Did you start making sourdough bread, painting new home decor or start playing an instrument during the COVID lockdown?
Well, experts say you’re not alone.
A recent study published in Frontiers in Psychology found that COVID restrictions led to an “overall positive change in creativity,” which was “mainly related to having more free time or opportunities.” The findings showed that the lockdown forced people to adapt to a new situation and “rethink our habits.”
Led by the Frontlab at the Paris Brain Institute in France, researchers surveyed 380 French-speaking adults who reported craving creativity.
“Our first observation is that the lockdown was psychologically distressing for the majority of participants, which other studies have shown, but that on average they felt more creative,” said study author Théophile Bieth of Frontlab.
“By correlating the two pieces of information, we showed that the better people felt, the more creative they thought they were.”
Participants were asked questions regarding their living situation, their mental states and if they felt more or less creative than before.
The increased creativity was strongly linked with having more free time, more motivation or the need to solve a problem while negative changes were related to negative affective feelings or a lack of resources or opportunities.
The study also determined what creative activities people picked up during the lockdown. The top creative hobbies people devoted their time to were cooking, painting, sewing, gardening, decorating and playing music.
Only about 40% of the activities that were mentioned in the study were hobbies that people had previously practiced within the last five years, leading researchers to find that the majority of people found new hobbies.
Of the activities that people had previously participated in, the ones that had the most devoted participants were cooking, sports and dance programs, self-help initiatives and gardening.
But while many people felt they became more creative while restricted to their COVID bubble, some individuals felt that they were not creative because they faced too many problems to be creative.
“There is some evidence in the scientific literature that you need to feel good to be creative, while other evidence points the other way,” said study author Alizée Lopez-Persem of Inserm (the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research) in Paris.
“Also, it is not known in which direction this process takes place – do we feel good because we are creative or does being creative make us happier?”