Creativity in action: Exploring how physical action and posture affect convergent and divergent thinking.

Creative thinking, namely the capacity to generate ideas that are novel and useful, has been extensively related to physical activity. The effect of physical activities has been shown also for logical thinking, namely the ability to find the best answer to a problem. Previous studies assert that this link between body posture/action and thinking is mediated by a language-related process and, specifically, by individuals’ ability to reason through metaphors. Namely, creativity is largely defined as fluid and flexible; by contrast, logical thinking is thought as more rigid and precise. The aim of this study is to explore whether this physical effect on convergent and divergent thought needs the mediation of language or, maybe, whether there is a direct influence of the body posture and movement, without the medium of language. In Experiment 1, we aim to highlight the effects of body posture on creative and logical thinking. Participants were asked to perform a physical movement or to maintain a specific position and then were asked to complete Gulford’s Alternative Uses test of creativity or Baddeley’s Reasoning Test of logical thinking. The results confirm the effect of specific actions and postures on the different thought processes we tested. In Experiment 2, we aim to verify the role of language. For this purpose, we use the same design of Exp.1, but now actions were followed by a dot-probe task, in which we use words and images representing possible linguistic and symbolic meaning of actions and postures (i.e. words: open and close; images: an opened or closed circle). Results are discussed in light of the understanding of embodied cognition and metaphorical thought and how the body may affect thought processes.