| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 園藝暨景觀學系 === 102 === Creativity is thought to be a great solution for problems, and this ability is emphasized by firms. How natural settings help us restore from fatigue is very well known from the Attention Restoration Theory (ART), but we don’t know if natural settings can also help us with other cognitive functions, such as being creative. Thus, this study aims to understand how different landscapes affect our creativity. Studies have shown that natural landscapes with water can further enhance the attention restorative benefit, hence we divided natural landscapes into two categories, one with vegetation only; one with less vegetation and water. Creativity is also mood sensitive, but whether positive or negative affect enhances creativity is still questioned. We add in mood as another variable to help us understand how creativity works.
We invited 100 participants to this study, first we showed them a 3-min video with one of the settings: forest, water, or street view. After the video, we asked them to fill out the PANAS mood scale and ATTA creativity test, to understand their reactions to different landscapes. Results show that among the four variables in the creativity test, fluency, elaboration and flexibility performed best in natural environments, elaboration being specifically significant. Originality performed best in street view, and worst in forest with water environment. We also found that negative mood strongly associates with elaboration, showing that peacefulness enhances participants’ ability to present with more detail, and nervousness will restrain this effect.
We conclude with the idea that different landscape environments can enhance different creative functions. Urban scene is where we spent most time in, and its richness of information might help us come up with more original ideas. Whereas natural environments still provide us with more attention restoration benefits that help us work through the details that are needed to put an idea into actualization.
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