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Give Your Ideas Some Legs: The Positive Effect of Walking on Creative Thinking

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Marily Oppezzo at Stanford University
Marily Oppezzo
Daniel L. Schwartz
Daniel L. Schwartz
Daniel L. Schwartz
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Abstract

Four experiments demonstrate that walking boosts creative ideation in real time and shortly after. In Experiment 1, while seated and then when walking on a treadmill, adults completed Guilford's alternate uses (GAU) test of creative divergent thinking and the compound remote associates (CRA) test of convergent thinking. Walking increased 81% of participants' creativity on the GAU, but only increased 23% of participants' scores for the CRA. In Experiment 2, participants completed the GAU when seated and then walking, when walking and then seated, or when seated twice. Again, walking led to higher GAU scores. Moreover, when seated after walking, participants exhibited a residual creative boost. Experiment 3 generalized the prior effects to outdoor walking. Experiment 4 tested the effect of walking on creative analogy generation. Participants sat inside, walked on a treadmill inside, walked outside, or were rolled outside in a wheelchair. Walking outside produced the most novel and highest quality analogies. The effects of outdoor stimulation and walking were separable. Walking opens up the free flow of ideas, and it is a simple and robust solution to the goals of increasing creativity and increasing physical activity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).
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RESEARCH REPORT
Give Your Ideas Some Legs: The Positive Effect of Walking
on Creative Thinking
Marily Oppezzo and Daniel L. Schwartz
Stanford University
Four experiments demonstrate that walking boosts creative ideation in real time and shortly after. In
Experiment 1, while seated and then when walking on a treadmill, adults completed Guilford’s alternate
uses (GAU) test of creative divergent thinking and the compound remote associates (CRA) test of
convergent thinking. Walking increased 81% of participants’ creativity on the GAU, but only increased
23% of participants’ scores for the CRA. In Experiment 2, participants completed the GAU when seated
and then walking, when walking and then seated, or when seated twice. Again, walking led to higher
GAU scores. Moreover, when seated after walking, participants exhibited a residual creative boost.
Experiment 3 generalized the prior effects to outdoor walking. Experiment 4 tested the effect of walking
on creative analogy generation. Participants sat inside, walked on a treadmill inside, walked outside, or
were rolled outside in a wheelchair. Walking outside produced the most novel and highest quality
analogies. The effects of outdoor stimulation and walking were separable. Walking opens up the free flow
of ideas, and it is a simple and robust solution to the goals of increasing creativity and increasing physical
activity.
Keywords: creativity, embodied cognition, exercise
People have noted that walking seems to have a special relation
to creativity. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1889) wrote,
“All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking” (Aphorism
34). The current research puts such observations on solid footing.
Four studies demonstrate that walking increases creative ideation.
The effect is not simply due to the increased perceptual stimulation
of moving through an environment, but rather it is due to walking.
Whether one is outdoors or on a treadmill, walking improves the
generation of novel yet appropriate ideas, and the effect even
extends to when people sit down to do their creative work shortly
after.
The Mind–Body Connection
Prior research has documented several ways that physical ac-
tivity can influence cognition. These include studies that have
shown global protective effects of exercise against cognitive de-
cline (e.g., Kramer, Erickson, & Colcombe, 2006), the “embodied”
dependency of semantic concepts on physical activity (e.g.,
Klatzky, Pellegrino, McCloskey, & Doherty, 1989), and the com-
petition of physical and mental activity for shared attentional
resources (e.g., Li, Lindenberger, Freund, & Baltes, 2001). As we
show later, these literatures do not explain the creativity effect
demonstrated here. More relevant is research that examines how
physical activity selectively enhances specific cognitive processes.
Studies on selective cognitive effects of physical activity have
largely focused on aerobic activity (running), rather than mild
activity (walking) or anaerobic activity (sprinting). For example,
aerobic activity appears to increase the speed of concurrent cog-
nition (Brisswalter, Collardeau, & Rene, 2002;Fontana, Maz-
zardo, Mokgothu, Furtado, & Gallaher, 2009;Tomoporowski,
2003). Researchers have also investigated short-term residual ef-
fects of aerobic exercise (e.g., Kubesch et al., 2003). In their
meta-analysis, Lambourne and Tomporowski (2010) found a small
improvement in memory performance following acute exercise.
Within this literature, there is also a hint that exercise could have
positive effects on creativity.
Gondola (1986,1987) found gains in participants’ ideational
fluency after aerobic running or dancing, and Netz, Tomer, Axel-
rad, Argov, and Inbar (2007) found similar results for aerobic
walking, regardless of participants’ fitness history. Steinberg et al.
(1997) measured people’s flexibility in generating unusual uses for
common objects after they had participated in aerobic exercise or
slow rhythmic stretching. Both activities led to greater flexibility
compared with watching a 20-min video on rock formations. Unfor-
This article was published Online First April 21, 2014.
Marily Oppezzo and Daniel L. Schwartz, Graduate School of Education,
Stanford University.
This work has been supported by grants from the Knut and Alice
Wallenberg Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and by
the Stanford Graduate School of Education Dissertation Support Grant.
The findings and opinions expressed in this work do not necessarily reflect
those of the granting agencies. The authors thank the members of AAAL-
ab.Stanford.Edu for all their help in all phases of the work. The authors are
grateful for the suggestions of Jeremy Bailenson, Bill Haskell, John Wil-
linsky, and Scott Klemmer.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Marily
Oppezzo, Wallenberg Hall, 450 Serra Mall, Stanford University, Stanford,
CA 94305. E-mail: moppezzo@gmail.com
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
Journal of Experimental Psychology:
Learning, Memory, and Cognition © 2014 American Psychological Association
2014, Vol. 40, No. 4, 1142–1152 0278-7393/14/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0036577
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... There is an abundance of evidence highlighting the negative health consequences of sedentary behavior (c.f., [26,128,183,195]). Fortunately, walking counteracts these effects by improving cardiovascular health [128], risk of disease [26], depression [96], happiness [187], and creativity [134], among others. Despite this clear evidence motivating the need to incorporate more physical activity into the workday to break up extended sedentary periods, knowledge workers continue to spend most of the day seated [37,183]. ...
... Our work strongly motivates a longitudinal study in industry to investigate whether such a prototype increases how often workers initiate walking meetings in practice. Given the power of walking to impact users both physically [26,96,128] and cognitively [134,187], we wanted to explore whether walking could be more than a secondary activity conducted for health purposes. As such, we investigated whether walking could be used as a design element to positively impact users' experiences and benefit primary tasks. ...
... By increasing physical activity at work, workers naturally experience health benefits [26,96,128]. Additionally, as movement increases creativity [134], cognition [173,180], and engagement [18,17], the primary work routine also benefits. Technology designers can intentionally use physical exertion to increase the sense of accomplishment when completing tasks and can design a stronger affective experience [Core4,18]. ...
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... Our study did not detect any noticeable improvement in learning attributed to walking in VR. This contradicts studies observing cognitive benefits after walking or physical activity Johnson-Glenberg et al., 2021;Oppezzo and Schwartz, 2014;Rasberry et al., 2011;Wretman, 2017;Zabriskie and Heath, 2019), but aligns with earlier studies finding no enhanced learning due to body movement in VR (Moreno and Mayer, 2002;Queiroz et al., 2023). One explanation might be that participants in the teleportation conditiondespite not movingremained in a standing position during the VR experience. ...
... Additionally, previous studies also highlight the beneficial effects of walking in other cognitive areas beyond mere acquisition of knowledge. Oppezzo and Schwartz (2014) observed enhanced creativity both during and after walking which also enhanced the formation of new and more qualitative analogies. As such, even if walking in VR does not enhance the acquisition of the displayed content, it can potentially increase the quality of the respective classroom lesson. ...
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