In the Mood for Creativity: Exploring Exposure to Humor and Creative Output

Author

Sarah Lee

Graduation Semester and Year

2021

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Jared B Kenworthy

Abstract

The purpose of these three studies was to replicate prior findings, namely, that positive moods can improve creative performance (Baas et al., 2008) as well as to test whether humor provides a creative advantage relative to a neutral emotional state. Three studies were conducted using sets of ten memes as the mood induction stimuli. Participants were assigned to either a positive, humor, or neutral condition in study one. Study two added an irony condition and study three added four parallel explanation conditions (i.e., positive explain, humor explain, neutral explain, irony explain). Participants were assigned to either a positive, humor, neutral, or ironic condition. It was expected that those in the positive and humor conditions would perform better on divergent creativity tasks compared to those in the neutral condition, and that the humor condition would perform better than the positive condition. It was additionally anticipated that those in the ironic condition would perform better on both divergent and convergent tasks compared to those in the neutral condition. Personality traits typically related to creativity such as openness, extraversion, and conscientiousness were also examined, but unfortunately did not replicate. Only support for positive mood enhancing creative fluency was found (studies one and two). Implications and future directions are discussed.

Keywords

Affect, Positive mood, Creativity, Humor

Disciplines

Psychology | Social and Behavioral Sciences

License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

Recommended Citation

Lee, Sarah, "In the Mood for Creativity: Exploring Exposure to Humor and Creative Output" (2021). Psychology Dissertations. 132.
https://mavmatrix.uta.edu/psychology_dissertations/132