Now here’s something interesting,
and counterintuitive and ultimately inconclusive. According to an article by Gretchen Reynolds
in the New York Times, researchers at Stanford have been studying the
connection between walking and creativity.
Most of us walkers would think the connection is straightforward and
obvious – but wait …
Stanford undergraduates (admittedly not exactly a random sample of humanity) were taken to a plain room
where there was just a desk and a treadmill and there they were given
creativity tests, which Reynolds writes, “in psychological circles might
involve tasks like rapidly coming up with alternative uses for common objects,
such as a button.”
Having taken the
tests the students hit the treadmill, walking at a pace they were comfortable
with, and they were tested again, while walking. The tests took about 8 minutes to
complete.
Most of the students
did much better on the tests while walking on the treadmill and “were able to generate
about 60 percent more uses for an object.”
You might argue that coming up with novel uses for an object isn’t
precisely the same thing as writing Ulysses,
but let’s accept the premise. Now it
gets interesting.
The researchers
subsequently let the students go for a walk in the wide open spaces of the
Stanford campus, and of course you might assume that this green and pleasant
environment would stimulate the senses and lead to even greater creativity, but
they found not. The increase in
creativity was exactly the same whether walking on the campus or on the treadmill.
So, you might conclude, it was simply the
walking that caused the increase, that apparently it doesn’t matter where or how
you walk.
But of course
the next step is to wonder whether the experiment proves anything whatsoever about
walking. Maybe it’s just about
exercise. Maybe a stationary bike or
running up a few flights of stairs would be just as useful in getting the
creative juices flowing. Or was it
something inherent in the treadmill?
Meanwhile
there’s the above. The last time I was
walking in Wonder Valley in the California desert I did my usual thing of
poking around in desert ruins and I found a ruined house, and beside it this abandoned treadmill in the middle of nowhere.
Now I’m thinking
it might be interesting to do some research on whether walking on a treadmill,
but in the great outdoors, might be even more creatively stimulating. And what about walking on a treadmill while
watching (or indeed smashing) a TV – what does THAT do for creativity? There’s never a Stanford researcher around when
you need one.
