{"id":35146,"date":"2015-02-26T14:50:12","date_gmt":"2015-02-26T21:50:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stage.headlessnauedu-b6hgdzckfdgxgzhe.westus-01.azurewebsites.net\/?p=35146"},"modified":"2015-02-27T10:01:30","modified_gmt":"2015-02-27T17:01:30","slug":"nau-researcher-discovers-power-art-making-mood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/nau-researcher-discovers-power-art-making-mood\/","title":{"rendered":"NAU study discovers power of art making on mood"},"content":{"rendered":"

For people who work with textiles to create art, whether it\u2019s knitting, quilt making or needlework, it is likely no surprise that the activities aid in relaxation and improve mood. Ann Collier,<\/strong>\u00a0assistant processor of psychological sciences, has first-hand experience with the phenomenon and the research to explain it.<\/p>\n

After having three children in about a year, Collier turned to making textiles as a means of coping. \u201cIt was the only relief I had, the only part of my life where I could finish something beautiful and have control,”\u00a0Collier said.<\/p>\n

As an academic psychologist, she began questioning the therapeutic value of making art and decided to write a book. \u201cAt the time, there was very little research on the topic,\u201d said Collier, who set out to fill the gaps. Her papers have been published in the Journal of Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts<\/em>\u00a0and the American Art Therapy Journal.<\/em><\/p>\n

Because people, especially women, have been making textile arts for centuries, and because the activities improve moods, Collier wanted to explore how art making could become even more useful by being used in therapy.<\/p>\n

In addition to survey studies, Collier recently conducted a laboratory study of women ages 18 to 77 who had some expertise in making textiles. Participants were asked to share in detail a stressful event and then they were assigned to control groups: expressive writing, meditation or art making. The women evaluated their moods and provided saliva samples to measure the body\u2019s inflammatory immune responses before, during and after the experiment.<\/p>\n

Participants in the art-making group had the most positive outcomes in mood repair and inflammatory immune responses. \u201cIt validates what I thought which is, you\u2019re so engrossed in what you are doing, you can\u2019t remember what bothered you and then you feel refreshed when you go back to the rest of your life,\u201d Collier said.<\/p>\n

Her additional research includes understanding how her findings correspond with the psychology of flow, described as the mental state of energized focus and being completely absorbed with an activity.<\/p>\n

Collier also is collaborating with a peer at another institution to include men who engage in do-it-yourself activities\u00a0in her research and has plans to expand her work to include greater economic and cultural diversity among participants.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For people who work with textiles to create art, whether it\u2019s knitting, quilt making or needlework, it is likely no surprise that the activities aid in relaxation and improve mood. Ann Collier,\u00a0assistant processor of psychological sciences, has first-hand experience with the phenomenon and the research to explain it. After having three children in about a…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":35147,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research-academics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}