UC Santa Barbara

Can artistic experiences promote downstream cognitive effects relevant to creativity? In this preregistered, randomized controlled experimental study, a representative online sample of participants (N = 483) were randomly assigned to either the artistic short film condition or the control condition, where they watched enjoyable, nonartistic videos. Within each condition, participants were further randomly assigned to view one of five possible videos of comparable duration: artistic short films in the experimental condition or compilation videos depicting humorous, home-video-style domestic antics in the control condition. After viewing a video, participants completed a creative short story task and a categorization task designed to measure conceptual expansion. The results revealed that participants in the artistic short film condition showed increased creativity in a creative writing task and increased conceptual expansion—characterized by a greater tendency to endorse unconventional items as belonging to standard categories. The effect of condition on conceptual expansion was fully mediated by state openness. These results suggest that immersive aesthetic experiences can temporarily alter cognitive processes in ways that facilitate creative thinking, promoting more open, fluid, and expansive mental states.