Combine The Effects Of 3 Scientific Studies On Creativity To Supercharge Your Ideas
We are constantly scouring the science out there as it relates to improving our creativity. We want every advantage, right? You can see all of the individual studies we’ve found so far on our Science tab. But what if we combined the insights from different studies? How unstoppable would we be then? Well, let’s see what happens when you combine walking, the color green, and getting off your smartphone.
The three studies.
WALKING INCREASES CREATIVITY BY 60%
Research out of Stanford found that we are 60% more creative when we are walking, regardless of whether that’s indoors, outdoors or on a treadmill. Walking gives your working memory something to focus on, which means it’s less likely to weed out “irrelevant” thoughts. 60%!
PRIMED WITH GREEN SUBJECTS ARE MORE CREATIVE.
A study out of the University of Munich proved that priming subjects with the color green prior to creativity tests improved creative performance. I have absolutely no idea why green primes creativity, but there you go.
SMARTPHONES MAKE YOU LESS SMART CREATIVELY
Research from Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience provides unprecedented neuroimaging evidence on the negative impact of smartphone addiction on creative cognition. If you’re always focusing on your phone, there’s no room for new ideas to enter.
Combined Supercharged effect.
Now, it’s common and quite conventional wisdom that taking a walk in nature is good for creativity. I don’t know of any scientific studies that prove that, but often conventional wisdom like this is self-evidently true. There’s something magical and primal about being surrounded by nature. But could it be more than that?
The three scientific studies above—if combined—give us some science to back up that magic.
Thanks to Stanford, we know walking increases creativity by a whopping 60%. And it doesn’t matter where you walk. You could be in a gym walking on a treadmill and the results of the study hold up. But what if you walked in nature?
What color is nature, predominantly? That’s right, green.
So now let’s combine the effects of walking (at all) with walking in a place (nature) that is predominantly green. Thanks to the University of Munich we know looking at the color green primes us for increased creativity. Walking in a green environment and we enjoy compounding creative effects. But that’s not all.
Typically when we’re walking in nature we’re looking to disconnect. Thanks to SCAN we have neuroimaging evidence that the distraction of a smartphone gets in the way of our creativity because our minds are less likely to wander.
So let’s take an inventory here…
Walking + Green + No Smartphone = Supercharged Creativity
Make your own combinations.
Now, go to our Science page and make your own combinations of studies. Maybe there are others you already do and haven’t realized there are studies that support them. Or maybe others you can see go together somehow. I mean, you’ll see that moderate amounts of alcohol increase our creativity, and that can be combined with all sorts of things. If you have ideas for combinations, please post them below in the comments.
As always, nothing is unthinkable!
Will Burns is the Founder & CEO of the revolutionary virtual-idea-generating company, Ideasicle X. He’s an advertising veteran from such agencies as Wieden & Kennedy, Goodby Silverstein, Arnold Worldwide, and Mullen. He was a Forbes Contributor for nine years writing about creativity in modern branding. Sign up for the Ideasicle Newsletter and never miss a post.