The Effect Of Bodily State On Creative Idea Generation

Most of us are sitting down to think and solve complex or challenging problems. However, according to a large number of anecdotes stories, some eminent people often prefer other bodily states(bodily postures and physical activities) for getting original thoughts or solutions. Whether bodily state(bodily posture and physical activity) can really exert an important effect on creativity? If it is this case, then which ones are the best to promote creativity? We were aimed to find out this truth by scientific research. We employed two studies including four experiments to check this. The bodily states in this study indicate bodily postures and walking conditions including lying, sitting, standing, roaming(walking freely) and non-roaming(walking non-freely).For the study 1, in the experiment 1, sixty-one college students participated in the study. Every participant completed the alternative uses task(AUT) in the bodily state conditions of lying, sitting and standing. 30 everyday objects selected were employed as materials, 10 trials were blocked for each condition. In the task, participants were instructed to speak out as many unconventional uses as they could in 1 min for each trial. The results showed that fluency score, flexibility score and novelty score were all higher when participants were standing than in sitting or lying condition.In the experiment 2, the figural combination task(FCT) was used as a creative imagination ability test. In the task, participants were required to assemble a novel object belong to a specified category by imagination using three given geometric figures in a picture. Thirty triplets of component figures were selected and ten for each bodily state: lying, sitting and standing. The results showed that the completion rate and novelty score in standing were both higher than those in sitting or lying, while there were no significant differences between sitting and lying on both response variables. Then there was no significant difference on response time among the three bodily states.For the study 2, in the experiment 1 we used the consequences imagination task(CIT) as a valid measuring tool of imagination ability. Sixty-three college students participated in the study. In the task, participants imagined the possible consequences of an assumed scenario as many as they could, the output should be as novel as possible. We encourage participants to report as many novel outputs of an imaginary scenario as possible in 1 minute. Thirty audio stimuli were included in the experiment. The results showed that fluency scores, flexibility scores and novelty scores in roaming or non-roaming were all higher than those in standing. Especially, the fluency score, flexibility score and novelty score in roaming were all higher than those in non-roaming.In the experiment 2, a within-subject research design compared the effects of bodily states(standing, roaming and non-roaming) on design improving task(DIT). Sixtythree college students completed this experiment. The design improving task involved real-life problems which required participants to give novel ideas about improvement of design for everyday objects so as to deal with some inconvenience. In the task, participants needed to think of novel ideas about the design in a fixed period in order to solve the problem, then they should report a most novel one they thought. We selected 30 problems in this experiment and they were given in the form of audio stimuli. The results showed that completion rate and novelty rating scores for DIT in walking condition were higher than that in standing condition, more importantly, the scores in roaming condition were both higher than that in non-roaming.Therefore, the results of current studies suggest that roaming is the best way of the five bodily states to facilitate the generation of creative ideas. The findings indicate that bodily state plays an important role in creativity, this extends the body of existed knowledge of embodied cognition. We attribute this mainly to defocused attention induced by bodily states, maybe different bodily states lead to different level of defocused attention, which result in the impact of bodily state on creative idea generation.