Whether it was doing the kitting or learning to play a new instrument, the Covid lockdown made people more creative, a new study says.

Researchers in Paris have surveyed hundreds of people about activities performed during the first lockdown at the start of the pandemic more than two years ago.

Overall, based on almost 400 responses, the team found that people were forced to adapt to a new situation and 'rethink our habits', which bred creativity. 

The researchers also acknowledged that pandemic and stay-at-home rules 'restricted our liberties and triggered health or psychological difficulties', however. 

The new study has been led by researchers from the Frontlab at the Paris Brain Institute in France and published in Frontiers in Psychology.

'Our first observation is that the lockdown was psychologically distressing for the majority of participants, which other studies have shown, but that on average they felt more creative,' said study author Théophile Bieth at Frontlab.

'By correlating the two pieces of information, we showed that the better people felt, the more creative they thought they were.'

The researchers conducted their online survey on French-speaking adults only using a two-part questionnaire, which referred to France's first mandatory home lockdown from March to May 2020. 

The first part of the survey consisted of questions aimed at understanding the circumstances and feelings of participants while at home for the extended period. 

Participants were asked about their situation (such as if they lived alone or with others), their mental states (if they were more or less moody or stressed, for example) and if they felt more or less creative than before. 

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