NotMuch2Say

She got the idea for the study while walking with her advisor at Stanford to discuss her thesis topic, and the paper she eventually published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in 2014 is sharp enough that it should have ended the seated meeting on the day it came out.

She ran 4 experiments on 176 people. Same person tested twice. Once sitting, once walking. The creativity tasks were the standard ones psychologists have used for decades to measure how good a brain is at generating novel useful ideas.

81% of participants in the first experiment produced more creative ideas while walking than while sitting. In the second experiment, 88%. In the third, 100%. Every single person walked into a more creative version of themselves. On average, people generated 60% more novel useful ideas the moment their legs started moving.

The skeptical question is the obvious one. Maybe it was the fresh air. Maybe it was the scenery passing by. Maybe it was the change of environment doing the work, not the walking itself.

Oppezzo killed every one of those explanations with one experimental decision. She put people on a treadmill facing a blank wall. No scenery. No fresh air. No environmental change. Just legs moving in place while staring at white drywall. The 60% boost held.

Then she ran the experiment that closed the case completely. She took participants outside in two conditions. Half of them walked through a Stanford courtyard. The other half were pushed through the exact same courtyard in a wheelchair. Same outdoor stimulation. Same scenery passing at the same speed. The only difference was whether the legs were moving.

The walkers produced dramatically more novel high-quality ideas than the wheelchair group. The outdoors did almost nothing on its own. The walking did everything.

She also tested the opposite kind of thinking. Convergent thinking. The kind where there is one right answer and you have to narrow down to it. Word puzzles where 3 words share a hidden fourth word that connects them. The seated participants did slightly better on these. Walkers got slightly worse.

Walking is not a general intelligence enhancer. It does one specific thing. It opens up the divergent search inside your brain. The part that generates options. The part that produces unexpected connections. The part that takes a problem and finds five ways into it instead of one.

When you need to converge on the single right answer, sit down. When you need to find the answer in the first place, get up.

The mechanism is now well understood. Walking selectively activates what neuroscientists call the default mode network, the system inside your brain that runs when you are not consciously focused on anything. The DMN is where mind-wandering happens. Where memories cross-reference each other. Where ideas that have been sitting in separate folders inside your head finally bump into each other.

When you sit at a desk and force yourself to concentrate, you suppress the DMN. When you walk at a natural pace, the executive part of your brain gets just busy enough handling the walking that the DMN comes online and starts doing the work that focus was blocking.

The most useful finding in the entire paper is the one almost nobody quotes. The boost did not turn off the moment people stopped walking. Participants who walked first and then sat back down stayed elevated. Their next round of seated creativity work was still significantly better than people who had been sitting the whole time. The rest lingered for at least several minutes after the legs stopped moving.

You do not need to do creative work while walking. You need to walk before the creative work. The brain holds the state.

Republican men hate women. Women who support conservative men are settling for crumbs as other women are targetted and harassed by men who sexually assault/rape women and children.

Marshawn truth bombs for 2 and a half minutes.

This picture of Karoline Leavitt (left) was scrubbed from AFP and Getty's systems after WH complained

By Jamie Hoo...

I can't even with this anymore.

Tell me I'm not the only one who noticed.

🔴 Shooting: 8:35 PM

🔴 Trump at podium reading from prepared notes: 9:30 PM

ONE HOUR.

Active shooting. Evacuation. Motorcade.

And he showed up READING FROM SOMETHING WRITTEN.

Trump doesn't do that.

Speaking off the cuff is literally his whole identity.

So I have one question that nobody is asking.

When was that written?

There are only 3 answers. 👇

1️⃣Written in the motorcade

30-45 minutes of pure chaos.

And somehow it's polished.

Structured.

Prepared.

Sure.

2️⃣ Written BEFORE the event

As a contingency.

Meaning someone specifically planned for a shooting happening there.

Before it happened.

They predicted it.

And they prepared for it.

3️⃣ It already existed before they walked in.

But THIS is what broke me. 👇

His opening line.

Dude.

I gasped.

I laughed.

And then I said no effing way ~ what the hell is going on.

It looked like a spoof.

Like a scene straight out of Idiocracy.

And then I realized. That's exactly the problem.

"That was very unexpected."

That is called an objection killer.

It's a sales technique.

You name the objection before anyone raises it.

You neutralize the skeptic before they speak.

You get ahead of the question before it's even asked.

That line was not shock.

That line was not relief.

That line was crafted.

By someone who had time.

Who was thinking clearly.

Who knew exactly what people would be thinking.

One hour after an active shooting.

❌ The notes existed.

❌ The opener was deliberate.

❌ The timeline doesn't work.

Not one person in mainstream media is talking about this.

Go watch it.

Then come back and tell me I'm wrong.

💾 Save this so you can show people.

♻️Share this before it disappears.