Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Poetry is one of the most creative uses of language. Yet the influence of poetry on creativity has received little attention.The present research aimed to determine how the reception of different types of poetry affect creativity levels. In twoexperimental studies, participants were assigned to two conditions: poetry reading and non-poetic text reading. Partici-pants read poems (Study 1 = narrative/open metaphors; Study 2 = descriptive/conventional metaphors) or control pieces ofnon-poetic text. Before and after the reading manipulation, participants were given a test to determine levels of divergentthinking. In Study 1 (N = 107), participants showed increased fluency and flexibility after reading a narrative poem. InStudy 2 (N = 131) reception of conventional, closed metaphorization significantly lowered fluency and flexibility (com-pared to reading non-poetic text). The most critical finding was that poetry exposure could either increase or decreasecreativity level depending on the type of poetic metaphors.