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Want to BeMore Creative?Take aWalkBy Gretchen Reynolds

April 30, 2014 12:01am

PHYS EDGretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

If you are unable to think of a catchy, creative way to present salesdata or begin a newspaper column, take a walk. A brief stroll, even aroundyour office, can significantly increase creativity, according to a handy newstudy.

Most of us have heard by now that exercise, including walking,generally improves thinking skills, both immediately and in the longerterm. Multiple studies have shown that animals and people usuallyperform better after exercise on tests of memory and executive function,which is essentially the ability to make decisions and organize thoughts(although prolonged, intense exercise can cause brief mental fatigue — sodon’t take a math test after a marathon).

Similarly, exercise has long been linked anecdotally to creativity. Formillenniums, writers and artists have said that they develop their bestideas during a walk, although some of us also do our best procrastinatingthen.

But little science has supported the idea that exercise aids creativity.

So researchers at Stanford University recently decided to test thatpossibility, inspired, in part, by their own strolls. “My adviser and I wouldgo for walks” to discuss thesis topics, said Marily Oppezzo, at the time agraduate student at Stanford. “And one day I thought: ‘Well, what about

this? What about walking and whether it really has an effect oncreativity?’”

With the enthusiastic support of her adviser, Daniel Schwartz, aprofessor in the Stanford Graduate School of Education, Dr. Oppezzorecruited a group of undergraduate students and set out to see if she couldgoose their creativity. Gathering her volunteers in a deliberately dull,unadorned room equipped with only a desk and (somewhat unusually) atreadmill, Dr. Oppezzo asked the students to sit and complete tests ofcreativity, which in psychological circles might involve tasks like rapidlycoming up with alternative uses for common objects, such as a button.Then the participants walked on the treadmill, at an easy, self-selectedpace that felt comfortable. The treadmill faced a blank wall. Whilewalking, each student repeated the creativity tests, which required abouteight minutes.

For almost every student, creativity increased substantially when theywalked. Most were able to generate about 60 percent more uses for anobject, and the ideas were both “novel and appropriate,” Dr. Oppezzowrites in her study, which was published this month in The Journal ofExperimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition.

But the practical import of that finding would seem to be negligible,if creativity were to increase only while someone was walking. Most of uscannot conduct brainstorming sessions on treadmills. So Dr. Oppezzonext tested whether the effects lingered after a walk had ended. She hadanother group of students sit for two consecutive sessions of test-takingand subsequently walk for about eight minutes while tossing out ideas forobject re-use, then sit and repeat the test.

Again, walking markedly improved people’s ability to generatecreative ideas, even when they sat down after the walk. In that case, thevolunteers who had walked produced significantly more and subjectivelybetter ideas than in their pre-exercise testing period.

Finally, to examine another real-world implication of walking and

creativity, Dr. Oppezzo moved portions of the experiment outdoors. “Mostpeople would probably guess that walking outside should be much betterfor creativity” than pacing inside a drab office. But surprisingly, her studyundermined that assumption. When volunteers strolled Stanford’spleasant, leafy campus for about eight minutes, they generated morecreative ideas than when they sat either inside or outside for the samelength of time. But they were not noticeably more creative as a result oftheir plein-air walk than when they subsequently walked on an indoortreadmill, facing a blank wall.

“It really seems that it’s the walking that matters,” in terms ofspurring creativity, Dr. Oppezzo said, and not the setting.

Just how a brief, casual stroll alters the various mental processesrelated to creativity remains unclear, Dr. Oppezzo added. “This is anacute effect,” she said, making it distinct from any long-term physiologicalchanges that exercise might produce inside the human brain. “It may bethat walking improves mood” as its primary effect, she said, and creativityblooms more easily within a buoyed-up mind.

Or walking may divert energy that otherwise would be devoted,intentionally or not, to damping down wild, creative thought, she said. “Ithink it’s possible that walking may allow the brain to break through”some of its own, hyper-rational filters, she said.

But those are only a few of many likely explanations, she said, addingthat she would probably go for a walk later to help her come up with otherplausible theories and inventive experiments through which to test them.

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