Creating art can also have many benefits for the brain, including:
Activating the reward center: Making art can activate the brain’s reward center.
Lowering stress and anxiety: Making art can help lower stress and anxiety.
Promoting brain plasticity: The process of creating and appreciating art promotes brain plasticity, which can lead to cognitive flexibility and problem-solving skills.
Art therapy is a recognized form of treatment because engaging in a creative practice can help reduce symptoms of depression and PTSD.
“What’s so interesting is that we seem to intuitively understand that if we can get ourselves to believe something first, we’ll be more effective at getting others to believe it,” says William von Hippel, a psychologist at The University of Queensland, who co-authored the study. “So we process information in a biased fashion, we convince ourselves, and we convince others. The beauty is, those are the steps Trivers outlined—and they all lined up in one study.”
