Watching art films can make you a more creative thinker

The first was a categorization task. Here, study participants were asked to rate how well various objects fit into a given category. For example: rate how much a car belongs in the category "vehicle." Pretty straightforward. But what about a camel? Or a foot? That's where things get interesting. People who are more willing to accept these offbeat examples are exhibiting what researchers call "conceptual expansion" - a loosening of the boundaries between mental categories. And when those boundaries loosen, ideas cross-pollinate, and new associations form. This is, in many ways, at the heart of creative thinking.

The second task measured creative production more directly. Participants were asked to create a short story that included three given words: "stamp," "letter" and "send." Some stories were uncreative and predictable: "I was writing my friend a letter, so I put a stamp on it and took it to the post office to send." Others were more inventive, using the words metaphorically ("...her words left a stamp in my mind") or taking the prompt in a surprising direction. Independent judges rated the stories on their originality. Once again, the group that had watched the artistic shorts came out ahead.

Perhaps the most surprising outcome was that, in general, individuals who viewed the experimental films reported that they felt worse after, compared to individuals in the control group. They rated the films lower and reported more negative emotional states. Yet they still outperformed on every measure of creativity. It seems art can produce cognitive benefits without requiring the viewer to enjoy the experience.

So what's going on? The study points to a specific mechanism. Art appears to work its cognitive magic by triggering "state openness" - a temporary shift toward a more receptive and exploratory mindset. This shift, the researchers found, fully explained the link between watching art and broader conceptual thinking. The common intuition that art "expands your mind" may be more literal than it sounds.

The films used in the study were sourced from Short of the Week, a highly selective film curation platform, and all fell into the "experimental" genre, reflecting works that resist simple interpretation, are visually surprising or narratively ambiguous. The control videos, on the other hand, were rapid-fire compilations of funny animal clips and other domestic bloopers. They offered immediate gratification but little to chew on intellectually.

While the results of this study cannot speak to the effect of art more broadly - beyond artistic short film - the implications could have real time applications. At a time when arts funding faces persistent pressure in schools and public budgets, the study provides a controlled, preregistered and transparently reported demonstration that brief encounters with art can temporarily drive changes in cognition that favor creativity.

"When there are debates about whether arts programs deserve more funding, studies like this offer something concrete to point to," Gross said, "The case isn't closed but with evidence like this, the idea that art expands the mind is starting to look less like a metaphor, and more like a measurable psychological effect."

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