Creativity may be a joke, but it is no accident

The late American artist and televised painting teacher, Bob Ross, was best known for his positive attitude summed up by his classic saying, "we don't make mistakes, we just have happy accidents." Because of this cheery outlook he has been much loved and often parodied in our culture:

If Bob Ross was creative, would he be likely to think aggressive memes like this one were funny? Was Bob Ross creative because he was so positive or because he was a complex person (he was also a Master Sergeant in the United States Air Force, a rescuer of injured squirrels in Muncie, Indiana, the father of three boys from two marriages, a painter of - as he often said - "happy trees").

Chang, Chen, Hsu, Chan, and Chang (2015) were interested in a similar question: does a person's style of humor relate to that person's level of creativity? To answer this, they conducted a large study (1,252 participants) with Chinese 13-year-olds living in Taiwan. The measures that they used were translated into Chinese and were chosen because they worked in cross-cultural settings (meaning that the nationality of the participants should not be an issue that will influence the results).

The teenagers competed a Humor Styles Questionnaire and a cluster analysis of their answers placed them into groups. Similar to past research, four styles emerged:

1) Positive Humor: joking about yourself in a positive way (showing off) or joking about others in a positive way to show that you like them.

2) Negative Humor: joking about yourself in a negative way (putting yourself down) or joking about others in a negative way to be aggressive. For example, implying that nobody will date you!

3) General Humor: joking in both positive and negative ways about yourself and about others. In this case humor can be used to both befriend and to be aggressive at times.

4) Humor Deniers: below average use of any type of humor.

Among other measures, the participants took a modified figure drawing test of creative thinking. Each teenager received a piece of paper with 27 versions of the Chinese character for "Human" printed on it. They were asked to doodle upon each symbol to create drawings that incorporated that shape. The drawings were rated on: Fluency (how many of the 27 versions were drawn upon in ten minutes); Flexibility (the number of categories in the drawings' themes); Originality (how novel the drawings were compared to others); and Elaboration (the number of details in the drawings).

The most robust results strongly supported a theory of creativity: Intrapersonal Variability. In this perspective, "...individuals who hold opposing or conflicting traits...[or have] complex personalities..." are more creative (p. 307). The teenagers whose main humor style was General, or full of contradictions and complexity, scored noticeably higher than the other students on all four ratings of creativity.

On the other hand, one comparison did seem to support an alternate theory: the Positivity Perspective suggests that positive humor is linked to more creative thinking. Only in the ratings of Elaboration did participants with Positive Humor outscore the participants with Negative Humor.

If we accept that Bob Ross was a creative man, the most prominent results of this study support that his complex personality and conflicting life experiences may have increased that creativity. Chang et al. explain that creativity may be enhanced when people are able to accept their inner conflicts (self-integration) or when their complex personalities allow them to be psychologically flexible in their thinking.

At the same time, the Elaboration finding implies that Bob Ross' attention to detail in his paintings may have been, at least in part, related to his positive outlook on life. The Positivity Perspective assumes that using positive humor is associated with being in a positive mood, which is assumed to allow one to be more creative, or in this case, to embellish creative acts.

Although Bob Ross' humor clearly included positivity, his life experiences may have led him to embrace a General Humor style, which in turn may have fostered his creativity. In that case Bob Ross would probably find this week's meme funny, even though its humor is aggressive.

Further Reading:

The Chang et al. (2015) article can be accessed through your local college library.

Watch a talk by Dr. Robert Provine, a psychologist and neuroscientist, on laughter.

Read a press release from the Association for Psychological Science about a research study by Vohs, Redden, and Rahinel (2013) that links a messy work environment to increased creativity. 

BONUS:

Feel the positivity! Feel the creativity! The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) Digital Studios created a really amazing musical remix of Bob Ross using manipulated clips from his television program.