walking outside increases creativity

It's official! What we have always known - that nothing beats a good long outdoor walk for boosting and bettering ideas has now been asserted in a scientific rather than anecdotal way. Dr Marily Oppezzo and Daniel Schwartz report in the article 'The positive effect of walking on creative thinking' (Journal of Experimental Psychology, April 21 2014) that walking improves GAU measures of creativity by 81%. GAU (Guilford's Alternate Uses test) measures the subject's ability to think up as many different uses for an object- something that correlates meaningfully with being creative. The tests were performed using treadmills indoors and also going on outdoor walks- in contrast with being seated. They found that outdoor walking produced 'the most novel and highest quality' results of all.