Systematic Review of the Proposed Associations between Physical Exercise and Creative Thinking

The Impact of Exercise and Health Management on Workplace Creativity

Objectives

This study aimed to investigate Japan's service sector employees to determine whether employee creativity is associated with the provision of a fitness program (that encourages employees to perform physical exercise) or a health and productivity management (H&PM) program at the workplace.

Design

This was a cross-sectional study.

Methods

A nationwide online survey was conducted using stratified sampling. Data were obtained for respondents' demographic characteristics, subjective health, exercise frequency, and organizational wellness support. Workplace creativity, psychological safety, and leadership were evaluated using standardized scales. A binary logistic regression was performed to examine the relationship between organizational wellness support programs and workplace creativity.

Results

Respondents were 1,955 full-time employees in private-sector organizations (979 men and 976 women; mean age 40.30 ± 10.85). Workplace creativity was significantly more likely respondents whose employers provided a fitness program (adjusted OR = 1.86, 95% CI = 1.39-2.48, p<.001) or an H&PM program (adjusted OR = 2.07, 95% CI = 1.53-2.80, p<.001). Furthermore, workplace creativity was significantly more likely in employees who perceived themselves as rather healthy or healthy. Employees who exercised frequently over the past year were more likely to display creativity than those never exercised.

Conclusions

Workplace creativity was associated with good subjective health, high exercise frequency, and organizational wellness support programs offered by employers. Human resource management for employees' fitness and health is crucial for cultivating the productivity and innovation necessary for business success.

New principles, the benefits, and practices for fostering a physically active lifestyle

The modern environment has led to an increased risk and incidence of sedentary lifestyles. When physical activity (PA) becomes insufficient, pathophysiological pathways are invoked and the future risk for chronic diseases and premature mortality increases. As a consequence, since the 1970s governmental agencies and medical societies have published guidelines to promote PA. The 2018 Guidelines for Physical Activity for Americans contain important updated guidelines, but many of these guidelines are not yet sufficiently known by the public or health providers. In addition, to make use of these guidelines, they need to be integrated with optimal behavioral interventions. Accordingly, this narrative review critically assesses five tenets that stem from the 2018 Guidelines and illustrates how these tenets can be integrated with tools and techniques for motivating individuals to initiate and maintain a more physically active lifestyle. The first tenet indicates that there is no lower threshold of PA that must be obtained before health benefits begin to accrue. Second, it is no longer required that PA be obtained in bouts of 10 min or more to "count". Bouts of lesser duration also count. Pending further study, new accelerometry data suggest that vigorous intermittent PA of just 1-2 min may also benefit health, such as that acquired by stair climbing or carrying heavy groceries. This has led to a new concept of promoting "lifestyle physical activity". Third, excessive sitting is health damaging if it is not accompanied by sufficient daily life PA or accrues over long uninterrupted bouts. Fourth, it is essential to incorporate resistance exercises for optimal health and to promote successful aging. Fifth, a wealth of new evidence indicates that PA strongly protects and promotes all aspects of brain health and may improve cognition even after a single bout of exercise.

Can Physical Exercise Promote the Development of Teenagers' Non-Cognitive Ability?-Evidence from China Education Panel Survey (2014-2015)

Background: With the development of educational philosophy, physical exercise is considered to be an important factor in the development of individual cognitive abilities in adolescents. However, the effects of physical exercise on non-cognitive abilities in adolescents remain inadequate. Objective: This study examined the effect of physical exercise on non-cognitive ability and further examined the differences in this effect in different groups. Methods: Survey data on non-cognitive ability, physical exercise and covariates were collected in the China Education Panel Survey (2014−2015) from a nationally representative sample of adolescents (n = 7904) in the eighth (follow-up) grade. Results: The results show that, after controlling for the influence of other factors, physical exercise has a promoting effect on six non-cognitive abilities—social behavior (p < 0.001), communication ability (p < 0.01), perseverance (p < 0.05), school adaptation (p < 0.001), educational expectation (p < 0.01) and creative thinking (p < 0.01)—and there is no significant effect on emotional control (p > 0.05). Furthermore, the development of non-cognitive ability in physical exercise shows certain group differences. Conclusions: There are gender differences in the performance of non-cognitive ability. Girls perform better than boys in non-cognitive ability. Physical exercise is an important means to develop non-cognitive ability, which indicates that non-cognitive ability has plasticity in adolescence. Future intervention may improve the non-cognitive ability of Chinese adolescents by increasing physical exercise.

Acute and Chronic Physical Activity Increases Creative Ideation Performance: A Systematic Review and Multilevel Meta-analysis

BACKGROUND

Physical activity is a health-relevant lifestyle factor associated with various benefits on physical and mental health. Several meta-analyses indicated effects of acute and chronic physical activities on elementary cognitive functions such as executive control processes, memory, and attention. Meta-analytic evidence on the effects of physical activity on creative idea generation, which involves a conglomerate of these elementary cognitive functions, is largely missing.

OBJECTIVE

A twofold approach was used to evaluate (1) if there is an association between habitual physical activity and creative ideation and (2) if physical activity interventions (acute and chronic) enhance creative ideation performance.

METHODS

Multilevel meta-analytic methods were applied to (1) evaluate the cross-sectional association between creative ideation performance and measures of habitual physical activity and (2) the effect of physical activity on creative ideation performance. Indicators of creative ideation (fluency, flexibility, originality, elaboration, or composite score), creativity domain (verbal, figural), population (adults, children), gender, study quality, and publication year served as moderator variables for both meta-analyses. Analyses of intervention studies additionally examined the moderator variables study design (between, within), time of measurement (during, after), and implementation of intervention (acute, chronic).

RESULTS

The applied meta-analytic multilevel analysis indicated a medium effect for cross-sectional studies (r = 0.22, SE = 0.06, p = 0.002, 95% CI [0.10-0.34]) based on 17 effects sizes from seven studies. The pooled effects of 28 intervention studies, providing 115 effect sizes, indicated a medium effect size of Hedges' g = 0.47 (SE = 0.09, p < 0.001, 95% CI [0.30-0.65]). Furthermore, a stronger effect was observed for chronic interventions of several days or weeks in comparison with acute interventions of one single bout.

CONCLUSION

This study adds important new meta-analytic evidence on the beneficial role of physical activity beyond mental and physical health outcomes: Physical activity has a positive impact on creative ideation, which expands the literature on the role of physical activity in more elementary cognitive functions such as executive control, memory, and attention. Moderator analyses suggested that chronic interventions showed stronger effects than single bouts of physical activity. Rigorously conducted randomized controlled intervention studies and more cross-sectional studies are needed to broaden the evidence in this nascent field of research.

Effects of Verbal Priming With Acute Exercise on Convergent Creativity

The acute effects of moderate-intensity treadmill exercise during anagram problem solving on subsequent creativity performance has yet to be empirically investigated, which was this study's purpose. A two-visit (counterbalanced order), within-subject experiment was conducted among individuals aged 18-35. For the acute exercise visit, participants engaged in a 15-minute bout of moderate-intensity treadmill exercise while solving anagram problems. For the anagram only visit, participants engaged in 15 minutes of seated rest while solving anagram problems. Average RAT performance was higher for the exercise + anagram problem-solving visit (M = 10.51, SD = 3.25) compared to anagram-solving + seated rest (M = 9.29, SD = 4.12). The difference between conditions was statistically significant, t(44) = 2.385, p = .021, Cohen's d = 0.36. These findings demonstrate that acute exercise coupled with anagram problem-solving, prior to RAT completion, is a potential strategy for enhancing verbal convergent creative thinking.

The Relationship Between Personality Traits, Resilience, School Support, and Creative Teaching in Higher School Physical Education Teachers

The investigation has been carried out on the status quo of higher school physical education teachers’ personality traits, resilience, and creative teaching status. The exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, combined with multiple stratified linear regression analysis, were used to verify the data obtained by the structure model. The results show that (1) among the big five personality traits, excepting conscientiousness, the rest of the four dimension personality traits have different influences on creative teaching; (2) extraversion, agreeableness, and openness can produce an intermediary effect on innovative teaching through different dimensions of resilience; (3) the school support has a positive influence on five aspects of the creative teaching; and (4) problem cognition and empathy in resilience play a multilevel role of mediating effect and are regulated variables as well. The findings of the present study revealed that the key to success to creative teaching is to understand teachers’ personality traits, pay attention to the resilience of the development of teachers’ creative teaching, and provide required support; the higher the awareness of the problem and the degree of school support in the resilience was, the higher the problem solving and the higher degree of teaching in the creative teaching tended to be.