Creative People Enjoy Idle Time More than Others

The study, published in the Creativity Research Journal, finds that creative people are more likely to fruitfully use idle time by letting one idea lead to another. Study participants who were more creative felt less bored when they sat alone in a room, researchers found. And during the COVID-19 pandemic, a time when the world experienced unusually extended periods of unstructured time, creative people were less bored and more engaged with their thoughts.

The researchers divided the study into two parts. For the first experiment, the researchers asked each participant to sit alone in a room for 10 minutes without any access to digital devices. In the absence of any particular prompt, the participants were asked to voice their thoughts aloud in real time. The recorded files from 81 participants were then transcribed and analyzed.

The first experiment also found that creative people were more engaged in their thoughts when they were left alone without distractions, such as cell phone and internet.

Source: sciencedaily.com

For the second experiment, over 2,600 adults answered questions through a smartphone app called Mind Window, developed by an associate professor in the Department of Psychology and senior author of the paper Jessica Andrews-Hanna and her graduate student Eric Andrews. Participants who self-identified as being creative reported being less bored during the pandemic.

"Understanding why different people think the way they do may lead to promising interventions to improve health and well-being," Andrews-Hanna said