Wandering body, wandering mind? The relationship between bodily movement, creativity and mind wandering

Abstract

It has long been hypothesized that creativity may be related to mind wandering. Recent work has shown that bodily movement is related to both creativity and mind wandering. In the current experiment, we examined the question as to whether mind wandering and creativity would be simultaneously enhanced during an active walking condition relative to an inactive control condition. The experiment included 30 students (between the age of 19 and 32, 18 females and 12 males) from the UiT – Norway’s Arctic University, which was randomized to repeated measures on a creativity test (Guilford’s Alternate Uses; GAU) and a standard assessment of mind wandering frequency (Sustained Attention to Respond Task; SART) with and without walking on a treadmill. We failed to replicate the previous finding that creativity was enhanced during walking relative to rest (t(29) = 1.345, p = .09), and found no significant increase in self-reported mind wandering frequency during walking compared to rest (t(29) = .671, p = .55). In addition we found no significant correlation between mind wandering and creativity during the WALK condition (r = -.15, p = .09), or the REST condition (r = -.06, p = .76).