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Art therapists have long held that art production causes reductions in stress and elevations in mood (Rubin, 1999). The authors examined this claim in a randomized, controlled trial. Fifty adults between the ages of 18 and 30 were randomly assigned to either create an art work or to view and sort a series of art prints. Three measures of overall negative mood and of anxiety were collected before and after each intervention. Two-way ANOVAs (Group by Time) demonstrated significantly greater reductions in negative mood and anxiety in the art production group compared with the art viewing control group on all three measures (all p-values <.005). These results demonstrate that the simple act of creating a work of art can produce dramatic reductions in negative mood and that these reductions can be attributed specifically to the production of art rather than to its viewing.
Bell et al. (Mon,) studied this question.