Opción B - 3 · Inglés PAU Castilla y León Extraordinaria 2021

OPTION B

CAN EXERCISE MAKE YOU MORE CREATIVE?

If you often exercise, there’s a good chance you also tend to be more creative, according to an

interesting new study of the links between physical activity and imagination. It finds that active people

come up with more and better ideas during tests of their inventiveness than people who are relatively

sedentary. Science already offers plenty of evidence that physical activity influences how we think. Many

5 studies show that our brains change in response to physical activity, in part because during exercise we

marinate our brains with extra blood, oxygen and nutrients.

Creativity is one of the most abstract of thinking skills and difficult to quantify, and its relationship

with exercise has not been clear. A 2014 study of exercise and creativity likewise found that moving can

spur innovation. But this and most other past studies of movement and creativity looked into the short-

10 term effects of physical activity under tightly controlled conditions in labs or similar settings. They did

not examine the potential linkages, if any, between everyday activities, like going for a walk, and the

workings of our imaginations, or how being active could possibly affect creativity in the first place.

The scientists wondered, too, about happiness. Some past research had speculated that good

moods might be the intermediary linking activity and creativity. According to that idea, moving makes

15 people happier, but, the researchers wondered, did being happy relate closely both to how much people

moved and their creativity, meaning it linked the two?

The answer, the researchers concluded, was no. The most active of the volunteers proved to be

also the most creative, and active people also tended to be happy people, although their moods were

highest if they engaged in relatively vigorous activities, like jogging or playing sports, rather than

20 moderate ones. But the correlations between activity, creativity and moods were slight. People could walk

often and be quite creative but not especially happy, suggesting that it was not improved moods that most

influenced creativity. It was moving.

The study does not explain how exercise and other activities might shape creativity, but it implies

that active imaginations start with active lives.

25 (Fragment adapted from The New York Times.)

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