Poetic Break: Incubation for Associative Creativity

Abstract

Creative thinking often improves during incubation, a phase where attention shifts away from the problem, generally involving mind-wandering. This study examined whether reading poetry could be an effective incubator for creative ideation. A total of 153 participants were randomly assigned to one of the three incubation conditions: reading a poem (reading), reading and rating the poem (rating), and reading non-poetic text (control). Creativity was assessed using Forward Flow (FF) for associative thinking and the Alternate Uses Task (AUT) for divergent thinking, both pre- and post-incubation. Participants reported their levels of mind-wandering during incubation and also completed a questionnaire assessing their daydreaming trait. Results showed that high mind-wandering in the reading condition significantly boosted associative thinking, while low mind-wandering decreased it. In contrast, associative thinking increased in the other conditions regardless of mind-wandering levels. No significant effects were observed on divergent thinking in any condition, and daydreaming traits did not influence the results. These findings suggest that poetry reading during incubation may effectively enhance free-flowing associative thought but does not necessarily stimulate the generation of entirely novel ideas.