Sense of Humor as Predictor of Creativity Level in University Undergraduates

Abstract

Sense of humor is concerned with all those things which a person verbally express or perform in a way which would be perceived as amusing and causes others to laugh. It is a cognitive procedure that is involved in creation and perception of any funny stimulus as a result it creates an emotional response which is involved in its enjoyment (Martin, 2007).Humor is directly linked with the creativity, process of producing new, unique, novel and insightful ideas but it demands a lot of effort, struggle and passion (Amabile, 1996). Humor has appeared to be a very important variable, as a predictor of creativity. Humor encourages the creativity of children. Research showed that there is similarity in the thinking contributing towards humor and creativity. Children who are involved in finding new, novel and strange ways of making sense also have the ability to create something. It is also said that solving problems is easy for those children who have a better sense of humor (McGhee, 2002).According to Kim (2009) there are some important factors which contribute in the process of creativity as well as in humor for example purpose, diversity, relationship, imagery and externalization. The factors are not dependent upon condition rather it remains the same in all the fields of life whether it is science or social sciences. Humor is one of the ways to express the creativity and the factors of creativity and humor are interlinked because the purpose of humorous situation is to stimulate the audience to show emotional response. The diversity factor of humor is aimed at a fusion of different things which are not appearing and are normally linked with each other. Furthermore it is aimed to identify the relationship between different objects by the help of some specific themes. Humor raises many interesting images, words or physical structures which are the way of expressing and representing humor.A survey was conducted and found that sense of humor is very effective for the job as the people who are humorous usually show good performance and creativity in work. As a result of research it was concluded that people with a sense of humor tend to be more creative, less rigid and more willing to consider and embrace new ideas and methods (Twidale, 1986).In a study conducted by Hauck and Thomas (1972), the independence of creativity and intelligence was verified by a low correlation. However, sense of humor correlated highly with both creativity and intelligence. Furthermore Murdock and Ganim (1993) carried out content analysis of definitions and theories of humor and suggested that humor and creativity are closely related, and that humor production is basically a subset of creativity.Rouff (1975) found that creativity and humor comprehension were positively correlated among undergraduates, and argued that they have a common basis in the ability to find hidden connections between apparently disparate concepts. Gilbert (1977) also found a positive relationship between humor comprehension and creativity among first graders, in contrast to a negligible correlation between humor appreciation and creativity.Brodzinsky and Rubien (1976) found that creativity was positively related to humor production. Furthermore Fabrizi and Pollio (1987) found correlations between teacher and peer ratings of humor. Several investigations (Humke & Schaefer, 1996; Kovacs, 1999) have found positive relationships between paper-and-pencil creativity measures and scores on Thorson and Powell's (1993b) Multidimensional Sense of Humor Scale. Ziv (1988) described that humor training is effective at enhancing creativity in adolescents.Humor is also having connection with sociability. Sociability refers to ones desires to live in a group because they want to be part of a group of people whom they respect, people who like them, whose values they share, and people whose cognitive reasoning they can understand. The existence of social beings is incomplete unless they cared for others (Monroe, 1998). …