Give me Support and Hope, and I Can Be Creative: Evidence for a Mediation Model from Five Countries

Social support has been found to facilitate creativity. However, the underlying mechanism remains unclear. Guided by the broadened-and-build theory, this correlational study addressed the question of how perceived social support (PSS) influences self-rated creativity through the mediating role of hope. Study 1 included a community sample of 1204 individuals aged 18 to 64 from Australia, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore. Correlation analysis showed the three variables were positively correlated with each other across five countries. Moreover, mediation analysis indicated that PSS had an indirect relationship with creativity through hope when creative self-efficacy and age were controlled. Study 2 replicated these findings in a sample of 210 working adults in Malaysia. The consistency supports the robustness of the results across different age and cultural contexts. These findings confirm that social support and hope should be considered in creativity studies. Although further research would be useful, it appears that creativity could be improved with social support and hope. Altogether, policy, program development, and interventions aimed at fostering supportive communities may be able to enhance creativity by leveraging both social support and hope.