Business meetings held without chairs increase excitement and creativity, suggests a new study.

In the study, published in the journal  Social Psychological and Personalty Science, participants were asked to work in teams for 30 minutes to develop and record a university recruitment video, either working in a room with chairs or in a room without any chairs. The participants’ “psychological arousal” – the way their bodies react when experiencing excitement – was monitored using sensors that were placed on their wrists.

Research assistants evaluated how well the teams worked together and found that the non-sitters were more creative and less inclined to ‘defend their turf’.

“Our study shows that even a small tweak to a physical space can alter how people work with one another,” says study leader Andrew Knight of the Olin Business School at Washington University.