Humor supports creativity: evidence that personality traits moderate the effects of humor styles on divergent thinking

While humor has been a subject of fascination for people since ancient times, research examining the effect of humor on creative behavior has been relatively scarce in recent decades, despite the reciprocal relationship between these variables. Moreover, it is not apparent whether the effect of humor on creativity significantly varies based on various personality traits or differences in humor usage. Thus, we presented two studies aiming to investigate these issues, with a particular focus on the manipulation of humor styles, namely self-enhancing humor and self-defeating humor, along with a control condition. Study 1 focused on the effect of humor and personality traits on creativity. Humor was manipulated using cartoons, and participants were asked to generate alternative uses for an ordinary object in a creativity task. Study 2 was a continuation of the first study, where the state of extraversion in participants was manipulated. The findings revealed that the participants who did read humorous cartoons generated more ideas than those who did not read cartoons. Moreover, personality traits moderated the effect of self-defeating humor on creative behavior. These findings underscore the important role of personality traits in the relationship between humor and creativity and provide valuable insights for future studies on the experimental manipulation of humor styles.