Music engagement and college student creativity: Emotional awareness as a mediator

Given the significance of fostering creativity within higher education settings, it is imperative to explore the strategies universities can adopt to nurture student creativity. The primary objective of this study was to examine the mediating pathway of emotional awareness between music engagement and student creativity. We administered a self-administered questionnaire to Chinese college students (N = 330) to collect data. We tested the hypotheses by utilizing structural equation modeling techniques. The findings revealed that music engagement enhanced emotional awareness, thereby fostering student creativity. Furthermore, the results underscored the pivotal role of emotional awareness as a mediating mechanism in the relationship between music engagement and student creativity. This study contributes significantly to elucidating the underlying mechanism linking music engagement and student creativity, thereby enriching the extant literature on the relationship between music and creativity.