A Review of Experimental Research on Embodied Creativity: Revisiting the Mind–Body Connection

Abstract

A growing body of experimental work highlights the potential value of unstructured, interactive, or spontaneous motions, including gestures, dance, shifting body postures, physical object-manipulation, drawing, etc. to favorably impact creative performance. However, despite these favorable findings, to our knowledge, no systematic review has been conducted to explore the totality of evidence for embodied activities in this arena. Thus, the objective of this paper was to systematically evaluate the potential effects of embodied experimental manipulations on traditionally assessed creativity outcomes. A systematic review was conducted utilizing PubMed, PsychInfo, Sports Discus, and Google Scholar databases. The 20 studies evaluated employed a variety of methodological approaches regarding study design, embodied manipulation, and selection of specific creativity outcomes. Despite these variations, embodied movement robustly enhanced creativity across nearly all studies (90%), with no studies showing a detrimental effect. Based on the evaluation of the studies reviewed, several common themes emerged. These included the relevance of symbolic metaphors and distributed embodied cognitions, selection of embodied modality, specific measurement considerations, as well as the importance for implementing true, inactive control conditions in embodied creativity research. This review expands on these findings and places them in the context of improving future embodied creativity research.

Fluid movements enhance creative fluency: A replication of Slepian and Ambady (2012)

“…Studies on embodied cognition have also revealed that bodily sensation and movements can modulate divergent creative thinking [11,12]. For example, walking better facilitates subsequent divergent thinking than sitting [13], suggesting an effect of bodily movements per se on creativity.…”

“…Abstract concepts represented by somatosensation and bodily movements also modulate creativity [11,12]. To understand abstract concepts, human cognitive as well as linguistic processes employ metaphors mapping abstract concepts onto superficially dissimilar concrete concepts [3,5].…”

How Radical Is Embodied Creativity? Implications of 4E Approaches for Creativity Research and Teaching

“…As embodied cognitive science has matured, some scholars argue that the embodied metaphor thesis is not radical, rather it is an example of grounded cognition that is compatible with CC models (Adams, 2010; Gallagher, 2015a; Shapiro, 2019). Nonetheless, a number of experimental studies examining embodiment in creativity have focused on how movement might enact embodied metaphors to enhance divergent and convergent thinking (Stanciu, 2015; Frith et al, 2019).…”

Is Visual Creativity Embodied? Thinking Aloud While Performing the Creative Mental Synthesis Task

“…The view that bodily movements shape the mind, and consequently creativity, can be interpreted within the frame of the embodied cognition theoretical approach [ 8 , 9 , 10 ]. This approach posits four basic principles: (1) the body, including brain and sensorimotor capabilities, supports cognition(embodiment) [ 11 ]; (2) organisms interact with both the physical environment on the basis of the possibilities (affordances) available [ 12 , 13 ] and the social-cultural environment (embedded) [ 14 ]; (3) cognition is for action, that is organisms form their experiences by initiating actions while interacting with their environment (enactive) [ 8 , 15 , 16 , 17 ]; (4) cognition is distributed beyond the body, that is non-biological devices (e.g., computers, smartphone, etc.)…”