I have done a lot of my song-writing while hiking in the woods. On the other hand, I have also done a fair amount on long commutes, when I had a car whose radio didn't work.http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/apa-taw042414.php
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 24-Apr-2014
Contact: Lisa Bowen
American Psychological Association
Taking a walk may lead to more creativity than sitting, study finds
Free-flowing thought more likely while walking indoors or outdoors, research reveals
WASHINGTON -- When the task at hand requires some imagination, taking a walk may lead to more creative thinking than sitting, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.
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While at Stanford University's Graduate School of Education, Oppezzo and colleague Daniel L. Schwartz, PhD, conducted studies involving 176 people, mostly college students. They found that those who walked instead of sitting or being pushed in a wheelchair consistently gave more creative responses on tests commonly used to measure creative thinking, such as thinking of alternate uses for common objects and coming up with original analogies to capture complex ideas. When asked to solve problems with a single answer, however, the walkers fell slightly behind those who responded while sitting, according to the study published in APA's Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition.
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To see if walking was the source of creative inspiration rather than being outdoors, another experiment with 40 participants compared responses of students walking outside or inside on a treadmill with the responses of students being pushed in a wheelchair outside and sitting inside. Again, the students who walked, whether indoors or outside, came up with more creative responses than those either sitting inside or being pushed in a wheelchair outdoors. "While being outdoors has many cognitive benefits, walking appears to have a very specific benefit of improving creativity," said Oppezzo.
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