation of emotional self-perceptions and behavioural dispositions and assessed via self-report. The first aim of this study was to highlight how the potential creativity of primary school children may be increased through a new teaching action, based on the training of several cognitive and metacognitive abilities related to creative thinking, whose efficacy was measured through the Evaluation of Potential Creativity (EPoC, Lubart, Besançon & Barbot, 2011). In addition, our second goal was to explore the relationship between the training of creativity and trait EI. The new training has been provided to 488 subjects (221 females; Mage = 9.25, SD = 0.75) from three different Italian regions. The results of test-retest show an improvement of children’s creative performance in integrative abilities (i.e., ability to produce original contents), with no differences between boys and girls, whereas in the divergent ability an increment emerged from EPoC only starting from abstract stimuli, again regardless of gender. Interestingly, children who presented lower levels of trait EI have benefited more from training, in terms of enhancing cognitive skills related to creative productions. These results provide an empirical basis on the benefits of using a multivariate approach for the enhancement of creative thinking in primary school, taking into account both cognitive and emotional variables for the development of children’s creative potential.