Being in front of a screen or a piece of paper and needing ideas to emerge is something that for many people is an urgent need, but the problem here is that sometimes it is completely impossible. But the reality here is that we have a wonderful way to get these ideas to come to mind through a simple walk.
Science has studied it. For decades, experts have been looking for a way to unblock our brain in this situation, and here a study published in 2014 had a lot to say, since researchers demonstrated through four experiments that walking has a positive effect on the creative thinking that is often lacking.
However, his greatest contribution was the dissection of what type of creativity benefits from movement. Specifically, they saw a drastic improvement in divergent thinking, which is the ability to generate multiple new and original ideas from a stimulus, but no or even slightly detrimental effect on convergent thinking, which is the ability to arrive at a single correct or logical answer.
The best. With all this we come to the conclusion that walking is an extraordinarily powerful tool for brainstorming or starting a project from scratch, but it is not the best strategy if what we need is to solve a complex mathematical equation or find the exact answer to a test.
In the real world. This study laid the foundation in a controlled environment where, in fact, part of the experiments showed that the effect persisted when walking on a treadmill in front of a blank wall, ruling out that the visual stimulus in the environment was the only one responsible. But when we leave here, the logical thing we think is that everything can end up changing.
And to answer this, a study published in 2024 in American Psychologist took the research out of the laboratory thanks to sensors and real-time evaluations in 157 young adults and analyzed daily steps in an everyday context.
Your results confirmed that both acute walking episodes and the regular habit of going for a walk are directly associated with greater performance in verbal creative ideation. That is, the effect was not a laboratory anomaly, but rather translated perfectly to the real world.
And it is confirmed again. This same year, a systematic review published in the journal PLOS ONE analyzed 23 independent studies where 1,036 participants were grouped. Their conclusions indicated that there is a large and statistically significant effect between walking and having better divergent thinking. But there is still no evidence regarding convergent thinking.
Images | Emma Simpson
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