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Mind full of ideas: A meta-analysis of the mindfulness–creativity link
Izabela Lebuda
a,
⁎, Darya L. Zabelina
b
,MaciejKarwowski
a
a
Department of Educational Sciences, The Maria Grzegorzewska University, 40 Szczesliwicka St., 02-353 Warsaw, Poland
b
Medical Social Science, Northwestern University, 633 N St Clair Street, Chicago, IL 60611, United States
abstractarticle info
Article history:
Received 29 March 2015
Received in revised form 22 September 2015
Accepted 23 September 2015
Available online xxxx
Keywords:
Creativity
Meditation
Meta-analysis
Mindfulness
Mindfulness improves people's functioning in many areas, but its relationship with creativity is equivocal. To
assess the link between mindfulness and creativity, we present a multilevel meta-analysis of 89 correlations ob-
tained from 20samples in studies published between 1977 and 2015and demonstrate a statistically significant,
but relatively weak correlation (r= .22) between these two constructs. This effect was moderated by thetype of
mindfulness, being significantly lower in case of the awareness aspect of mindfulness, than in the case of the
open-monitoring aspect. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.
© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Mindfulness is a state of nonjudgmental, sustained, and alert aware-
ness resulting from living in the moment (Brown & Ryan, 2003), which
improves people's cognitive, emotional, and interpersonal functioning
(Carson & Langer, 2006; Sedlmeier et al., 2012) and positively affects
the efficacy of stress regulation. In previous studies authors have
found that mindfulness also improves the ability to concentrate
(Sedlmeier et al., 2012), decreases the fear of being judged,as well as re-
duces aversive self-conscious experience (Brown, Ryan, & Creswell,
2007), and helps to deal with thoughts and feelings (Shapiro, Carlson,
Astin, & Freedman, 2006). The enhancement of mindfulness through
practicing meditation (Lutz, Dunne, & Davidson, 2007)aswellashigh
level of self-reported mindfulness have previously been linked to pro-
cesses important to creativity (Ball, 1980; Colzato, Ozturk, & Hommel,
2012). Creativity, understood as the ability to produce ideas that are
both novel and appropriate (Amabile, 1996; Sternberg & Lubart,
1996), is typically measured by the divergent thinking tests, during
which participantsare asked to name as manyuses for a common object
(e.g., brick) as possible within a limited amount of time (Guilford,
1967). Responses are scored in terms of fluency (number of ideas),
flexibility (number of categories), originality (statistical novelty of
responses), and elaboration (level of details). Other measures of creativity
include self-report scales concerning creative behavior, personality, and
activities (Baas, De Dreu, & Nijstad, 2008; Simonton, 2012), or creative
achievement (Carson, Peterson, & Higgins, 2005). Less commonly, crea-
tivity researchers use tasks with a single correct answer, such as insight
problems —for example, remote association tests (RAT; Mednick &
Mednick, 1967).
A number of abilities which are associated with trait mindfulness, or
facilitated by mindfulness training are also linked with creativity (De
Dreu, Nijstad, Baas, Wolsink, & Roskes, 2012). For instance, mindfulness
is associated with the increased ability to switch perspectives (Carson &
Langer, 2006; Feldman, Hayes, Kumar, Greeson, & Laurenceau, 2007),
while mindfulness training leads to the improvement of working mem-
ory (Chiesa, Calati, & Serretti, 2011), as well as increases the ability to re-
spond in a non-habitualfashion (Moore & Malinowski, 2009). Practicing
mindfulness also reduces the fear of judgment (Carson & Langer, 2006),
which is conducive to creativity (Baas et al., 2008; Nijstad, De Dreu,
Rietzschel, & Baas, 2010). Consequently, mindfulness may be both
directly and indirectly related to creative thinking (Davis, 2009; De
Dreu, Baas, & Nijstad, 2008), and to creative achievement (Langer,
2014).
A wide body of research has indeed shown that meditation training
enhances creative thinking and creative performance as well as im-
proves the ability to solve insight problems (Colzato et al., 2012; Ding,
Tang, Deng, Tang, & Posner, 2015; Ding, Tang, Tang, & Posner, 2014;
Ostafin & Kassman, 2012; Ren et al., 2011) and facilitates creative elab-
oration (Zabelina, Robinson, Ostafin, & Council, 2011). Experienced
meditators also outperform others in verbal fluency and are better at
finding novel solutions to a given problem (Grenberg, Reiner, &
Meiran, 2012). Importantly, meditation has a positive effect on creativ-
ity regardless of the length of practice (Jedrczak, Beresford, & Clements,
1985), which means that even short meditation can effectively stimu-
late creative abilities (Ding et al., 2014).
However, although the findings of several studies support the posi-
tive link between mindfulness and creativity, some inconsistencies
exist. For example, while meditation was clearly demonstrated to
improve verbal fluency, flexibility, and originality (Justo, 2009), longitu-
dinal examination of groups practicing transcendental meditation for
Personality and Individual Differences xxx (2015) xxx–xxx
⁎Corresponding author.
E-mail address: izalebuda@gmail.com (I. Lebuda).
PAID-07063; No of Pages 5
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2015.09.040
0191-8869/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Personality and Individual Differences
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/paid
Please cite this article as: Lebuda, I., et al., Mind full of ideas: A meta-analysis of the mindfulness–creativity link, Personality and Individual
Differences (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2015.09.040
five months did not show any significant gains in verbal creativity, but
did reveal a significant improvement in figural flexibility and originality
(Travis, 1979). Such inconsistencies may be attributed to a number of
moderators, among them the type of meditation (Colzato, Szapora,
Lippelt, & Hommel, 2014), and the multidimensional character of mind-
fulness (Baer, Smith, Hopkins, Krietemeyer, & Toney, 2006; Baas,
Nevicka, & Ten Velden, 2014). Mindfulness is a complex phenomenon,
composed of a set of different skills: the ability to pay attention to
various stimuli (observation), the ability to focus with full awareness
(acting with awareness), the ability to give a nonevaluative verbal de-
scription of the observed phenomena (description), and the ability to
avoid immediate evaluation (Baer et al., 2006). These skills may be dif-
ferentially related to creativity —for example, while open-monitoring
meditation (so-called targeting observation) may tend to increase crea-
tive thinking, focused-attention meditation (aimed at acting with
awareness) may be either unrelated to creativity (Colzato et al., 2012),
or may even impede performance on creativity tasks (Baas et al.,
2014; Zedelius & Schooler, 2015). Additionally, phenomena contrary
to mindfulness, such as disinhibition and mind-wandering, predict cre-
ative thinking and creative achievement (Baird et al., 2012; Carson,
Peterson, & Higgins, 2003; Eysenck, 1995; Schooler, Reichle, &
Halpern, 2004; Zabelina, O'Leary, Pornpattananangkul, Nusslock, &
Beeman, 2015; Zedelius & Schooler, 2015). Thus it is possible that
the facets of mindfulness may moderate the mindfulness–creativity
association.
1
Despite inconsistencies, both the general pattern of empirical results
as well as theoretical arguments (Langer, 2014) provide a rationale to
hypothesize a positive association between mindfulness and creativity.
Although empirical studies do not always confirm this link
(e.g., Domino, 1977; O'Haire & Marcia, 1980), the higher statistical
power of meta-analysis enables a more robust estimation of this rela-
tionship. It also allows us to explore the role of potential moderators.
The scarcity of published studies makes it impossible to investigate
all of the theoretically relevant moderators. However, it is possible to
examine the role of study design (correlational versus experimental
studies showing the influence of meditation on creativity), the
creativity aspects measured (insight problem solving versus divergent
thinking), as well as theaspects of mindfulness measured. Both existing
theories (Fink, Slamar-Halbedl, Unterrainer, & Weiss, 2012)andprevi-
ous research (Zedelius & Schooler, 2015) lead to the expectation
that the attention aspect of the mindfulness –measured, for example,
by the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS; Brown & Ryan,
2003)–will be significantly less strongly (or even negatively —see
Baas et al., 2014) related to creativity than other aspects of mindfulness.
1. Method
1.1. The selection of studies
We performed a literature search in the Google Scholar, PsycInfo,
Ebsco, and Scopus databases as well as at ResearchGate.net and
Academia.edu. The first stage involved a search for articles by means
of the following keywords: creativity and mindfulness, creativity and
meditation, creative problem solving and mindfulness, and creative
problem solving and meditation. In the second stage, we scanned the
databases for all the authors of the publications found. In the last
stage, the query involved an analysis of the references from each of
the papers. The first author found and analyzed 33 articles. The third au-
thor conducted an independent review of all the identified articles. This
meta-analysis includes papers published in peer-reviewed journals and
based on quantitative research; we excluded theoretical or review
papers (e.g., Horan, 2009; Mooneyham & Schooler, 2013), and those
in which only one of the main variables (creativity or mindfulness)
was directly measured (e.g., Langer, Russell, & Eisenkraft, 2009). We
also excluded publications that concerned constructs closely related
to, but not identical with creativity, such as openness to experience or
cognitive flexibility (e.g., Moore & Malinowski, 2009).
We included articles devoted to both trait and state mindfulness
(Bishop et al., 2004). In the case of experimental studies, we did not
exclude any of the types of meditation (e.g., focused attention or
open-monitoring). One study that lacked a control group or baseline
level of creativity was excluded from the analysis (Colzato et al.,
2014). This procedure resulted in 20 independent samples and 89
correlations obtained in a total sample of 1549 participants.
1.2. Data analysis
We applied three-level meta-analysis (Cheung, 2014a; Cheung,
2014b) in the metaSEM package (Cheung, 2014a) for the Renvironment
(RDevelopment Core Team, 2013). Level 1 describes the participants in
studies, Level 2 describes effects within studies, and Level 3 describes
the studies themselves. Three-level meta-analysis allows us to give un-
biased estimates of standard errors, Level 2 (within-study) variance,
and Level 3 (between-study) variance. Three-level meta-analysis has
an advantage over traditional random-effect meta-analysis (which
should be considered a two-level model) because averaging the effects,
which is necessary in random-effects models, reduces the statistical
power of the analysis.
We converted all the obtained effects (i.e., mean differences
between experimental and control groups in experimental designs) to
Pearson's r, applying widely used formulas (Lipsey & Wilson, 2001). All
correlations were corrected for unreliability: they were divided by the
square root of the reliabilities of the variables (Hunter & Schmidt,
1990). When reliability estimates were not provided, we used average re-
liabilities. For comparison purposes, Table 1 contains both reliability-
corrected and uncorrected correlations. All studies and correlations are
included in the online supplementary material.
2. Results
We processed data in three-steps. First, we estimated overall effect
sizes for the relationship between mindfulness and creativity. Second,
we fitted three three-level models to assess the role of potential moder-
ators. Finally, we performed an analysis of publication bias to examine
whether selective reporting may have influenced the results.
2.1. The overall relationship
The effect sizes obtained using three-level meta-analysis are
presented in Table 1.
The correlation between mindfulness and creativity was estimated
at r=.22(r= .18 without correction for attenuation). This correlation
is significant but heterogeneous. We found more between-study than
within-study variability, which means moderators are more likely to
exist between than within studies. Despite this heterogeneity, our
main hypothesis finds support —creativity does correlate with mindful-
ness significantly, with a “small-to-medium”effect size (Cohen, 1992;
Lipsey & Wilson, 2001).
2.2. Moderator analysis
In the first model testing the role of moderators, we included:
(1) study design, coded: 0 = correlational,1=experimental; (2) creativity
measurement, coded: 0 = self-reported,1=test; (3) the aspect of
creativity, coded: 0 = achievement,1=potential, and (4) gender (the
percentage of females). This model was not characterized by a signifi-
cantly improved fit compared to the baseline model, −2LL(df =6)=
5.93, Δ-2LL(Δdf =3) = 6.57, p= .09, and none of the moderators
were significant, pN.05. Consequently, the effect was stable across
1
We are grateful to the anonymous reviewer for bringing this to our attention.
2I. Lebuda et al. / Personality and Individual Differences xxx (2015) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Lebuda, I., et al., Mind full of ideas: A meta-analysis of the mindfulness–creativity link, Personality and Individual
Differences (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2015.09.040
correlational and experimental studies as well as studies with creativity
assessed via test or self-reported measures.
In the second step, we tested the role of the measure of mindfulness.
The Kentucky Inventory of Mindfulness Skills (KIMS), which was used
most often across the studies (35 times) served as a reference category,
while the MAAS, Integrative Mind-Body Training (IBMT), the Five Facet
Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ), OM Meditation, Transcendental
Meditation, and “other”types of meditation were introduced as
dummy variables. This model was better fitted than the baseline,
−2LL(df =9)=−1.125, Δ-2LL(Δdf = 6) = 13.63, p= .03, and, consis-
tently with our predictions, MAAS scores resulted in significantly weak-
er relationships with creativity than KIMS scores (B=−0.31,SE =0.14,
p= .03).
In the third step, we reduced all the analyzed effects to those focus-
ing on creative abilities (68 correlations from 18 studies, with the aver-
age effect size of r=.20,SE =0.07,p= .004) and examined whether
the type of creative abilities moderated the obtained effects. Insight
problem solving skills served as a reference category, while other as-
pects of creativity were introduced as dummies. The model was fitted
significantly better than the baseline model, −2LL(df =8)=−0.29,
Δ-2LL(Δdf =5)=25.01,pb.001, with all predictors except composite
divergent thinking being statistically significant (Table 2).
We applied our final model to simultaneously test the role of crea-
tive thinking skills (0 = divergent thinking,1=insight), the type of
mindfulness (0 = other,1=MAAS), and the interaction of the two.
This model was fitted better than the baseline, −2LL(df =6
)=15.26,
Δ-2LL(Δdf = 3) = 9.46, p=.02(Table 3). MAAS remained the only
predictor of the mindfulness–creativity relationship; neither insight
nor the Insight ×MAAS interaction was significant.
2.3. Publication bias
We used two methods to assess the risk of publication bias. The first
one was the analysis of the funnel plot (Duval & Tweedie, 2000). The
second one involved the application of p-curve analysis (Simonsohn,
Nelson & Simmons, 2014). The funnel plotwas symmetric (Fig. 1), with-
out a pattern showing that smaller studies yielded higher effect sizes.
The trim-and-fill method (Duval & Tweedie, 2000) suggests adding
four more studies, which would reduce the observed effect to r=.135
(95% CI: .03, .24). However, in the case of high heterogeneity, this
method is considered too restrictive (Peters, Sutton, Jones, Abrams, &
Rushton, 2007).
To examine the publication bias using a more recent technique, we
performed a p-curve analysis (Simonsohn, Nelson & Simmons, 2014;
http://www.p-curve.com/). The p-curve analysis focuses only on
statistically significant effects and serves to check whether “just signifi-
cant effects”(i.e., slightly lower than p= .05, or between p= .04 and
p= .05) are not overrepresented in the analyzed studies. Such overrep-
resentation may stem from publication bias, but also from “cherry-
picking,”“p-hacking,”or other questionable research practices
(Simonsohn, Simmons & Nelson, 2014). The p-curve analysis did not
provide any evidence of the file-drawer effect —a majority of studies
provided significant results, and there was no overrepresentation of
“just-significant”ones (Fig. 2).
The continuous test for a right-skewed curve –showing that
studies contain evidential value –was statistically significant
(z=−5.31, pb.001), while testing for the left-skewed studies
(i.e., those that exhibit evidence of p-hacking) did not bring significant
results (pN.999).
3. Discussion
Although famous creators are sometimes absentminded, creativity
seems to require mindfulness. Indeed, this meta-analysis showed that
creativity and mindfulness are significantly related, with a “small-to-
medium”effect size (Cohen, 1992). Although this effect was not moder-
ated by the design of the studies, it tended to be stronger whencreativ-
ity measurement had the form of insight tasks rather than divergent
thinking tasks. When the aspects of creative thinking skills were
regressed on the general effect together with the mindfulness type,
the only statistically significant relationship was the one with the
awareness aspect of the mindfulness (measured by the MAAS scale),
generating lower effect size. We found no serious evidence of publica-
tion bias or p-hacking, which allows us to conclude that this estimation
is both accurate and robust.
From the theoretical standpoint, the relationship we obtained fits
well into the postulated role of mindful mind in creative thinking and
behavior (Langer, 2014). However, the moderators that we were able
to include in our analyses also shed light on the theoretically important
questionsabout the nature of this relationship. First, we were unable to
find any differences between correlational and experimental studies —
in both types of studies the effect size of the association was the same.
We perceive this null finding as important, as it shows not only that cre-
ativity and mindfulness correlate with each other, but also, more impor-
tantly, that developing mindfulness during meditation increases
Table 1
Overall effect size obtained using three-level meta-analysis.
Model No. of studies No. of effects NEffect size (r) 95% CI p
Unreliability-corrected 20 89 1549 .220 .095, .344 b.001
Unreliability-uncorrected 20 89 1549 .183 .078, .289 b.001
Model summary
Level-2 s
2
= .029 (SE = .007), pb.001, I
2
= .30
Level-3 s
2
= .061 (SE = .026), p= .02, I
2
= .63
Q(df = 88) = 1027.37, pb.001, −2LL(df = 3) = 12.50
Table 2
Moderator analysis —multilevel model est imating the effects of different aspects of
creative abilities (insight= reference category).
Predictor Estimate SE 95% CI p
Intercept 0.45 0.11 0.24, 0.66 b.001
Fluency −0.52 0.12 −0.76, −0.29 b.001
Flexibility −0.34 0.13 −0.59, −0.09 .007
Originality −0.47 0.12 −0.70, −0.24 b.001
Elaboration −0.57 0.16 −0.88, −0.26 .001
Composite divergent thinking −0.22 0.16 −0.54, 0.09 .17
Within-study variance 0.02 0.006 0.005, 0.03 .005
Between-study variance 0.13 0.06 0.02, 0.25 .02
Table 3
Moderator analysis —multilevel model estimating the effects of the type of creative
abilities and the type of mindfulness.
Predictor Estimate SE 95% CI p
Intercept 0.31 0.07 0.18, 0.44 b.001
Insight (other =0) 0.005 0.16 −0.31, 0.32 .98
MAAS (other =0)−0.73 0.23 −1.17, −0.28 .002
Insight ×MAAS 0.47 0.29 −0.11, 1.04 .11
Within-study variance 0.04 0.01 0.02, 0.06 b.001
Between-study variance 0.03 0.02 −0.004, 0.07 .08
Note. Thismodel is based on 68 correlations from 18 studiesdealing with creativeabilities.
3I. Lebuda et al. / Personality and Individual Differences xxx (2015) xxx–xxx
Please cite this article as: Lebuda, I., et al., Mind full of ideas: A meta-analysis of the mindfulness–creativity link, Personality and Individual
Differences (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2015.09.040
creativity as well. Therefore, there are good reasons to believe that there
is not only correlation, but also causation in the mindfulness–creativity
link. Putting these findings together –i.e., showing a correlational as
well as causal link between mindfulness and creativity understood as
potential (comprising cognitive and self-concept aspects) –may have
important consequences for the educational psychology of creativity
and for the practice of creative education. It was demonstrated
previously that the kind of creativity training that promotes not only
awareness and imagination but also mindfulness-related skills is
effective (Karwowski & Soszyński, 2008). It is very likely that such
mindfulness-based interventions, especially ones based on open-
monitoring meditation, may be beneficial for creative abilities as well
as for creative self-concept.
The relationship between mindfulness and creativity was signifi-
cantly lower when research concerned the awareness aspects of mind-
fulness. The awareness aspect of mindfulness can be contrasted with
disinhibition and mind-wandering, which have been previously report-
ed to be linked with creativity (Schooler et al., 2004). Previous studies
reported that the awareness of irrelevant environmental clues, as well
as shifting attention from one object to another can lead to insight and
play an important role in the creative process (Baird et al., 2012;
Carson et al., 2003). Similarly, the inability to effectively filter irrelevant
sensory information may lead to creativity in real world settings
(Zabelina et al., 2015). At least two previous studies (included in this
meta-analysis) showed that high awareness is negatively associated
with creativity (Baas et al., 2014; Zedelius & Schooler, 2015). Indeed,
the effect of the relationship between attention-based mindset and
creativity was significantly weaker than in the case of other aspects of
mindfulness. It is likely that different aspects of mindfulness, such as
open-monitoring abilities and awareness, play a role at different stages
of the creative process. It is worth to explore this issue in future
research.
3.1. Limitations and future research
It is necessary to consider a number of limitations while interpreting
the results of this meta-analysis. First, due to the small number of stud-
ies, it was impossible to analyze all potential moderators of this relation-
ship. Consequently, future research on the creativity–mindfulness link
should differentiate between various aspects, levels, and forms of
creativity as related to mindfulness. It is especially important to
examine whether the observed relationship between mindfulness and
self-reported creativity stems to a greater extent from creative self-
concept variables (Karwowski & Lebuda, in press)orfrompastcreative
activity or achievement. Although this meta-analysis demonstrates the
link between mindfulness and creativity mainly at the little-c creativity
level (Kaufman & Beghetto, 2009), there are arguments to believe that
mindfulness may also play a role in the case of professional creators in
different domains (Langer et al., 2009). Similarly, it is important to
explain how mindfulness works in general and how its different types
work at different stages of the creative process, when problems are
defined and when solutions are generated, elaborated, and assessed.
Acknowledgements
This article was written thanks to the funding obtained in the
Mobility Plus program (1152/1/MOB/2014/0) from the Ministry of
Science and Higher Education, Poland.
Maciej Karwowski was supported by the Iuventus Plus program of
the Ministry of Science and Higher Education.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at http://dx.
doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2015.09.040.
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Please cite this article as: Lebuda, I., et al., Mind full of ideas: A meta-analysis of the mindfulness–creativity link, Personality and Individual
Differences (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2015.09.040
