Certain meditation techniques can promote creative thinking, even if
you have never meditated before. This is the outcome of a study by
cognitive psychologist Lorenza Colzato and Dominique Lippelt at
Leiden University, published in Mindfulness.
Long-lasting influence
The study is a clear indication that you don't need to be an
experienced meditator to profit more from meditation. The findings
support the belief that meditation can have a long-lasting influence on
human cognition, including how we conceive new ideas. Besides
experienced meditators, also novices may profit from meditation.
Different techniques, different effects
But the results demonstrate that not all forms of meditation have the
same effect on creativity. Test persons performed better in divergent
thinking (= thinking up as many possible solutions for a given problem)
after Open Monitoring meditation (= being receptive to every thought
and sensation). The researchers did not see this effect on divergent
thinking after Focused Attention meditation (=focusing on a particular
thought or object.)
Setup of the study
40 individuals participated in this study, who had to meditate for 25
minutes before doing their thinking tasks. There were both experienced
mediators and people who never meditated before. The study
investigated the influences of different types of meditative techniques
on the two main ingredients of creativity:
Divergent thinking Allows for many new ideas to be generated. It is
measured using the so-called Alternate Uses Task method where
participants are required to think up as many uses as possible for
a particular object, such as a pen.
Convergent thinking Convergent thinking, on the other hand, is a
process whereby one possible solution for a particular problem is
generated. This is measured using the Remote Associates Task
method, where three unrelated words are presented to the
participants, words such as 'time', 'hair' and 'stretch'. The
participants are then asked to identify the common link: in this
case, 'long'.
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