Creativity Research Journal, 2020 Emotional Creativity: A Meta-analysis and Integrative Review Martin Kuška1, 2, Radek Trnka1, 2, Josef Mana1, 3, Tomas Nikolai1, 3 1Prague College of Psychosocial Studies, Czech Republic 2OUSHI, Palacky University, Czech Republic 3Charles University, Czech Republic Abstract Emotional creativity (EC) is a pattern of cognitive abilities and personality traits related to originality and appropriateness in emotional experience. EC has been found to be related to various constructs across different fields of psychology during the past 30 years, but a comprehensive examination of previous research is still lacking. The goal of this review is to explore the reliability of use of the Emotional Creativity Inventory (ECI) across studies, to test gender differences and to compare levels of EC in different countries. Thirty-five empirical studies focused on EC were retrieved and the coefficients required for the meta-analysis extracted. The meta-analysis revealed that women showed significantly higher EC than men (total N = 3,555). The same gender differences were also found when testing scores from three ECI subscales, i.e. emotional novelty, emotional preparedness and emotional effectiveness/authenticity. When comparing EC in 10 different countries (total N = 4,375), several cross-cultural differences were revealed. The Chinese sample showed a significantly lower average ECI total score than all the other countries. Based on the integration of results, the avenues for future research on EC and the breadth of influence of the concept of EC across different fields of psychology are discussed. Note: This is the preprint version of the manuscript, the published article is available at https://doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2020.1751541 Keywords: Emotional Creativity, Review, Meta-Analyses, Meta-Analysis, Definition, Emotional Creativity Inventory, ECI, Reliability, Gender Differences, Cross-cultural, Cross-culture, Personality Traits, NEO Personality Inventory, Big Five, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Openness to Experience, Introversion, Neuroticism, Emotions, Creativity, Cognition, Cognitive Abilities, Affect, Fantasy, Coping, Alexithymia, Anhedonia, Self-understanding, Motivation, Creativeness, Innovative Performance, Creative Ability, Artistic Creativity, Creative Thinking MeSH Headings: Emotions, Creativity, Affect, Affective Symptoms, Gender, Sex, Gender Identity, Cross-Cultural Comparison, Transcultural Studies, Temperament, Extraversion, Neuroticism, Anhedonia, Creativeness, Cognition, Cognitive Function, Artistic Creativity, Creative Ability, Creative Thinking Emotional creativity (EC) is a pattern of cognitive abilities and personality traits related to originality and appropriateness in emotional experience (Averill, 1999; Ivcevic, Brackett, & Mayer, 2007). It significantly pervades human creative performance, because it involves one's ability to connect with the reasons for and consequences of emotional responses at the preparation stage of the creative process as well as to experience and express novel emotions at the verification stage of the creative process (Averill, 1999; Soroa, Gorostiaga, Aritzeta, & Balluerka, 2015). Therefore, it is not surprising that higher EC has been found to be related to the increased involvement of participants in creative leisure-time activities, e.g. creative writing, painting, composing music, dance improvisation, theatrical improvisation and do-ityourself activities (Trnka, Zahradnik, & Kuška, 2016). EC is considered to be one of three main areas of general creativity, together with nonverbal and verbal creativity and creativity in problem solving (Ma, 2009). The important feature of EC is a divergence from the ordinary emotional experience, because it involves the cognitive abilities that enable cognition to diverge from common and generate novel emotional reactions (Ivcevic et al., 2007; Trnka, Cabelkova, Kuška, & Nikolai, 2019). Emotionally creative abilities have been found to be closely related to cognitive abilities supporting innovative performance, i.e. idea generation, promotion and realization (Wang, Huang, & Zheng, 2015). The Emotional Creativity Inventory (ECI, Averill, 1999) is the most widely used instrument for measuring EC. The ECI consists of three subscales: (1) Preparedness, comprising understanding and learning from one's own and others' emotions, (2) Novelty, referring to the ability to experience unusual emotions, and (3) Effectiveness/Authenticity, linked to the skill to express emotions adroitly and honestly (Averill, 1999). During the past two decades, the ECI has been found to correlate with a wide spectrum of other scales and measures (for an overview, see Electronic Supplementary Material 1). For example, the ECI positively correlated with openness to experience (Averill, 1999, Study 3; Ivcevic et al., 2007; Luke & Zychowicz, 2014) and agreeableness subscales of the NEO Personality Inventory (Averill, 1999, Study 3) or with hope and positive affect (Sharma & Mathur, 2016). Among others, the ECI negatively correlated with alexithymia (Fuchs, Kumar, & Porter, 2007) and apathy accompanying cognitive deficits in late adulthood (Trnka et al., 2019). Despite the applied significance of EC and the number of empirical studies reporting various relationships with other variables, to our knowledge, no review summarizing the evidence concerning EC has been published so far. The present review aims to summarize the existing empirical evidence that includes EC and to integrate recent knowledge on EC into a comprehensive framework. METHOD Eligibility criteria The current review retrieved all empirical studies concerning EC published in peerreviewed resources written in the English (30 papers), or Russian (5 papers) languages. The main criterion for including the paper into the review was that EC was investigated empirically in the given study (other inclusion criteria: the language of the publication is English, German or Russian; the full text is available; the paper is published in a peer reviewed source; exclusion criterion: the methodological quality of the paper is recognized as poor). The review was elaborated in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines (Moher, Liberati, Tetzlaff, & Altman, 2009) and recommendations of the Cochrane Collaboration (Higgins & Green, 2008). [please, insert Figure 1 about here] Search strategy and extraction of findings All the appearances of EC in peer-reviewed papers accessible via Google Scholar, EBSCO and the Web of Science were considered. The exact phrase was emotional creativity for Google Scholar and emotional W0 creativity for EBSCO, respectively. The subsequent phrases were emotion* creativ* and emotion* W0 creativ*, respectively. As of 24 April 2018, database searches generated 1290 occurrences of EC (see Figure 1). Doctoral dissertations, MA theses and popular papers were excluded. After removing duplicates, the full-texts of 198 papers were screened for relevance. All full texts of the selected papers were then examined to exclude papers in which EC was only mentioned, without any empirical findings involving EC. Finally, 35 empirical journal papers dealing with EC were selected (see Electronic Supplementary Material 1). Subsequently, the reference lists of the retrieved manuscripts were scanned for relevant sources, and these sources were later retrieved. Forward tracking was conducted with the Times cited tool provided by the Web of Science. This operation did not reveal any other papers relevant for inclusion into the review. All empirical findings involving EC were independently extracted by two reviewers (TN and MK). The following information was collected: (1) a description of the results of empirical findings regarding EC, (2) the methodological quality assessed using the PRISMA-P protocols (Shamseer et al., 2015). For the purposes of meta-analysis, all the EC-relevant data were excerpted from the papers. When insufficient data were available from the papers, the authors were contacted to request missing data. RESULTS Disciplinary reach of the EC concept and distribution of citations in time The disciplinary reach of Averill's (1999) fundamental paper introducing EC and the method of its measurement, the ECI, was assessed. To reveal the disciplinary reach, the method of Starr and Zurbriggen (2017) for mapping citations in time was applied. First, all citations of Averill's (1999) paper were tracked on Google Scholar, using the function Cited by for searching in papers containing the given reference. On the 17 January 2019, the search resulted in 224 references. Subsequently, books, theses, dissertations and conference proceedings were excluded from this sample. Onehundred-eight scientific papers containing a citation of Averill's (1999) paper were found in 86 unique journals. Second, these journals were coded for the discipline of the publication outlet. [please, insert Figure 2 about here] The largest number of citations (see Electronic Supplementary Material 2) were published in the creativity/cognitive psychology journal category (10) and the same number of citations (10) were found for the category multidisciplinary psychology. Other journals with a higher number of quotations of Averill's (1999) paper were from the social psychology category (8), the personality psychology category (8) and the organizational psychology category, respectively (7). Furthermore, in order to display how the impact of Averill's (1999) concept of EC is distributed in time, a histogram by year was created (Figure 2). Reliability generalization To test the internal consistency of ECI and its subscales, a reliability generalization meta-analysis was conducted (Vacha-Haase, 1998). The summary statistics and its 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were estimated using an inverse-variance weighted random- effects model. To assess possible sources of heterogeneity, meta-regression with language as a moderator was conducted. For all analyses .05 level of statistical significance was used. All analyses were performed using the metafor package (Viechtbauer, 2010) in the software environment for statistical computing R version 3.4.4 (R Core Team, 2018). The sample used for the reliability generalization analysis of the ECI global scale (N = 5,479) consisted of fourteen studies that used the whole 30-item ECI questionnaire, two studies that used a shortened 17-item version (Soroa et al., 2015; Oriol, Amutio, Mendoza, Da Costa, & Miranda, 2016) and one study that used an abridged 13-item version (Gutbezahl & Averill, 1996). The sample used for the reliability generalization analysis of the three ECI subscales (Novelty, Preparedness and Effectiveness/Authenticity) (N = 6,284) consisted of fifteen studies that used the full version of the ECI, two studies that used a shortened 17-item version (Soroa et al., 2015; Oriol et al., 2016) and one study that used a shortened 28-item version (Soroa et al., 2016). Table 1 presents descriptive statistics of the sample, estimated summary statistics with its 95% CIs and statistics assessing heterogeneity. The meta-analysis revealed acceptable alpha values for the ECI global scale (alpha = .84, 95% CI [.81, .86]) and the subscales (alphas ≥ .75). [please, insert Table 1-2 about here] Seven different languages (English, French, Spanish, Georgian, Persian, Russian and Czech) were considered as moderators for the ECI global scale and six different languages (English, Spanish, Georgian, Persian, Russian and Czech) were considered as moderators for all three ECI subscales. Table 2 presents the results of the test of moderators, heterogeneity measures of the moderator models and the amount of heterogeneity accounted for by the models. The language did not moderate the ECI total score. In contrast, the language moderated the Novelty, Preparedness and Effectiveness/Authenticity subscales' scores. The language in which the ECI was administered predicted 2% of the reliability heterogeneity across studies when the overall scale effect size was the criterion, 73% of the reliability heterogeneity across studies when the Novelty subscale effect size was the criterion, 63% of the reliability heterogeneity across studies when the Preparedness subscale effect size was the criterion and 40% of the reliability heterogeneity across studies when the Effectiveness/Authenticity subscale effect size was the criterion. Gender differences in EC To find out if there is a gender difference in EC and its components, a randomeffects model meta-analysis with gender as the independent and ECI and its subscales scores as the dependent variables was conducted. The sample used for the analysis of gender differences (N = 3,555) consisted of seven studies that used the whole 30-item ECI questionnaire and one study that used a shortened 17-item version (Soroa et al., 2015). [please, insert Table 3 and Figure 3 about here] The analysis identified significantly higher total scale ECI scores, higher Novelty subscale scores, higher Preparedness subscale scores, and higher Effectiveness/Authenticity subscale scores in women than in men (see Table 3 and Figure 3). Several studies fell behind the borders of the funnel plot (see Electronic Supplementary Material 3), however, Kendall's tau rank correlation tests and Egger's regression tests for funnel plot asymmetry did not indicate a risk of publication bias. EC across nations To characterize how the nationality affects EC and its components, a metaregression with nationality of the sample as the independent and the ECI and its subscales scores as the dependent variables was conducted. Because the raw means of ECI scores are a function of the number of items in the scale, only studies using the full ECI questionnaire and/or full ECI subscales were included in the respective analyses. The sample used for the analysis consisted of 28 samples (N = 4,375) for total ECI score, 20 samples (N = 2,609) for Novelty and Preparedness, and 19 samples (N = 2,529) for Effectiveness/Authenticity. The ECI total scores of ten different nations (China, Czech Republic, France, Georgia, India, Iran, Korea, Russia, the UK and the USA) were compared. After applying the Bonferonni correction for multiple comparisons, there were significantly lower total ECI scores in the Chinese sample than in samples from all the other countries (Z = 4.47–9.68, ps < .001) as well as in the Korean sample than in the samples from India (Z = 3.96, p < .001), Iran (Z = 3.47, p < .001) and Russia (Z = 4.06, p < .001). There were marginally significant lower total ECI scores in the Korean sample than in samples from Georgia (Z = 3.19, p = .001) and the USA (Z = 3.28, p = .001) and in the French sample than in samples from India (Z = 2.47, p = .013) and Russia (Z = 2.46, p = .014). The ECI Novelty, Preparedness and Effectiveness/Authenticity scores of seven different nations (China, Czech Republic, Georgia, Iran, Korea, Russia and the USA) were compared. After applying the Bonferonni correction for multiple comparisons, there were significantly lower Novelty scores in the Chinese sample than in the samples from all the other countries, except Korea (Z = 3.14–6.63, ps < .002), as well as than in the Korean sample in the samples from Georgia (Z = 4.46, p < .001), Iran (Z = 4.32, p < .001), Russia (Z = 5.04, p < .001) and the USA (Z = 4.13, p < .001). There was a marginally significant lower Novelty score in the Korean sample than in the Czech sample (Z = 2.20, p = .028). After applying the Bonferonni correction for multiple comparisons, there were significantly lower Preparedness scores in the Chinese sample than in the samples from Iran (Z = 3.17, p = .002), Russia (Z = 3.06, p = .002) and the USA (Z = 3.27, p = .001). There were marginally significant lower Preparedness scores in the Chinese sample than in samples from the Czech Republic (Z = 2.68, p = .007), Georgia (Z = 2.12, p = .034) and Korea (Z = 2.44, p = .015). After applying the Bonferonni correction for multiple comparisons, there were significantly lower Effectiveness/Authenticity scores in the Chinese sample than in the samples from all the other countries (Z = 3.57–5.66, p < .001). [please, insert Figure 4 about here] Frequency of word-occurrence of EC-related terms A quantitative content analysis was employed to reveal which words occur together in relatively close proximity to terms expressing EC in empirical papers included in the meta-analysis (Electronic Supplementary Material 1). Non-English written papers were excluded. Figure 4 shows that EC mostly co-occurred with the word emotion (481x). Others of the most frequently co-occurred words were relation (417x) and correlation (409x). DISCUSSION The present review on EC integrated findings across a wide spectrum of psychological research and showed the reach of Averill's concept of EC (1999). The analysis of journal papers referencing Averill's concept (1999) provided insights into the reach and breadth of influence of this concept. Overall, the analysis showed that the concept of EC has succeeded in reaching a relatively large audience, both internationally and across disciplines. When considering the reach within different subdisciplines of psychology, EC was cited mostly in cognitive psychology and creativity research, personality psychology, social psychology, organizational psychology, theoretical psychology and multidisciplinary or non-specific psychological journals. Furthermore, the distribution of citations in non-psychology journals showed the reach outside of psychology. These journals ranged from life science/environmental journals to medical, pharmacological and health service/nursing journals. Furthermore, significant gender differences were found in EC and its subscales. The meta-analysis identified higher ECI total scores in women than in men. Furthermore, women scored higher in all three subscales – Novelty, Preparedness, and Effectiveness/Authenticity – across studies. The results make apparent that women are more emotionally creative than men. From the perspective of emotional novelty, women more often perceive their own emotions as original, unique, uncommon and improbable when compared to men. Women also think more about their own emotional reactions and emotional experiences and search for the reasons for their own feelings. They also pay more attention to other people's emotions in an effort to better understand their own feelings than men. The higher scores of women in the authenticity/effectiveness dimension, when compared to men, indicated a more effective response in situations requiring new or unusual emotional responses and the tendency to believe that emotions may help in achieving one's own life goals. These findings are also in accordance with the results of a recent meta-analysis of da Costa, Páez, Sánchez, Garaigordobil, and Gondim (2015), which revealed slightly higher cognitive creativity in women than in men. The results of the current meta-analysis revealed excellent reliability for the ECI total score. However, the reliabilities for particular subscales were lower than for the ECI total score, though they were still acceptable. The ECI has been proved to be a suitable research instrument for measuring EC in different cultures. The moderator analysis showed that the reliability of the ECI total score was not influenced by language adaptation of the ECI. In other words, different language adaptations of the ECI did not lead to different reliability, i.e. the psychometric properties were not altered when different language versions were used. However, the language moderated all three ECI subscales. This finding should lead to caution when interpreting the results from the ECI subscales in cross-culturally designed studies. The reliability of the Novelty subscale was identified as the most prone to be influenced by the different language adaptations of the ECI. Also, the reliability of the Preparedness subscale was found to be vulnerable to being influenced by the language adaptation. In contrast, the Effectiveness/Authenticity subscale was minimally affected by the language adaptation. The analysis of cultural differences identified lower ECI total scores in the sample from China, in comparison to all the other countries. Furthermore, the sample from Korea showed lower ECI total scores than the Indian, Iranian, Russian, Georgian and American samples. One may ask which factors contributed to these cross-cultural differences. A possible explanation may be related to differences in emotion-related values. Emotions generally have a very low value in China (Eid & Diener, 2001). As Eid and Diener (2001) pointed out, a Chinese sample consistently showed the lowest experiences in almost all emotions, because Chinese culture considers emotions as dangerous, irrelevant or even illness-causing. Regulation strategies, such as the suppression of emotions, are generally suggested to be highly valued in East Asian cultures, and the value of a moderated emotional life can also be found in these cultures (Trnka, Šolcová, & Tavel, 2018). Future research on cross-cultural differences in emotion-related values should provide us with further insights into various levels of EC in different countries and cultures. The content analysis revealed the co-occurrence of words that emerged in close relation to EC in previous empirical studies focused on EC. EC was found to occur frequently with the words relation, correlation, or significant (Figure 4). This indicates that empirical research following the introduction of Averill's concept of EC (1999) was mostly correlational, exploring various relations of EC with other constructs or variables. In a more detailed look at the correlations that have been found to be significant in previous research, the correlations of the ECI total score (Figure 5) and correlations of the ECI subscales with other variables (Figure 6) can be distinguished. Figure 5 integrates all the known direct correlations of the ECI total score, distinguishing positive and negative correlations. The ECI total score correlated (1) positively to personality traits, such as extraversion (namely with facets of warmth and positive emotions), openness to experience (all its facets) and neuroticism; (2) positively to creative dispositions (e.g., fantasy proneness); (3) positively to the escapeavoidance coping strategy; and (4) negatively to alexithymia. [please, insert Figure 5-7 about here] Furthermore, the network of relationships showing various correlations of the ECI subscales, i.e., Preparedness, Effectiveness/Authenticity and Novelty, with other variables has been revealed (Figure 6). This network integrates statistically significant correlations, both the positive and the negative, and enables us to see the embedding of EC across different, mostly personality-trait constructs. The ECI's Preparedness subscale correlated positively with social anhedonia, introversion and agreeableness. Furthermore, agreeableness also positively correlated with the Effectiveness/Authenticity subscale of the ECI. This subscale was also negatively correlated to conscientiousness and the escape-avoidance coping strategy and positively correlated to neuroticism, as measured by the NEO-PI. 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Journal of Individual Differences, 29, 157– 167. doi: 10.1027/1614-0001.29.3.157 TABLES Table 1. Reliability of Emotional Creativity Inventory (ECI) Notes: E/A = Effectiveness/Authenticity subscale; k = number of studies; N = pooled sample size, α = summary estimate of Cronbach's alpha coefficient; CI = confidence interval; Min. = minimal alpha in the sample; Max. = maximal alpha in the sample; Q = Cochrane's Q statistic; I2 = total heterogeneity/total variability; *** p < .001. Scale k N α 95% CI Min. Max. Q I2 Global Score 17 5,479 .84 [.81, .86] .69 .90 213.34*** 92.8% Novelty 18 6,384 .81 [.79, .83] .74 .90 123.30*** 86.5% Preparedness 18 6,384 .75 [.70, .78] .53 .82 284,08*** 93.2% E/A 18 6,384 .78 [.74, .81] .57 .88 267.77*** 94.1% Table 2. Moderator analyses in reliability generalization Notes: E/A = Effectiveness/Authenticity subscale; Qmod = test of moderators statistic; R2 = amount of heterogeneity accounted for by the model; Qerror = test for residual heterogeneity statistic; I2 = total heterogeneity/total variability; *** p < .001. Scale Qmod R 2 Qerror I 2 Global Score 6.74 0.02 151.99*** 91.1% Novelty 32.07*** 0.73 35.96*** 60.4% Preparedness 28.06*** 0.63 72.16*** 81.7% E/A 15.10*** 0.40 124.36*** 89.4% Table 3. Gender differences in emotional creativity (EC) Notes: E/A = Effectiveness/Authenticity subscale; k = number of studies; N = pooled sample size, Effect size = average random effect size; SE = standard error of mean; CI = confidence interval; Q = Cochrane's Q statistic; I2 = total heterogeneity/total variability; * p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001. Scale k N Effect size SE 95% CI Q I2 Global Score 9 3,555 -.355*** .055 [-.471, -239] 18.500* 55.9% Novelty 10 3,910 -.218*** .058 [-.332, - .105] 22.323** 59.5% Preparedness 10 3,910 -.313*** .038 [-.388, - .239] 11.048 15.5% E/A 10 3,910 -.306*** .050 [-.403, - .209] 17.070* 45.1% FIGURES Figure 1. PRISMA flow chart of study selection Records identified through database searching (n = 1290) Records screened (n = 198) Records excluded (n = 138) Full-text papers assessed for eligibility (n = 60) Full text papers excluded with reasons (n = 25) Full-text papers included in review (n = 35) Id en ti fi ca ti o n In cl u d e d El ig ib ili ty Sc re en in g Figure 2. Years of publication of articles citing Averill (1999) Notes: EN = English, other = other languages. Figure 3. Forest plots for analyses of gender differences in ECI. Negative values mean higher scores in women than in men. Figure 4. The words mostly co-occurred with emotional creativity (EC) in the corpus 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500 self personality measure novelty ability score experience significant effect study create correlation relation emotion Figure 5. Relationships of the Emotional Creativity Inventory (ECI) total score with other variables Figure 6. Relationships of the Emotional Creativity Inventory (ECI) subscales with other variables Figure 7. Moderating impacts of emotional creativity (EC) on the abilities, skills and dispositions Electronic Supplementary Material 1. The detailed structure of extracted data is as follows: author(s) name(s), year of publication, geographical location of data-mining, participants, sample size(s), emotional creativity (EC) measure(s) involved, and a brief overview of achieved empirical results regarding EC Author/s, year of publication Country Population Sample size EC measure Key findings Abdulaze & Martskvishvili (2016) Georgia Art and non-art university students 80 ECI Art faculty students had higher ECI scores than students from other faculties. The Novelty subscale of the ECI correlated with a difficulty of describing emotions. Andreeva (2011) Russia Students 48 ECI The results showed that the Russian translation of the ECI is valid, reliable, stable, and internally consistent. Averill (1999) USA Undergraduate students 489 ECI Women scored higher than men on the Preparedness and Effectiveness/Authenticity ECI subscales (Study 1). The people who scored high on the ECI were judged by their peers as being emotionally creative (Study 2). The ECI total score correlated with an openness to experience and agreeableness from the Big Five personality inventory (Study 3). EC was associated with mystical experiences. Emotionally creative people tended to be confident in their own capabilities (Study 4). Emotionally creative people used a range of coping strategies when faced with a stressful situation. Their emotional lives differed substantially from alexithymics (Study 5). Early trauma and obstacles predisposed a person to be emotionally creative (Study 6). Derevyanko (2017) Ukraine University students 80 ECI Emotional awareness and sincerity in the expression of emotions were the most important components for the coping behavior of people with a high level of EC. In the sample of people with a low level of EC, the ability to experience unusual emotions contributed to a positive reassessment and constructive resolution of problems. Dyson et al. (2016) Taiwan, China University students 39 ECI The role-playing games were not related to EC. Frolova (2016) Russia University students 30 ECI The ECI was correlated with Frolova's method of measuring EC. EC training helped to increase EC and coping strategies. Frolova & Novoselova (2015) Russia Students and their parents 200 (incl. 50 child / parent pairs) ECI + projective/ associative tool EC was positively connected with hardiness and subjective quality of life. Fuchs et al. (2007) USA Students of psychology 322 ECI ECI and its subscales positively correlated with fantasy proneness and negatively correlated with the measure of alexithymia. Ghadiri Nezhdyan & Abdi (2010) Iran Undergraduate students 650 ECI The findings of a confirmatory factor analysis provided support for the structure of the EC construct in an Iranian community. Golubina (2013) Russia Young and middle-age adults 46 Berezina test A positive correlation between EC (Berezina test) and emotional intelligence was revealed. Gutbezahl & Averill (1996) USA Introduction to Psychology students 800 (Study 1); 900 (Study 2) ECI Participants who scored high on the ECI were more expressionistic; those, who scored low on the ECI were more pictographic (Study 1). The ECI correlated with the creativity scores of the narrative involving a love relationship and with the composite creativity score for the story (Study 2). Holt et al. (2008) UK Psychology and sociology students 183 ECI High schizotypes reached higher scores on the ECI than low schizotypes. Humphreys et al. (2008) USA and China American and Chinese MBA students 70 ECI EC was negatively associated with the desirability of transformational leadership. The Chinese showed higher scores on the ECI compared to the Americans. Ivcevic et al. (2007) USA Students (Study 1: age 17-49; Study 2: age 17-19 107 (Study 1); 113 (Study 2) ECI EC and emotional intelligence have been found to be distinct abilities. EC was mostly uncorrelated with cognitive intelligence, and it was highly correlated with an openness to experience from the Big Five personality inventory. Jenaabadi et al. (2015) Iran High school students 200 ECI Gifted students scored higher on the Novelty and Effectiveness/Authenticity subscales of the ECI than normal students. Lattifian & Delavarpour (2012) Iran Students 324 ECI The ECI and its subscales played a mediating role in the relationship between attachment styles and mental health. Luke & Zychowicz (2014) UK Psychology students 40 ECI A medium-sized positive correlation was found between ECI scores and openness to experience scores. No relationship between EC and psi scores was found. Martin et al. (2016) Worldwide Internet study. English native speakers 664 ECI Social anhedonia was positively associated to the Preparedness ECI subscale. Introversion was negatively associated to the Preparedness ECI subscale. Martsksvishvili et al. (2017) Georgia Students 834 ECI The psychometric properties of the Georgian version of the ECI were revealed. Moltafet et al. (2018) Iran Undergraduate students 375 ECI The components of parenting style were shown to predict students' EC. The styles of parenting using warmth and structure positively predict the EC of students, and the styles of parenting using coercion and chaos negatively predict it. The dimensions of autonomy and the competence of satisfying basic psychological needs had a mediating role between parenting style and EC. Navaei et al. (2014) Iran Women 240 ECI The ECI subscales showed a difference between married and divorced women. Oriol et al. (2016) Chile Students 428 ECI Developing high levels of dispositional EC enhanced the activation of positive emotions in the classroom. EC predicted the intrinsic motivation and academic engagement of university students. Roe et al. (2014) UK Students 34 ECI The ECI was used as one of methods of differentiating participants into three groups. Sharma & Mathur (2016) India Undergraduate students 300 ECI EC was positively correlated with hope and positive affect. Positive affect mediated the pathway between hope and EC. Singh & Kumar (2010) India Trainee teachers 180 ECI On two subscales of the ECI, i.e., Preparedness and Effectiveness/Authenticity, trainee teachers of in-service courses scored higher in comparison to teachers of pre-service courses. Song (2016) China Teachers of English 674 ECI Teachers' EC positively moderated the relationship between supervisors' paternalistic leadership and teachers' teaching efficacy. Soroa et al. (2015) Spain Students 1145 ECI-S (shortened Spanish version of the ECI) The paper developed and validated a shortened Spanish version of the ECI (the ECI-S). High scores on neuroticism were related to the perception of emotional responses as being novel, but not effective, whereas people who scored high on extraversion perceived emotional reactions as effective, but not novel. The total ECI-S score of women was higher than of men. Soroa et al. (2016) Spain Students 594 ECI (shortened Basque version) This paper introduced the adaptation and validation of the ECI for the Basque-speaking population. Women scored higher than men on the preparedness and effectiveness/authenticity subscales. No differences were observed between women and men on the novelty subscale. Sundararajan & Fatemi (2016) Iran University students and staff 99 ECI EC was not found to be a function of relational cognition. Trnka et al. (2016) Czech Republic University students, graduates, and young adults 251 ECI Art students and graduates scored significantly higher on the ECI than other majors. The humanities scored significantly higher than technical/economic majors. Five creative leisure activities were significantly correlated with the ECI, namely writing, painting, composing music, performing dramas, and DIY home improvement. Valueva et al. (2009) Russia Psychology students 179 ECI The paper adapted the ECI in the Russian language sample. Valueva & Ushakov (2010) Russia High school students 162 ECI EC was positively correlated to object creativity and negatively to emotional intellect. Wang et al. (2015) China 546 supervisor –subordinate dyads Employed at 18 enterprises 1092 ECI Employees' EC had significant effects on their innovative performance. The supervisors' support for creativity acted as a moderator of the relationship between employees' EC and innovative performance. Zarenezhad et al. (2013) Iran High school students 400 ECI EC was a positive and significant predictor of educational adjustment. Zenasni & Lubart (2008) France Undergraduate students 107 ECI The ECI was used to evaluate emotional idiosyncrasy. Individuals tend to experience emotions differently than how they are reported by the majority of the population. Electronic Supplementary Material 2. Breadth of influence Journal Type / Discipline All Citations Primary Citations Journals in Primary Citations Sample Personality Psychology 8 3 Journal of Personality; Personality and Individual Differences; Journal of Personality Disorders Social Psychology 8 3 Social Behavior and Personality; Elsevier Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences Creativity / Cognitive Psychology 10 5 Creativity Research Journal; Thinking Skills and Creativity Psychology Multidisciplinary 10 5 Spanish Journal of Psychology; Journal of Modern Foreign Psychology; International Journal of Indian Psychology; Pszichológia; Developmental Psychology: Journal of Iranian Psychologists Cyberpsychology 2 0 Educational Psychology 4 2 Frontiers in Psychology Educational Psychology; Journal on Educational Psychology Organizational Psychology 7 3 International Journal of Leadership Studies; Korean Journal of Health Service Management; Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology Theoretical Psychology 6 2 Psychological Inquiry; Problems of Psychology in the 21st Century Psychology Other 6 2 Journal of Parapsychology; International Annual Edition of Applied Psychology: Theory, Research, and Practice Other Non-Psychological 25 7 Advances in Applied Sociology; Bulletin of Environment, Pharmacology and Life Sciences; Korean Journal of Health Service Management; Journal of Urmia University of Medical Sciences; Journal of Urmia Nursing and Midwifery Faculty; Research in Medical Education; Journal of Life Science and Biomedicine Total Citations 86 32 Electronic Supplementary Material 3. Funnel plots for analyses of gender differences in ECI