The Influence Of Humor On Insight Problem Solving And Its Neural Mechanisms

Since the 1980s,many studies have examined the relationship between humor and creativity.Empirical research about the relationship between humor and creativity had found that humor can promote individual creativity.The study found a positive correlation between the sense of humor or humor type and creative personality or creative thinking.The study also found that actively creating humor or passively appreciating humor can promote creative thinking.However,most of the research has been concerned with the divergent thinking,lack of the research about the relationship between humor and other creative thinking(such as insight,insight is an important field of creative thinking research)and did not further explore the mechanism of humor impact on creative thinking and neural mechanism.Based on the shortcomings of the existing research,this study aims to investigate the impact of humor on the insight problem solving and to further explore the cognitive mechanism and neural mechanism.Three experiments were completed.The first study was designed as a single-factor three-level within-subjects design,to investigate the impact of humor on college students insight problem solving.The result showed that:(1)The correct rate of insight problem solving in humorous condition is significantly higher than that of no-humor condition;(2)There is no significant difference between humorous condition and non-humorous condition.The second study investigated whether cognitive flexibility played an mediating role in humor and insight.The result showed that:(1)The score of cognitive flexibility and the correct rate of insight problem solving in humorous condition were significantly higher than those in no-humor condition;(2)Cognitive flexibility played a part of mediating role in humor and insight.In the third study,ERP technology was used to reveal the impact of humor on insight from the perspective of neural mechanism.The result showed that:(1)The average amplitude of the novel semantic association condition'N400 is significantly greater than that of the usual semantic association condition;(2)The interaction between the activation type and the semantic association type in the mean amplitude of the first half of LPC is significant.Under the novel semantic association condition,The average amplitude of the humorous condition was significantly less than that of the no-humor condition.Under the usual semantic association condition,The average amplitude of the two activation conditions was not significantly different;(3)The average amplitude of the second half of the LPC in humorous condition was significantly less than that of no-humor condition.