Creativity, embodiment, and COVID-19: Discovering new research horizons under methodological and environmental constraints

Abstract

COVID-19 has been a powerful reminder of the role that our bodies and physical context play in our lives. The pandemic revealed that human embodiment and many ways creative cognition is affected by the physical world and environmental constraints remain among the least understood aspects in the psychology of creativity, where creativity tends to be presented as an individual’s mental ability. In this autoethnographic article, I reflect on how restrictions and methodological constraints that I, as a researcher, experienced during the pandemic have informed five insights about the domain of my scientific inquiry. Through these five takeaways from the pandemic, I sketch a new picture of the creative process—a process that is situated, embodied, tool-mediated, and collaborative. I emphasize the importance of acting on opportunities amid a crisis and outline promising research directions for future creativity scholars across disciplinary borders.