TY - GEN
T1 - Shining (blue) light on creative ability
AU - Abdullah, Saeed
AU - Czerwinski, Mary
AU - Mark, Gloria
AU - Johns, Paul
PY - 2016/9/12
Y1 - 2016/9/12
N2 - Given the importance of creativity for both personal and societal achievements, there have been consistent efforts to stimulate creative ability. But an important environmental factor-blue (i.e., short wavelength) light - has been relatively unexplored to date. Blue light improves a number of cognitive processes (e.g., attention, working memory and sleep) known to influence our creative abilities. In this study, we investigate the effects of blue light on enhancing creativity in tasks and compare it to the effects of walking, which has been shown to stimulate creative ability. Based on data from 21 participants over 2 weeks, we found that blue light resulted in a 24:3% increase in convergent thinking ability, while walking improved divergent thinking by 18%. We discuss the implications of the findings within the context of UbiComp research. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first systematic examination of the impact of blue light on convergent and divergent thinking ability.
AB - Given the importance of creativity for both personal and societal achievements, there have been consistent efforts to stimulate creative ability. But an important environmental factor-blue (i.e., short wavelength) light - has been relatively unexplored to date. Blue light improves a number of cognitive processes (e.g., attention, working memory and sleep) known to influence our creative abilities. In this study, we investigate the effects of blue light on enhancing creativity in tasks and compare it to the effects of walking, which has been shown to stimulate creative ability. Based on data from 21 participants over 2 weeks, we found that blue light resulted in a 24:3% increase in convergent thinking ability, while walking improved divergent thinking by 18%. We discuss the implications of the findings within the context of UbiComp research. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first systematic examination of the impact of blue light on convergent and divergent thinking ability.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84991455912&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84991455912&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/2971648.2971751
DO - 10.1145/2971648.2971751
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84991455912
T3 - UbiComp 2016 - Proceedings of the 2016 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing
SP - 793
EP - 804
BT - UbiComp 2016 - Proceedings of the 2016 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing
PB - Association for Computing Machinery, Inc
T2 - 2016 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing, UbiComp 2016
Y2 - 12 September 2016 through 16 September 2016
ER -