Creativity has been considered as a capacity that students need in order to become as a talented future
leader, artistic experiences have been suggested in order to promote students’ creativity. In this study,
artistic experience was divided into two types: Self-expression on the subject (creation) and re-interpretation
of the external stimulus (appreciation), and four qualitative factors (cognitive stimulation, negative
emotionality, self-reference, and positive attraction) were examined to explore the relationships among
artistic experiences, creative performance, and motivation by using a sample of 108 undergraduates. The
results showed that it was the self-reference factor that differentiated the artistic experience from the other
experiences. In addition, there were differences in creative performance and motivation depending on the
types of artistic experience among the qualitative factors of artistic experience. In details, the task
performance that required creative thinking and the level of efforts were higher as participants in the
creation group were more willing to express themselves, whereas participants in the appreciation who had
higher positive attractiveness group were more interested in the task. The findings of this study suggest
that self-awareness and self-expression are important factors in creativity education and there are
discriminatory effects among the qualitative factors of artistic experience.