EXERCISE ENHANCES CREATIVITY INDEPENDENTLY OF MOOD

Objectives-It has been widely accepted in the literature that various forms of physical exercise, even in a single session, enhance positive mood. It has also been shown that physical exercise may sometimes enh ance creative thinking, but the evidence is inconclusive. Positive moo ds can favour creative thinking, but the opposite has also been report ed and these relations are unclear. There is a large anecdotal literat ure suggesting that creative people sometimes use bodily movement to h elp overcome ''blocks''. The aim of this study was to establish whethe r post-exercise creative thinking was attributable to improved mood. M ethods-The responses of 63 participants to an exercise (aerobic workou t or aerobic dance) and a ''neutral'' video watching condition were co mpared. Mood was measured using an adjective list, and creative thinki ng was tested by three measures of the Torrance test. Results-Analysis of variance showed a large and significant increase in positive mood after exercise (P<0.001) and a significant decrease in positive mood a fter video watching (P<0.001). A significant increase between the crea tive thinking scores of the two conditions was found on the flexibilit y (variety of responses) measure (P<0.05). A multifactorial analysis o f all data failed to show a significant covariance of creative thinkin g with the two measures of mood (P>0.05). Conclusions-These results su ggest that mood and creativity were improved by physical exercise inde pendently of each other.