The Influences Of Running On Creativity And Its Mechanism

Throughout previous studies on the relationship between aerobic exercise and creativity,due to the complexity of creativity and the fact that the manipulation of aerobic exercise is susceptible to the influence of exercise time,exercise intensity,exercise type and other variables,the conclusions obtained are not completely consistent.In addition,as most studies only explored the influence of single trial aerobic exercise on creativity,the underlying mechanism still remained unclear.This study aimed to investigate the influence of aerobic exercise on individual creative thinking through continuous aerobic exercise training,and to explore the internal mechanism of aerobic exercise on creative thinking.For this purpose,we conducted three experiments.To explore the effects of aerobic exercise on different dimensions of creativity,study1 recruited 77 participants and divided them into experimental(40)and control(37)groups on a voluntary basis.The experimental group was required to participate in a 10-day 30-minute jogging training,the control group did not carry out special jogging training.All participants took part in four tests at the same time,including the exercise habits questionnaire,AUT and RAT.Furtherly,exercise habits questionnaire were measured in the first test,AUT and RAT with four equivalent version,in which have balanced the sequence effect by Latin square design.According to the results of Repeated measures ANOVA,the two groups had no significant difference in the fluency of AUT task and RAT task,and had significant difference in the originality of AUT task.The originality score of the experimental group showed an upward trend in the four tests,while that of the control group remained unchanged,and the scores of the experimental group was higher than that of the control group.This suggested that 10-day aerobic exercise did not have a consistent effect on the different dimensions of creativity.However,due to the difference in exercise habits between the two groups,whether this effect was caused by 10-day jogging training or related to the individual differences between the two groups remained unclear.For further investigation of the study1,the study2 continued to explore the influence of aerobic exercise on creativity under the premise of balancing the individual differences between groups.To further explore the influence of aerobic exercise on different dimensions of creativity and its underlying mechanism,60 participants in study 2 were randomly divided into experimental group(30)and control group(30).All participants were required to complete a pretest including a questionnaire on exercise habits,AUT(part1+part2),RAT,CRAT,PANAS,shifting number task,and stroop task.After the pretest,the experimental group was required to conduct a 30-minute jogging training in the playground for 10 consecutive days,and the control group did not carry out special jogging training in these 10 days.After 10 days,all participants completed posttest in the laboratory,including PANAS,persistence questionnaire,AUT,RAT,CRAT,shifting-number task and stroop task.There were two versions of the AUT,RAT and CRAT tasks for measuring creativity and we adopted the sequence of ABBA in the pre-test and post-test.The test of AUT task is divided into part1 and part2.During part1,the participants were given three items and each one to be completed within 3 minutes.After finishing that,the participants had another 3 minutes on each item to continue the task in part2.Finally we calculated the scores of these two parts separately.The results showed that there was no significant difference between the two groups in the executive function,RAT and CRAT tasks,the fluency of the AUT tasks in part1 and part2.Particularly,on the originality of AUT task in part1,there was no significant difference between the two groups in the pre-test,but the experimental group was significantly higher than the control group in the post-test.There was no significant difference between the two groups in the originality in part2.Positive emotions increased significantly in the experimental group and decreased in the control group.We took the state of motion as the independent variable,the change of originality score in the part1 of the AUT task as the dependent variable,and the change of positive emotion as the mediating variable to analyze the mediating effect.The results showed that the model was established(Bootstrap Estimate [95% CI]=0.2783[-1.0660,-0.0046]).This showed that jogging could promote the improvement of divergent thinking and was related to the change of positive emotions.Regular jogging training improved the individual’s positive emotions and made the participants more flexible in completing the divergent thinking task.However,the effect of running exercise on executive function did not reach the significant level,and the model with executive function as the intermediary variable was not established.To explore the duration effect of aerobic exercise on creative divergent thinking,two months later,study 3 conducted a follow-up research on the individuals in study 2,collecting their exercise habits,PANAS and AUT(part1+part2)data.Independent sample T test was conducted on the scores of the two groups of participants,and the results showed that there was no significant difference.This suggested that the positive effects of 10-day jogging training on creativity had a real-time effect.Once the jogging training stopped,positive emotions of individuals returned from peak to baseline over time,and then the positive effects on creativity disappeared.