Traumatic Personal Relationship Can Be the Mother of Invention

Work environments are more often competitive and threatening than positive and favorable. When facing a threatening situation, employees are required todemonstrate their creativity to survive. Our research used attachment theory and a gain/lossframe analysis to examine the attachment styles that could lead to higher creativity in a threatening situation. Experimental data supported our hypothesis that employees primed with a state-like fearful attachment generated more creative ideas than those primed with a state-like secure attachment under a loss frame. We discuss potential mechanisms explaining fearful attachment’s beneficial effect on employee creativity under a threatening work environment.