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

Abstract

Bodily movements representing abstract concepts (e.g., fluidity) can affect divergent creative thinking. A recent study showed that participants who performed fluid arm movements by tracing curved line-drawings (the fluid condition) subsequently generated a larger number of more original alternative uses for newspapers than did those who traced angular linedrawings (the non-fluid condition). This suggests that fluid movements enhance fluency and originality in divergent creative thinking. To replicate these findings, we employed the same task with a larger Japanese sample. Participants in the fluid condition generated more uses for newspapers than in the non-fluid condition, regardless of confounding variables: mood, subjective difficulty of the tracing, and daily use of newspapers. In contrast to previous findings, there were no effects on originality. Our results suggest that fluidity enacted by arm movements robustly enhances creative fluency, although other factors (e.g., culture) could interfere with its effect on originality.

Meaning behind the movement: Attributing sacred meaning to fluid and nonfluid arm movements increases self-transcendent positive emotions and buffers the effects of nonfluidity on positive emotions.

“…In summary, previous research has found small to moderate effects of fluid movement on creativity (Imaizumi et al, 2020;Slepian & Ambady, 2012), race conceptions, and affective concern (Slepian et al, 2014) and no effects of fluid movement on positive and negative emotions. Furthermore, all previous research has found no statistically significant differences in mood (i.e., how good or bad participants felt) between fluid and nonfluid conditions, and Ambady (2012, replicated in Imaizumi et al, 2020) found no statistically significant differences in self-reported difficulty of drawing the lines between fluid and nonfluid conditions.…”

Body Specificity Hpothesis: Different Bodies Develop Correspondingly Different Brains and Minds

“…While handedness has been considered the primary testbed, experimenting with the BSH so far, researchers have also tried to verify the theory targeting other body parts or attributes. The targets include but are not limited to footedness [20], arm fluency [26], and pain perception [31]. In these studies, participants showed neurocognitive differences (or conversions) during the process with similar tendencies regarding the common body characteristics they share, which potentially validates the BSH theory.…”

“…Generally, the results showed that participants in portraying curved line-drawings (i.e., fluid condition) subsequently came up with more alternative uses of printed journals than did those who traced angular linedrawings, involving in non-fluid condition. A clear distinction to be made here is that the new experiment focuses on the divergence [26] rather than both divergence and originality [36]. The result suggests that fluid movement influences cognitive processing [36].…”

“…Furthermore, some experiments have shown that the effect of fluid movements can be extended from divergent creative thinking to whole-body movements [26], where a bidirectional link between proprioceptivemotor kinematics and abstract metaphorical concepts exists. Though the experiments did not directly mention the BSH, their results align with the hypothesis, as the "fluidity" is a typical physical experience according to the environment.…”

“…The hypothesis can be reasonably deduced as the fluidity becomes severely limited because of bodily-specific abnormalities, the advanced cognitive process might be affected. A particular limitation to be noticed that the baseline comparison (non-movement) was not addressed in the original experiment [36] nor the replication [26], which may confuse the credibility of these experiments. Additionally, potential factors were not seriously controlled, gender [1] especially.…”