| The constructs of humor and creativity are familiar to everyone, but difficult to define to everyone's satisfaction. Humor and creativity may share many components, including playfulness, risk-taking, resolution of incongruity, even insight (e.g., Koestler, 1964; Rouff, 1975; Kuhlman, 1984). Several studies have also focused on how humor might facilitate creativity (e.g., Ziv, 1983, 1989; Bryant and Zillman, 1989; Humke & Schaefer, 1996).;Based on a review of research on creativity, humor and their relationship, a study was designed to investigate the possibility of gender differences in these variables. Thorson and Powell (1993) hinted at differences in the humor styles of males (characterized as more aggressive) and females (characterized as more social). Similarly, creativity style differences were suggested by Groth (1976) and Heintz (1977), with females more attuned to the creative process, while males more focused on the creative end-product.;It was proposed that these differing styles would affect mean score levels and correlations between humor and creativity. For this study, 242 male and female college students were administered a fresh combination of the Multidimensional Sense of Humor Scale and the Khatena-Torrance Creative Perception Inventory. Two factors---sex and sex role type---were related to scores on these two measures.;Sex and sex role groups were examined by ANOVA for differences in humor and creativity mean scores, and their humor-creativity correlations were compared. These analyses were also conducted with the 4 subscales of the humor measure and 11 subscales of the creativity measure. The correlational results were tested for significant differences among sex and sex role subgroups by the z-test based on Fisher's r-to-z transformation.;Males were found to have significantly higher humor mean scores than females. In addition, the sex role subgroups Androgynous and Masculine recorded higher mean scores for both humor and creativity. A 2 x 2 analysis suggested that this might simply reflect a main effect of the Masculinity, or Instrumentality dimension. Several interesting subscale correlations were obtained, but were so few they may have occurred by chance. The study's main question---Are there any gender differences in humor, creativity, and their correlations?---can be answered in the affirmative, but many questions remain. |
