Anger bottled up inside. Should I have tagaltiniorni for lunch? And maybe an acrylic-pour, colourful abstract original artwork painting on canvas in fluid art red, green and white for a friend’s next birthday present?
The weather sucks big cojones today here in whatever it’s fashionable these days to call Toronto. It’s cold and dark and pissing (not raining), so this got me thinking: Does weather affect one’s creativity? Aside from making it easier to procrastinate (like blog) or alleviate stress (smoking), apparently I am also prone to recognize metaphors, think of new pasta names, and come up with abstract gift ideas more seamlessly in weather like this.
There are a lot of sites out there that address if/how crapstain weather affects your creativity, but I wanted some science behind it, which is how I tracked down Laura Geggel (@LauraGeggel) and her piece in Live Science titled “Five Weird Ways Cold Weather Affects Your Psyche.”
Ms. Geggel goes into more depth than merely exploring creativity, but here’s a brief summary of said subject:
Different types of creativity can emerge when a person feels hot or cold, researchers found.
In a series of experiments, researchers found that people who were given a heated therapeutic pad, a hot cup of tea or who were in a warm room were better at creative drawing, categorizing objects and thinking of gift ideas for others.
But when they were cold, the participants were better at recognizing metaphors, thinking of new pasta names and planning abstract gift ideas.
It’s possible that warmth helps people with warm relational creativity, meaning they may feel psychologically closer to other people and more generous toward them. In contrast, cold may stimulate referential, or distant and cold processing, as people may feel more apart from others.
“The tactile experience of physical warmth seems to be one of the most basic cues through which people learn about their social world,” the researchers wrote in the 2014 study, published in the journal Acta Psychologica.
All I know is that if the weather doesn’t get better today, I may be back here sooner rather than later, and posting yet another update…
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