Scientists have proven that walking makes people more creative

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

After a walk, you are provided with 60% more inspiration.

They say that the most brilliant ideas are often born literally on the fly. And this is not a figure of speech. Scientists at Stanford have discovered a clear link between a love of hiking and creativity - the talent for generating new ideas. Moreover, it was possible to measure this connection mathematically.

As it turned out, people are pacing the room for a reason when they are enthusiastically thinking about something. Walking really helps you think.

Basically, the relationship between physical activity and is not a discovery. However, walking stands out among the physical exercises. Modern science connects Thinking, Walking, Talking: Integratory Motor and Cognitive Brain Function with the very development of the human brain. Like, Homo began to turn into sapiens only after he confidently climbed onto his lower limbs and walked briskly with them on the surface of the earth - one-two, one-two.

This method of movement is called bipedalism. At first glance, nothing special, but upon closer examination, bipedalism is a complex movement, in the processing of which many areas of the brain are involved.

To help our ancestors maintain balance, correctly distribute the load over the skeleton and muscles, step over and jump over obstacles, move rhythmically and synchronously, the ancient brain was forced to strain to such an extent that it "grew" itself a neocortex - the same gray matter covered with convolutions, which is believed to allow you and me to think. And do not assume that this is the end of evolution.

To understand exactly how walking affects the modern human mind, researchers at Stanford University conducted a series of experiments involving 176 people. During the experiments, the volunteers were given various tasks for thinking, and they had to be solved in different conditions:

• sitting on a chair in the room;
• walking on an indoor treadmill;
• sitting in a wheelchair, which was moved around the Stanford campus (in this way the scientists wanted to imitate the impressions that people get when walking);
• walking outdoors.

The tasks that were proposed to be solved were associated with inspiration and the search for new ideas. For example, volunteers were asked to find as many unusual uses for a common object as possible. By the way, this is a good creativity training, will you give it a try? Take, for example, a paper clip. Where can it be applied? Sketch ideas - the more the better.

The second type of assignments belonged to the so-called. The participants in the experiment were given some simple problem and asked to solve it in different ways. An example of such a puzzle: find a word that would connect three others. Let's say these words are "pie", "Switzerland", "farm". There can be many unifying words-solutions: "cream cheese" (it is added to pies, and it is also made from the milk of cows living on alpine farms in Switzerland), "cottage cheese", "rosemary" and so on. The more ideas of this kind were thrown by the participants, the higher their creative capabilities were rated. In addition, scientists separately noted "new ideas" - those unique solutions that other volunteers had not thought of.

Further, the researchers analyzed the collected statistics and found out: the number of "new ideas", if a person walked, increased by 60%! And it doesn't matter where exactly the walks took place: those who walked around the campus and those who wound meters on an indoor treadmill generally showed the same results.

It is curious that the subjects themselves noticed how inspiration descended on them while walking.

81% of the subjects admitted that while walking, they felt full of fresh thoughts and ideas.

Scientists suggest that the reasons for this amazing effect are the same ones that once led to the evolution of the neocortex. During walking, our brain works more actively, it is easier to establish new neural connections, more energetically connects its various departments. Therefore, the decisions that come to us while walking are often truly ingenious.

A nice bonus: a high level of creativity persists for some time after you, after returning from a walk, sit down in a chair. Therefore, if you feel that you are stuck at your desk and cannot squeeze the necessary idea out of yourself, go get some air. The reward will be not only inspiration, but a whole host of others that walking gives.