Cognitive scientists describe creativity as fluid thought. Drawing from findings on gesture and embodied cognition, we hypothesized that the physical experience of fluidity, relative to nonfluidity, would lead to more fluid, creative thought. Across 3 experiments, fluid arm movement led to enhanced creativity in 3 domains: creative generation,…

"Everyone else was turning the page but I had not yet finished the first item." That is how the author remembers the beginning of his interest in intelligence. For whatever reason, he decided while in elementary school that intelligence is modifiable, and every year he authored a work book with exercises children could complete to increase their…

Four experiments demonstrate that walking boosts creative ideation in real time and shortly after. In Experiment 1, while seated and then when walking on a treadmill, adults completed Guilford's alternate uses (GAU) test of creative divergent thinking and the compound remote associates (CRA) test of convergent thinking. Walking increased 81% of…

According to construal level theory, psychological distance promotes more abstract thought. Theories of creativity, in turn, suggest that abstract thought promotes creativity. Based on these lines of theorizing, we predicted that spatial distancing would enhance creative performance in elementary school children. To test this prediction, we primed…

Suggests that the concept of creativity has been used in an imprecise manner in education. Reviews theories of creativity in humanistic psychology, experimental psychology, and the cognitive psychological works of Piaget and Vygotsky. Argues that educators have not always distinguished between these differing views of creativity. (41 citations)…

It is argued that the study of one important aspect of intelligence, creativity, can be furthered by the introduction of causal theories and their experimental study. Purely correlational investigations are a useful beginning, but psychology can only acquire true scientific stature by combining correlational and experimental approaches. (SLD)