The impact of walking on creative thinking: A systematic review and meta-analysis
Alex Thabane, Vikram Arora, Joelle Boilard, Adam Sutoski, Sameer Parpia, Goran Calic, Jason W Busse, Tyler McKechnie · 2026
Read The impact of walking on creative thinking: A systematic review and meta-analysis by Alex Thabane, Vikram Arora, Joelle Boilard, Adam Sutoski, Sameer Parpia, Goran Calic, Jason W Busse, Tyler McKechnie (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/plos-pone-0347878.txt.
Description
Alex Thabane and colleagues gathered every study they could find on whether walking boosts creativity, then pooled the results mathematically. Twenty-three studies covering just over a thousand people, mostly university students, measured two kinds of thinking: divergent thinking, generating many novel ideas, and convergent thinking, narrowing to the single best answer. Study quality and evidence certainty were graded with formal tools.
Walking showed a large positive effect on divergent thinking with moderate certainty, holding up when only the strictest trials were counted. For convergent thinking the pooled effect was near zero and the evidence shaky. The authors suggest a walk is a cheap, plausible intervention when the task is brainstorming, while warning against expecting it to sharpen the final narrowing-down stage of problem solving.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Alex Thabane, Vikram Arora, Joelle Boilard, Adam Sutoski, Sameer Parpia, Goran Calic, Jason W Busse, Tyler McKechnie |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 33546 |
| LICENSE | CC_BY |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | PLOS |