Key points

Convergent thinking is a "many-to-one" process where many pieces of information help find one best answer.

Divergent thinking is a "one-to-many" process where one idea is predefined and several new ones generated.

Subjects in a study generated about 61% more original uses after stair-climbing than using the elevator.

Previous studies have shown that aerobic exercise enhances divergent thinking, but only two have explored this in natural environments. Those studies, involving walking and aerobic games, focused solely on divergent thinking without assessing convergent thinking.

This study recruited medical students in their twenties, excluding those with psychiatric conditions or prior participation in similar studies. Participants were asked to refrain from intense activities, smoking , or caffeine consumption before testing. Baseline mood was measured using the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule, and subjects were randomly assigned to two conditions on separate test days: walking up and down stairs or taking the elevator.

For the stair-climbing condition, participants walked from the fourth floor to the first and back. In the control condition, they followed the same path using the elevator. After each intervention, participants completed tests to measure divergent and convergent thinking. Divergent thinking was assessed using the Alternate Uses Test (AUT), where participants wrote down as many unusual uses for common objects as possible. The number of uses (fluency), the variety of categories (flexibility), and the originality of responses were measured. Originality was determined based on conceptual categories; if only one participant suggested an idea from a specific category, it was considered original, but if two or more participants provided ideas from the same category, it was not counted as original. These metrics—fluency, flexibility, and originality—are commonly used constructs used to assess divergent thinking and were applied in this study.

Convergent thinking was evaluated with matchstick arithmetic problems, where participants had to solve equations by moving a single matchstick. Subjects’ mood was also recorded on a visual analog scale for pleasure, relaxation, and vigor.

The experiment was conducted on two separate days, and the results were combined for analysis. Stair-climbing resulted in higher pulse rates than the elevator condition (110 vs. 90 beats per […]

Will Climbing the Stairs Give You a Creativity Boost?