Covid 19: the pandemic has made us more creative. Much more creative?

The unusual conditions of the first confinement linked to Covid-19 pushed us to show great adaptability. A group of Frontlab researchers at the Institut du Cerveau have looked into this phenomenon to determine whether this exceptional situation has had an impact on our creative potential.

They created a two-part questionnaire: the first included questions aimed at understanding the situation in which the participants of the study found themselves in March-April 2020 and if they had felt more or less creative during this period, while the second focused on the creative activities they carried out during confinement. They collected nearly 400 actionable responses.

Scientists have found that the confinement has been psychologically taxing for most respondents. Other studies had already highlighted this worrying trend. Researchers from Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore have previously claimed that one in three adults suffer from Covid 19-related psychological distress globally. According to them, the pandemic has particularly weakened the mental well-being of women, young adults, and those whose socio-economic status is considered to be lower.

While confinement and health restrictions have been deleterious to our mental health, they have a much more beneficial effect on our creativity. Many participants in the Brain Institute study said they felt more creative during these troubled times. This positive change may be linked to the fact that they found themselves with more free time, that they felt more motivated during confinement or that they felt the need to adapt to an unprecedented situation. So many psychological factors that can stimulate and promote creativity.

All creative?

But how did she express herself during the first confinement? The research team observed that many of us turned to cooking, sports and dance programs, self-help initiatives and gardening during these long weeks of isolation. But that’s not all: study participants who were already engaged in creative activities before the start of the pandemic saw their practice increase, on average, by 40% during this period.

However, it was not without a hitch. Respondents felt that they encountered many obstacles in their daily lives, which prompted some of them to be inventive in carrying out their usual activities. On the contrary, others have faced too many problems to feel creative during this period. “Some data from the scientific literature show that you have to feel good to be creative, while others establish the opposite. Similarly, we do not know in which direction this process operates: Do we do we feel good because we are creative or does being creative make us happier?” said Alizée Lopez-Persem, co-first author of the study. “Here, one of our analyzes suggests that creative expression has enabled individuals to better manage their negative emotions linked to confinement and therefore to feel better during this difficult period.“.

If the first confinement boosted our creativity, many researchers are still wondering about this quality, some of which seem to be more endowed than others. This is the case of Jules Zimmermanauthor of the book “The Bath of Archimedes” published by Editions Arké in 2021. “There is a very popular idea that everyone is creative, from the artist to the entrepreneur. I’m quite opposed to the rhetoric that says we’re all creative geniuses with immense potential hidden within us. We can all develop our creativity. This does not mean that we are all destined to be creative geniuses. This is an opportunity to get rid of a strong injunction: that of ‘succeeding’ even in our pleasure activities. I find it quite terrible this idea that as a modern human being, we should necessarily realize ourselves by creating, by inventing things“, he explained to ETX Daily Up. What we feel guilty about.