Give Your Ideas Some Legs: The Positive Effect of Walking on Creative Thinking Marily Oppezzo and Daniel Schwartz Stanford University Four experiments demonstrate that walking boosts creative ideation

Give Your Ideas Some Legs: The Positive Effect of Walking
on Creative Thinking
Marily Oppezzo and Daniel 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