Reflections on COVID-19 and death in personal creativity: a cross-lagged panel data analysis using four-wave longitudinal data.

Takeuchi, R. Guo, N., Teschner, RS, & Kautz, J. (2021) Reflecting on the COVID-19 and death in personal creativity: a cross-lag panel data analysis using four-wave longitudinal data. Journal of Applied Psychology, 106(8), 1156 -1168. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000949

Commentary

The COVID-19 pandemic has claimed millions of lives worldwide, suggesting that death is a familiar environment for those who may not have readily recognized it.

It is believed that employees in certain professions are constantly engaged in their work with thoughts of death, while employees in other professions are not in such an environment. However, the perception of death has been shown to have a negative impact on many important organizational outcomes, including creativity.

This study will use four-wave longitudinal data collected weekly from late June to late July 2020 to determine how employees react in terms of death anxiety and death ruminations, and whether death anxiety and death ruminations are related to creativity. The study was conducted to find out.

Cross-lagged panel modeling was conducted on four-wave longitudinal data from 605 employees, and the data showed that positive results can be obtained from trying times, such as death reflection being positively related to creativity.