Creative Engagement as Calibrative Regulation: The 7 Muses and Adaptive Functioning in an Uncertain World

This chapter presents creative engagement as a form of calibrative regulation through which individuals maintain adaptive functioning under conditions of uncertainty. Rather than treating creativity as a specialized ability or a domain-specific outcome, the chapter argues that creative engagement operates as a regulatory system that coordinates top-down and bottom-up processes across cognitive, emotional, social, and physiological domains. Drawing on Wallas (1926), Preparation, Imagination, and Verification are reinterpreted as a dynamic regulatory cycle through which schemas are stabilized, loosened, and reintegrated in response to changing conditions. Within this framework, the 7 Muses—Independence, Curiosity, Playfulness, Confidence, Openness, Interdependence, and Passion—are conceptualized as regulatory processes that shape whether this cycle supports coherence, flexibility, and reorganization or collapses into rigidity or instability. Integrating research across creativity, neuroscience, psychology, and health, the chapter argues that these regulatory processes are implemented through neural rhythms, neuromodulatory systems, and neurochemical mechanisms, helping explain the relationship between creativity, mental health, physical health, and broader well-being. From this perspective, the benefits associated with creative engagement are understood not as isolated effects of activity alone, but as downstream expressions of more fundamental processes of calibrative regulation. In an uncertain and rapidly changing world, creative engagement is therefore framed as a foundational mode of adaptive regulation through which individuals sustain functioning, health, and meaningful participation over time.