RCT · 2025
Psilocybin microdosing and creativity: pooled results from three placebo-controlled trials
- Original title
- Microdosing psilocybin and its effect on creativity: Lessons learned from three double-blind placebo controlled longitudinal trials.
- Authors
- Prochazkova L, Marschall J, van Elk M, et al.
- Journal
- Neuropharmacology, 2025
- Molecules
- Psilocybin
- Conditions
- Healthy volunteers
- Participants
- 171
- Evidence grade
- Moderate
- Source
- Read the original paper
The question
Does taking very small doses of psilocybin (found in magic truffles) actually make people more creative, as popular claims suggest?
What they did
The researchers ran three double-blind, placebo-controlled studies in which participants took either a microdose of psilocybin or a placebo over a period of time, without knowing which they had received. One of the three trials was pre-registered. Participants completed standard creativity tasks measuring divergent thinking (generating many different ideas) and convergent thinking (finding one correct answer). Data from all three trials were combined into a single pooled analysis of 171 people.
What they found
Active microdosing increased the ratio of original responses (originality divided by total number of responses), suggesting a higher quality of divergent thinking. The raw originality score was also higher during active microdosing, but only when the dose was adjusted for each person’s body weight. These effects held up after accounting for whether participants guessed they had received the active dose and for demographic differences. No effects were found on other divergent-thinking measures or on convergent thinking.
The fine print
The effects were narrow: most creativity measures showed no difference, and one finding depended on adjusting the dose for body weight. Creativity was measured with laboratory tasks, which may not reflect creative work in everyday life. The abstract does not report dose amounts, trial length or effect sizes, and this summary is based on the abstract alone. Participants in microdosing studies often guess their condition, which the authors tried to control for but could not eliminate.
What it means
In one of the larger controlled tests of microdosing to date, psilocybin microdoses produced a small, specific improvement in the originality of ideas, but did not broadly boost creativity.
Evidence grade: Moderate. Pooled analysis of three double-blind placebo-controlled trials, but the setting was semi-naturalistic, only one trial was pre-registered, and the creativity measures are laboratory tasks rather than real-world outcomes.
This summary is based on the study’s published abstract.