Does suspense spur or hamper consumer creativity

Abstract

Little is known about how mixed emotions influence consumer creativity. Results of the five experiments revealed that suspense, a mixed emotion comprising hope and fear, facilitates consumer creativity. As felt conflict arises from experiencing suspense, a flexible mindset is adopted to reduce the conflict. Eventually, this mindset spurs consumer creativity. This holds for low dialectical thinkers, but not for high dialectical thinkers. Moreover, more cognitive effort is exercised when generating a number of ideas as well as novel ideas, but not when generating meaningful ideas.