A shared universe › Blog › Making something with your hands · Español
When did you last make something that did not exist before? It does not have to be art: a stew from a new recipe, a scarf, a chair that holds together again. Researchers in New Zealand and the United States asked themselves what these small creations do to the mood of the person who makes them.
Tamlin Conner, of the University of Otago in New Zealand, together with Colin DeYoung, of the University of Minnesota, and Paul Silvia, of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, followed 658 young university students for thirteen days. Each day, the participants noted how much time they had spent on creative activities, how they had felt, and how far they felt that what they did had meaning and that they were connected to other people. Psychologists call this last thing flourishing.
What counted as creative was very varied: writing songs, poems or stories, knitting and crocheting, painting, drawing, graphic design, playing music or trying new recipes.
The work was published in 2018. On the days after someone had created more than usual, that person felt more energetic and more enthusiastic, and said they were doing better with their life in general. Negative emotions, however, did not change: creating did not wipe away sadness or worries, but it added something good.
The researchers also checked the opposite route, in case it was good-humoured days that led to creating the next day. They found no such effect. Everything pointed to the creative activity coming first and the good mood afterwards.
It should be read with caution. The data were given by the participants themselves, they were young university students, and a study like this shows how things follow one another in time, but does not fully prove that one causes the other.
Other studies point the same way with people of all ages. In 2024, a team from Anglia Ruskin University in England, led by Helen Keyes, analysed a survey of 7,182 English adults carried out between 2019 and 2020. Those who painted, drew, made pottery or photography, embroidered, knitted or worked with wood reported being more satisfied with their lives, happier and with a stronger sense that their life was worthwhile, even when taking into account their age, their health or whether they had a job. In anxiety and loneliness, however, no difference showed. It is a snapshot of one moment, so it does not tell us what came first.
An international survey of more than 3,500 people who knit, published in 2013 by Jill Riley and her team, found that the more often they knitted, the calmer and happier they said they felt. Those who knitted in a group also spoke of more contact with other people.
And a 2018 review of cookery workshops, in hospitals and in neighbourhoods, found improvements in self-esteem, in dealings with others and in mood, although its authors warn that the studies were few, small and of limited quality.
Those who study creativity distinguish between great creativity, that of the geniuses who change history, and everyday creativity: that of someone who improvises a dinner from what is left in the fridge or mends a lamp with a bit of wire. The psychologists James Kaufman and Ronald Beghetto, who in 2009 sorted the forms of creativity into four types, remind us that this second kind is found in almost everyone. It is the kind that appears in the studies in this article.
It is not about doing it well or showing it to anyone. Nor do you need to reach that state in which you lose track of time, the one psychology calls flow, although it sometimes appears. In the Otago study, something much simpler was measured: the time each person spent making something new.
It is not yet known for certain. There are some possible explanations, none fully proven:
The authors of the Otago study also suggest a simpler possibility: that a project begun one day carries on into the next, and that this is what lifts the mood. Whether for one reason or several, what recurs across the different studies is the link between making something of your own and feeling somewhat better.
If you have gone weeks without enjoying anything, not even what you used to like, talk to your doctor. Sometimes mood needs more than a hobby.
A jar of jam, a half-knitted jumper, a chair sanded down: if today you have made something with your hands and it has done you good, tell it on a star with “What I’m grateful for”. Whoever sees it can share your joy.