'Creative Footing': Why Walking may Stimulate Cognitive Control of Imagination

If you're an innovative individual, a recent study suggests that taking a walk could help get the creative juices flowing.

According to researchers from Stanford University's Graduate School of Education, even a nice pace around the room could do the trick.

"Many people anecdotally claim they do their best thinking when walking," said researcher Marily Oppezzo, PhD, of the university, via a press release. "With this study, we finally may be taking a step or two toward discovering why."

For the study, researchers examined 176 people, mostly composed of college students. Findings revealed that those who walked instead of sat were more likely to come up with creative responses on tests. However, researchers also discovered that creative thinking could make the answers to questions more complicated. In other words, those who sat were better at solving problems with a single answer.

"Asking someone to take a 30-minute run to improve creativity at work would be an unpopular prescription for many people," said co-researcher Daniel L. Schwartz. "We wanted to see if a simple walk might lead to more free-flowing thoughts and more creativity."

The study was based on two experiments that each involved 48 participants. In the first study, the students were required to sit alone in a small room at a desk facing a blank wall. They were then asked to come up with alternative ways to use objects that the researchers named, such as "dollhouse." Next participants took a word association task with 15 three-word groups, including "cottage-Swiss-cake," for which the correct answer is "cheese." All tasks were repeated with different sets of words while sitting and then walking on a treadmill facing a blank wall in the same room.

The second experiment required that some participants sit for two different sets of tests while others walk during two sets of the test.

"This confirmed that the effect of walking during the second test set was not due to practice," Oppezzo said. "Participants came up with fewer novel ideas when they sat for the second test set after walking during the first. However, they did perform better than the participants who sat for both sets of tests, so there was a residual effect of walking on creativity when people sat down afterward. Walking before a meeting that requires innovation may still be nearly as useful as walking during the meeting."

Though further studies will be needed in order to determine more specifically how walking helps with creative thinking, researchers said they believe that exercise could stimulate cognitive control of imagination.

More information regarding the findings can be seen via the Journal of experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition.