There are some Monday mornings when simply showing up to work wearing a matching pair of socks is a feat for me.

I've experienced more than my fair share of post-weekend slumps. Sometimes they put me into a funk where hump day —much less the weekend — can't come quick enough.

Workers' bad moods and negative attitudes have received a bad rap for years, and were considered detrimental, recent research from Rice University in Texas says. But as it turns out, being in a foul mood may actually help get those creative juices flowing.

Professors Jennifer George and Jing Zhou say creativity is at its highest when a mix of negative and positive moods is supported.

The two researchers found that managers can encourage creativity by doing three things: giving feedback, informing workers about job-related decisions, and proving themselves trustworthy.

"Our findings suggest that managers should provide employees with feedback focused on learning and improvement, provide employees with information about decisions and why they were made and treat them with respect and dignity, and be trustworthy and demonstrate their own professionalism, competence, and dependability," George said via e-mail.

"Under these conditions, employees may be more likely to be creative both when they are in positive moods and when they are in negative moods."

Positive moods let us know that everything is going well at the moment, and let us think more expansively, the study says; negative moods tell us something is wrong, and can push us to develop ideas to fix the situation.

George is the Mary Gibbs Jones Professor of Management and a professor of psychology; Jing is an associate professor of management.

Maria Clapham, professor of psychology at Drake University, said via e-mail that research generally shows a positive association between positive mood and creativity. Research findings are mixed regarding negative mood and creativity.

"Creativity is more likely to take place in environments where individuals or groups feel free to take risks, and where failures are sometimes expected as a consequence of risk taking," she said.

She said the research by Jing and George highlights the critical role environment plays in creativity. "While their research does not prove that there is a causal association between supportive supervisory behaviors and creativity, it does show an association between the two when both positive and negative moods are present," she said.