Regulatory focus and creativity: Adaptive‐innovative cognitive style as a mediator and school climate as a moderator

Abstract This study examined the relationship between regulatory focus and creativity in combination with adaptive‐innovative cognitive style and school climate. A total of 687 middle school and high school students ( M age = 13.98 years; 52.8% males) completed a creative task and questionnaires concerning regulatory focus, adaptive‐innovative cognitive style, school climate, and creativity. Structural equation modeling (SEM) revealed that promotion focus positively predicted creativity through innovative style and negatively predicted creativity through adaptive style, and prevention focus negatively predicted creativity through adaptive style. SEM also showed that school climate strengthened the positive association between promotion focus and innovative style and inhibited the positive association between prevention focus and adaptive style. Furthermore, conditional process analysis suggested that school climate moderated the mediating effect of adaptive‐innovative cognitive style in the relationship between regulatory focus and creativity, that is, the negative prediction of promotion focus for creativity through adaptive style occurred only when school climate was at a low level. Adaptive‐innovative cognitive style mediated the association between regulatory focus and creativity. School climate moderated not only the association between regulatory focus and adaptive‐innovative cognitive style but also the mediating effect of adaptive‐innovative cognitive style in the association between regulatory focus and creativity.