Can Anger Fuel Your Creative Fire?

On the morning of September 15, 1963, four young African American girls were killed in a Ku Klux Clan bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.

Filled with anger in response to this tragedy, legendary singer Nina Simone confessed, “I had it in mind to go out and kill someone”. As Simone recalled, her husband turned to her and said, “You can’t kill anyone. You are a musician. Do what you do.”

And so instead of acting on those negative impulses, she took that feeling of rage and expressed it creatively. The following year, she wrote and recorded the iconic protest song "Mississippi Goddam", inspired by this event as well as the gunning down of civil rights activist Medgar Evers and a spate of violence toward Black communities in the South.

But was Simone the exception instead of the rule? There are times as professionals when we are faced with situations that inspire such visceral rage that it clouds our minds, our judgement. In these situations, we can lash out in search of some form of justice, no matter how misguided. On the other hand, perhaps it's an opportunity to do some of our best work.

According to some studies, this is not as far fetched as you may think.

In a paper by Matthijs Baas, Carsten De Dreu, and Bernard Nijstad in The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, one experiment demonstrated that anger was better than positive moods at promoting "unstructured thinking" about creative tasks.

In a second experiment, the same researchers elicited anger in their test subjects before asking them to brainstorm ideas. These hotheads ended up generating a lot more great ideas than other participants, including original ideas exclusive to just 1% of the test subjects.

Even a study covered in tech publication Wired showed that anger can, in fact, lead to more creative ideas and innovative solutions than feelings of happiness or contentment.

Now, all of this is not to say that being happy or content doesn't lead to brilliant creative ideas and solutions. As a creative professional, I know firsthand that it's indeed possible for negative emotions to lead to productive outcomes instead of derailing you, if channeled in the right direction.

If nothing else, these studies prove that you don't need a superior intellect or skills to pull this off. Heck, based on these results, even the Incredible Hulk has just as good a shot of smashing out great ideas as his brainier alter ego does, so let's not consign ourselves to a hopeless fate in the face of a bad situation.

Of course, the brightest stars burn out the fastest, and the same is true here. Prolonging anger will become exhausting and tank your performance sooner than later, so let it go before it consumes you.

To paraphrase Nina Simone's husband, “You can’t kill anyone. You are a creative. Do what you do.”